Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado

Colorado's Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park has the steepest river descent in the U.S., the raging whitewater surging between sheer rocks walls more than 2,700 feet high

Photo by Molas

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is one of the deepest gorges in the country, two sheer walls towering up to 2,722 feet above the raging waters below—yet according to 2008 statistics, the park suffers but the tiniest fraction (3.6%) the number of visitors that crowd the Grand Canyon's viewpoints.

Colorado's vertiginous Black Canyon was carved by the Gunnison River, which plunges and froths its whitewater way down the steepest descent of any river in the entire nation.

Though more than 2,700 feet deep, Black Canyon is at some points only 40 feet wide, lending it an air at once grandiose and claustrophobic—and at times quite a bit spooky.

When I was 16, I took a three-day rafting trip down a stretch of this walled-in raging river through Class II and IV rapids, and later camped at the north rim campground nearly 2,000 feet above the canyon floor.

It remains one of the highlights of my many cross-country road trips over the years, and while the main part of the canyon has been elevated to national park status since I was a kid—and this has closed the Gunny to rafting within the park boundaries—you can still shoot the whitewater in the adjacent Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area (www.blm.gov/co/st/en/nca/ggnca.html).

You can read more about the park in a piece I just did on Unsung National Parks for Travelandleisure.com.

Info: www.nps.gov/blca

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