Slot Canyon

See how the lines in this carved sandstone look like a section through sand dunes.  Layers of sand can almost be seen blowing in 200-million-year-old wind, just as they blow today in Death Valley.  So it seemed as the overture began today for the greatest earth on show. 

Alice was feeling bored while sitting on the riverbank, when she noticed a rabbit run past.  She followed it down a hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors and strange surroundings.  So I felt today after walking two hours to an ordinary-looking wash that suddenly narrowed into a steep-walled slot where the temperature dropped and sunlight nearly disappeared.

Sunlight glances off the vermillion walls of the canyon above me and comes in already red before it strikes the red walls near me as I stand in the bottom of a canyon so narrow that two people could not walk abreast.

Sunlight seldom or never reaches the bottom where warped and meandering walls rise and twist, not vertically, but in spirals and bends.

This slot is called Red Canyon, about seven miles north of Kanab.  Other slots that I hope to enter will be deeper and less lighted.  But even here I feel like creature of the netherworld.

Creeks that form slot canyons erode vertically downward, and their canyons are often no wider at the bottom than they are at the surface.  While most creeks meander and leave their debris behind as they continually find new and easier ways of flowing, creeks of slot canyons, carry all their debris with them and erode only downward.  Normal canyons broaden as they erode into the earth; their banks slide into the creek which carries debris away, eventually to some lake or sea. Slot canyons can cut hundreds of feet downward with walls that are often steeper than vertical, leaning back and nearly meeting each other, as if never really separated.