We'd set our alarm for 6 AM, so we could take showers and be out of the Lake Fork parking lot campground as soon as possible. The whole campsite incident had soured us on the area. We headed a mile up the road to the Pine Creek turnoff, where our boat tour would begin. The dirt road was a steep downhill which went about a half mile to the parking lot for the boat tour and access to the canyon. This was just beyond the Blue Mesa Dam where the Black Canyon begins. We had plenty of time, so we pulled into a nice flat space and had our breakfast and coffee.
As we were getting ready to head down to the boat dock, a ranger came along. He was the one directing the tour, but was interested in our Roadtrek. He'd always wanted one to full-time in for a couple of years, but never seemed to find the right time. Originally a corporate pilot from Connecticut, he'd retired early, moved to Tucson and got a seasonal ranger position here in Colorado where he has spent the last nine summers giving the boat tour. He bought a home nearby and spends his summers in Colorado and winters in Tucson. I'm not sure he needs a Roadtrek.
After chatting for a while, he headed off to get prepared for the tour. We followed shortly after that. To get to the boat dock from the parking lot, you have to descend 232 steps to the river and walk a half mile downstream along the riverbank on a path that was an old railroad bed. We were definitely in the canyon.
The tour boat is a 40-foot pontoon boat that takes 42 passengers. It was totally booked for today. There are two tours daily and tomorrow (Labor Day Monday) is the last day it runs for the year. We were lucky to stumble upon it and we got the last two seats on the 10:00 tour when we reserved yesterday.
It was a very interesting boat ride. Below the Blue Mesa Dam, there are three more dams inside the Black Canyon, the Morrow Point Dam, the Crystal Dam and the Gunnison Diversion Dam. The National Park begins after the last dam. All of the dams are part of a large water management project. All except the Gunnison Diversion Dam were built in the 1970s to capture the water draining into the Gunnison River, which comes from three mountain ranges in Colorado, and provide electric power. Most of the water is stored in the Blue Mesa Reservoir and the water levels are kept fairly even in canyon above the Morrow Point and Crystal Dams.
The Gunnison River through the Black Canyon has one of the steepest natural drops of any river in the US, so the two dams below Blue Mesa are primarily for power generation. In the Morrow Point Reservoir, where our boat trip was, the river is less than ten feet deep at the bottom of the Blue Mesa dam, but over 450 feet deep at the Morrow Point Dam only 12 miles downstream. There are actually places in the Black Canyon, where the river drops over 400 feet in two miles.
The Gunnison Diversion Dam was built in 1909 for a different purpose. It diverts a large part of the river flow into a 16-mile tunnel though the hills to the Uncompahgre Valley, which turned an arid valley into productive farmland. The main focus of the whole water project is to provide a consistent supply of water for agriculture.
Even though we were in the highest part of the canyon and the actual bottom of the canyon was a hundred feet or more below the boat, it soared above up. The Black Canyon, from the bottom is incredibly steep. There are nearly sheer walls from the bottom to the top. The top of the canyon was about 600 feet above us. As we went down the river, the ranger told us about the formation of the canyon. The rock is part of the Gunnison Uplift and is primarily hard shist and granite, which is why it is so steep. There were originally volcanic deposits above the granite and the river formed in that, when it reached the granite, the erosion of the hard rock is very slow and vertical.
He also spoke at length about the early explorations of the canyon and the building of a narrow gauge railroad along the upper part of the canyon, linking Western Colorado with the rest of the country. The path to the boat was part of the rail bed, but it disappeared into the water about a half mile past the boat dock. Finally, he talked a bit about the system of water rights in the West and how the dams and reservoirs fit into it. The boat tour was much more than just looking at the canyon, as interesting as it was.
After we returned to the dock, it was back up the rail bed and up the 232 stairs to the parking lot, just in time for lunch, after which we were off to the National Park, about 40 miles down the road. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is definitely one of the most low-key national parks we've visited. There is one visitor center, on the South Rim of the canyon along with a smallish campground. On the North Rim, it is even quieter with just a ranger station and a 13-site campground. The South Rim campground, where we are currently staying, is a bit unusual. There is no water source at the park, so it must all be trucked in. There are only water spigots for filling water containers and there are only vault toilets, but one loop has electricity. We knew this in advance and had topped off our water tank before heading here. Because everything needed a good charge (computers, phones, etc.), we opted for an electric site.
We just got a quick glimpse of the canyon this afternoon when we arrived. It is much deeper here, and even more impossibly steep. There are a couple of unmaintained trails into the canyon, but they involve scrambling over steep sections to get in and out, so it is unlikely that we will even attempt to hike down to the river. There is one point that we haven't been to yet, where the canyon is deeper than it is wide. Tomorrow should be interesting.
Photos from Curecanti NRA
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