Black Canyon of the Gunnison - Chasm View
Montrose, CO
Chasm View offers a direct look into the narrowest section of the Black Canyon, where the canyon walls are only 1,100 feet apart at the rim and 40 feet apart at the river. The Gunnison River is visible nearly 2,000 feet below. The overlook is accessed via a short trail from the North Rim Road.
Photography Guide
- Best Time
- afternoon
- Crowds
- Quiet
- Shot Types
- widelandscapeportrait
- Best Seasons
- springsummerfall
Author's Comments
There are canyons that open and canyons that cut, and the Black Canyon cuts. Standing at Chasm View, you are looking down into a wound in the earth where the walls have not had time to weather soft. The rock is Precambrian, nearly two billion years old, and it holds its edges. Eleven hundred feet across at the rim. Forty feet across at the river. The geometry of that taper does something to the body before the mind catches up. I prefer the North Rim for exactly the reason most people skip it. The drive in from Crawford is long and the road closes with the first real snow, and on a weekday in September I have stood at this overlook entirely alone. Afternoon is when the canyon shows itself best. Morning leaves the depths in flat shadow, but by two or three the light slants in from the west and finds a few of the ledges, and suddenly the scale becomes legible. You can see the river. You can hear it, faintly, almost two thousand feet down. A wide lens is the obvious choice and it is the wrong one as often as not. The canyon is so narrow and so deep that wide angles flatten it. I have made better photographs here with a normal lens, framing one wall against the other and letting the river thread the bottom of the composition. Vertical orientation. The fall of the rock matters more than the breadth of the view. Bring something to sit on. This is not a place to photograph in a hurry.
Gallery
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