Black Canyon of the Gunnison - Painted Wall
Montrose, CO
The Painted Wall is Colorado's tallest sheer cliff at 2,250 feet, streaked with pegmatite dikes of pink and white that contrast against dark Precambrian gneiss. It is the signature feature of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The South Rim Road provides the primary viewpoint at Painted Wall View.
Photography Guide
- Best Time
- morning
- Crowds
- Moderate
- Shot Types
- widelandscapedetail
- Best Seasons
- springsummerfall
Author's Comments
There are canyons that invite you in and there are canyons that hold you back at the edge. The Black Canyon is the second kind. It is narrow and impossibly deep and the rock is so dark that even at midday the bottom stays in shadow, and standing at the Painted Wall overlook on the South Rim is one of the few times I have felt genuine vertigo from a guardrail. The wall itself is the tallest sheer cliff in Colorado. Twenty-two hundred and fifty feet, straight down, streaked with veins of pink and white pegmatite that cut through the gneiss in patterns that look painted only because the word for what they actually are has not been invented. Morning is when the wall lights up directly. The sun has to clear the opposite rim, and there is a window, maybe an hour, where the face goes from cold blue shadow to warm and detailed and the pegmatite veins read like script. I have made the wide photograph here many times and I am rarely satisfied with it. The scale does not translate. A camera flattens what the eye cannot quite hold. What works better, I have found, is a longer lens trained on a single section of the wall, where the veins become the composition and the depth is implied rather than shown. The detail shot is the honest one. Come in late spring or early fall. Come at sunrise or just after. Stand at the overlook for longer than feels reasonable. The canyon does not perform. It simply is, and the photograph, when it comes, comes from waiting.
Gallery
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Black Canyon South Rim - Sunset View
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