The Black Canyon

Today was another day that we could take it easy getting up and going, as we knew we could hit all the good spots on the south side of the canyon in about 4 hours. Although we were only about 20 minutes from the north rim of the canyon, because of the size of it, it would take us about an hour and a half to get to the south rim and visitor’s center. And because of that reason, we figured we would hit the south rim and the eastern portal to the floor today, and then the north rim in the morning before heading to Leadville.

After our journey down to the south rim, which was thankfully mostly highway. Driving out here is awesome, but doing these shelf roads everywhere we go is a bit much for someone from PA. It was nice to not have to worry about falling to our deaths… for now. We would find that to be short lived.

We decided to go down to the river first, since the sun was pretty much as high as it would get and the walls are so tall. Every turn you are a couple feet from going over the side. They do warn you… no trailers, nothing over 22 feet, 18% grade zig-zagging the whole 2000 feet down. It’s not great on the brakes, I tried engine braking, and it helped a little, but without using the brakes too the engine would’ve revved way too high, it did get pretty hot.

We made it safely down, and the view was crazy. Pictures don’t do staring up these walls justice. The river road is east of the steepest walls in the canyon, but it’s still impressive. On a side note, where we were on the river was totally kayak-able for us, note for our next trip… but from here west it was nothing but expert whitewater, even in the best conditions, which were currently not good.

Panoramic View of East Portal Road

Once we were done marveling at the canyon, we headed back up the wall. Going up isn’t as bad, a few of the switchbacks were still a little tight, and over to the south rim trail. This road travels west of the east portal to give you views down into canyon from the edge. And sometimes you really are on the edge of a 2300 foot cliff, which according to a sign I read is a little more than 2 Empire State Buildings.

Driving the rim trail wasn’t a huge improvement from the portal trail, but was better. This time there closest encounters with the edge were surprises. There were bushes blocking the view from the road for the most part, and then all of a sudden there is a break in the bushes and you look straight down and notice that you can’t see the bottom, just the shear wall across the canyon from you, because you just drove a foot and a half away from a 2000 foot drop. Even when I missed them I knew they were there as Kacie grabbed on to whatever she could as we passed them. I gripped the wheel a little tighter every time as well.

There were 12 overlooks on the trail. Most of them are park and hike. None of them were more than a couple hundred yards away, which at this altitude still make you breath a little harder. We didn’t stop at every one, but hit the ones we thought were the best and different from the ones we just saw. Some where right down from the last one and had pretty much the same view.

The south side is not quite as close to vertical and the north side is, although when on top of them there’s not a huge difference. It’s more about looking east and west into the canyon where that comes into play. This is another thing that might not come through in the pictures, but when you’re standing on the north side at the edge, you can tell the difference.

We saw so many amazing views and rock formations. Hopefully we will do a feature page on this place in the future.

After we got to the end of the south rim, we headed back to the beginning, since the rim road is a dead end in a national park. It didn’t take that long to get out of there and head to WalMart. We needed some stuff. Then home where Kacie made Chicken Alfredo. Delicious.

While at WalMart, we picked up some bags for the trip home. After taking a minute to think things thru, we realized that we would need to send our luggage back home on Friday as soon as we arrived in Leadville and be without most of our stuff for 3 days. Right now airlines are allowing you to make changes to flights without charging fees so we thought it over and decided to cancel our flight home and make the drive! I haven’t been in a car across country since I was a kid and James hasn’t done it in years. I’ve wanted to do a cross country road trip for a while and it seemed to work out better for us this way anyway. Now we can keep all of our clothes and supplies with us until we head out on Sunday morning and still make it home on Monday. James canceled the hotel for Sunday night without penalty so the only thing we need to do now is plan a trip to use up our airline credit within the next year. What a shame… we have to go on another vacation.

Tomorrow we will hit the north rim trail for more dramatic views, then off to Leadville.