Dragon Canyon

Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a perfectly serviceable name, but it’s a slightly bland one for one of the most spectacular places in North America. Another gripe with the name is the fact that there are other Black Canyons (for example, one in Rocky Mountain National Park).

If it had been up to me, I would have called the wondrous gorge sliced by the Gunnison River through Central Colorado something a bit more dramatic: Dragon Canyon, after the pinkish white streaks embedded in its dark wall resembling serpentine monsters.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison is where my wanderlust began. In January 2012, after visiting Iowa for the caucuses, I stopped there on a whim and immediately became transfixed by America’s national parks. I visited again last summer and hope to visit again every summer, each time taking a different route down into the canyon.

Last year, it was the Gunnison Route, the shortest, most basic scramble originating near the South Rim visitor center. This time, for the first time, I saw the canyon from the harder-to-reach North Rim and traversed the SOB Draw (that’s really what it’s called because of all the poison ivy) down to the river.

Winter’s above average snowfall meant above average snowmelt, swelling the river, which roars even in ordinary years. Frothing and churning throughout the canyon, the Gunnison’s turbulent water in one spot formed a small waterfall over a giant rock in the middle of the river.

Not a soul was around as I found a rock of my own on the river’s north shore and took in the incomprehensible walls shooting straight up. A snarling, soaring dragon flapping between the sheer cliffs would hardly have felt out of place in this strange, beautiful place.