Black Canyon is in western Colorado and is part of a steep walled gorge carved through Precambian rock by the Gunnison river. There are roads and trails along both the north and south rims which have outlooks with views of the canyons dramatically steep walls and striated painted cliff faces. There is a winding eastern road that act as a portal and descends to the river.

The Gunnison river flows only a total of 48 miles and the deepest and most dramatic 12 mile portion of the canyon is within the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. However, the canyon continues upstream and is included in the Curedcanti National Recreation Area and downstream into the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area.

Many canyons in the American west are longer and some are deeper, but none combines the depth, narrowness, sheerness, and lack of sunlight than does the Gunnison. In fact, some portions of the Gunnison canyon get only about a half hour of direct sunlight a day.

Thus, the Black Canyon is so named because the steepness of it′s walls keep sunlight from reaching the river, often keeping the bottom of the canyon and much of the walls cloaked in shadow which causes the rock walls to appear black. So much of the canyon is narrow and the point at which it is narrowest, the river bottom is just 40 feet wide.

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8136 feet

Look at the next two photos and notice the different color rock veins.

Geologists tell us that about a billion years ago, at the end of the Precambian Eon, during the Proterozoic era, molten rock was squeezed into fissures forming the light colored bands which thread Black Canyon′s otherwise dark, nearly black walls.

These pegmatite dikes are a much harder igneous rock than the surrounding darker gneisses (pronounced nice es). Being a much harder rock, this makes the pegmatitie dikes much more resistant to erosion than the gneisses.

Since the pegmatite weathers more slowly, they produce the protruding fin like formations as well as the slim vertical pinnacles.

In fact, if you look again at the first four photos above, you may be able to make out these pegmatite dikes even better, now that you know what to look for. Also, the pegmatite that you see across the canyon is the same vein that the viewer on this overlook is standing upon on this side of the canyon.

Too, I am impressed with the amazing cutting power the water from the Gunnison river has as it has flowed through the Gunnison canyon.

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7760 feet

This overlook displays the extremely steep walls of Black Canyon, which has a dept of 1750 feet at the Narrows just upstream of here to as deep as 2700 feet north of Warner Point.

The Narrows, between Pulpit Rock and Chasm View, is the narrowest and shallowest section of the canyon, with it′s width less than a quarter mile across, about 1200 feet in width.

Also known as Warner Point.

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8289 feet