Arizona doesn't have too many rivers; Arizona has "washes." These are dry riverbeds that are terribly dangerous because they carry the runoff of thunderstorms miles away - thunderstorms so far "upstream" that you don't even know that they are happening. People like to use these washes as pathways because there are no cactus, etc. that they have to step over or walk around. (Hello. There is no vegetation because something has scrubbed it away!) Many, many people and their animals have lost their lives in these washes because of flash flooding.
The Upper and the Lower Antelope Canyons are on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona, and the Navajo's require you to join a tour as a way of controlling the number of people inside these slot canyons at any given time. So, we have reservations with a company in Page. They were a bit tricky to find, but once found they were super helpful. We are assigned to a slight, perky young woman who immediately takes charge and clearly gives instructions that she expects to be followed - promptly and to the letter. (She's my kinda lady, and I have no problems with it because she's clear in her instructions.) There are eight of us, and we pile into a well-used 4-wheel drive Suburban.
This lil' slip of a woman roars off down the highway as if there's not a second to waste. The canyons aren't too far out of town and the instant she pulls into the staging area she slows to a crawl, checks in at the guard shack, eases away, comes to a full stop, engages the 4-wheel drive, and heads down the embankment into the wash. There have been recent heavy rains, but there is no standing water in the wash. What evidence remains is deep green vegetation and beautiful flowers up on the banks.
Our guide isn't driving as fast as she did on the highway, but she is still wasting no time. The wash is maybe 50 or 75 yards wide and maybe 10 feet deep. The bottom is sandy, hence the need for the 4-wheel drive. The farther we go the deeper the wash gets. In a very few minutes we come to a dead end, she pulls a u-turn, parks in line with other tour guide vehicles, and throws it into park.
We're all full-sized adults and those of us squeezed into the back seats are pleased to be set free. She directs us to the "dead-end," and we're wondering what's going on. As we get a bit closer we see that there's an opening in the wall - the slot canyon!
You can judge from the size of the person how tall that opening is - 50 feet? maybe 60? That's equivalent to a five or six story building! And notice how sandy and flat and cactus-free the wash is. It's easy to see why folks would prefer to hike that instead of the landscape up top. Problem is, if a flash-flood of thunderstorm runoff were to come gushing out of this slot canyon, HOW would one get out of the wash?
Slot canyons are rare - found worldwide - but rare. It takes a specific combination of geology and water features to create these canyons. They are most often found in soft rock formations like sandstone and limestone, but can sometimes be formed in granite and basalt rock as well.
These canyons on the Navajo Reservation in the American Southwest may be the most well known worldwide, but the largest collection is in a not-so-very-accessible region of Australia.
If you think Biblically, there are slot canyons in Petra, Jordan. (They are the ones that were used in filming "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.") Settlement of that area began as early as 1500 years before Christ, but Petra (or the Rose City because of the color of its rock) was carved out of the rock somewhere around 312 B.C. The world didn't know about this city until 1812. Pretty well-kept secret, I'd say!! Smithsonian Magazine names it as one of the "28 Places to See Before You Die." If you approached Petra from the south you would pass the Tomb of Aaron, Moses brother.
Utah has the largest concentration of slot canyons anywhere in the world. These include canyons in Bryce, Zion and Death Valley National Parks, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and a place called Buckskin Gulch which is the longest slot canyon in the world. These are just north across the state line from Page, Arizona.
As we get closer, the opening doesn't seem as tall. It's kinda spooky lookin' and I think of Granny Beth and her claustrophobia... But this is a canyon, not a cave. One can see sunlight peeking in from the top all the way through. Still, it's pretty close inside.
Now comes the REALLY, REALLY hard part: choosing which photos to share with you! Granpa took over TWO HUNDRED photos!!
The swirling action of the water - likened to the inside of a washing machine - forced through this canyon at rocket speeds created these whirling patterns.
The sand particles trapped in the water smoothed and polished the softer portions of the rocks.
I don't know exactly how Granpa did it, but he musta changed his camera settings somehow. The first picture is true colors and pretty, but the second I think is beautiful!!
These floor to ceiling shots give you a pretty good idea what walking through it looked like.
Obviously I could go on and on showing you the exquisite phenomenon of nature... just look at the texture in these formations. Our guide had names for a lot of the features, she knew what camera settings were best for which areas, knew what angles to take pictures from, even grabbed my iPhone several times in order to get it just right!
One could book a "photo tour," but all that allowed was more time to spend in the canyon because folks were setting up tripods with mega lens and using light meters - and basically being rude to the rest of us po' folk.
One of the pictures our guide took with my phone is really cool: she called it "The Heart."
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