Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park - part 1

On Monday, we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. 

On our way to the park, we re-traced some of our drive from Fruita to Gunnison, going along the side of the Blue Mesa Reservoir....

... and some of the ranch lands in the area.

Inside the park -- we had read that there may be issues with finding parking at some of the overlooks -- so we stopped at the first overlook, Tomichi Point as there was a parking place available!

Here we first started seeing the canyon.

Obligatory selfie

Sure enough, there was no parking at the next stop, which was the Visitor's Center (and it had the most parking places of any of the stops, but not enough for the number of visitors on this particular day).

We continued on to Pulpit Rock Overlook where we saw this mound of yellow flowers with butterflies (or moths?) on it -- see the video to see the flying things: https://youtu.be/lD324zSgr1k

From this viewpoint, we could see (and hear) the Gunnison River down below.

The cliff face on the north side is very steep, and the south side more sloped...

Steep north face

The reason for the difference in the slopes

We drove on to Cross Fissures View...

Interesting views of the north face from this view

I have read that it is called "black canyon" because the bottom of the canyon gets so little sunlight each day -- in some places about 33 minutes a day at the maximum.

You can also visit the North Rim -- you may be able to see the gravel road into the north side in the middle of this picture on the other side of the canyon -- but it is a couple of hours drive from the south rim to the north rim as there are no direct roads.

"Chasm View"

Information board at Painted Wall View

Another information board at Painted Wall View

Painted wall

Information at Sunset View

Sunset View (looking west out the end of the canyon)

Another visitor offered to take our picture at Sunset View.

We drove to the end of South Rim Road (High Point), but again, even though there were more parking spaces than at other stops, they were all taken. We decided that we had enjoyed enough of the rim views, and headed to another part of the park, East Portal. More about that in another post!

Note: I wrote this post on Wednesday after we had visited the park on Monday, July 7. On early Thursday morning, July 10, according to reports, a dry lightning storm moved through the area of the National Park and ignited a fire that has burned over 3500 acres and is 0% contained as of July 13. 

I posted this picture of a map board in the post above from our visit on Monday...

 

 

 

 

...this photo appeared on the park's Facebook page on Friday. I am pretty sure it is of the same signboard; the platform out over the canyon appears to be gone.

 

The area that I posted above where the flowers with the butterflies was located also appears to be in the burned area. All along the South Rim Road it appears to be burned, though many of the overlooks may have been preserved. The visitor center (which we were unable to visit due to lack of parking) has been preserved to this point.

The information about the wildfire with daily updates can be found here: https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-information/cobcp-south-rim 

We are grateful that we went when we did, but it is sad that this area which we enjoyed so recently may not be available for others to enjoy for quite some time. It reminds us of visiting Jasper (about this time of year last year) and it burning within just a couple of days after we left. We are praying that the firefighters will be kept safe and that they will have success containing the fire.