Carving a Slot Canyon

ANTELOPE The lure of mysterious beauty disguises its power of LIFE AND DEATH

The wall of water rose 30 feet as it roared through "the Corkscrew" of Antelope Canyon. Thunderstorms in mountains dozens of miles away had generated the flash flood about an hour earlier. The wave measured no more than a few feet high when it rushed across the wide basin just above the narrow canyon. But at the bottom, it crashed into the quarter-mile-wide sandstone reef that Antelope Canyon runs through. The canyon's narrow upper entrance-no more than 10 feet wideforced the wave to pile up against the sandstone wall as it tried to pour through the natural sluiceway of the canyon.

Inside the slot canyon, 11 tourists and their guide had only a brief warning of impending disaster. A terrible roar, a little water at their feet, more water, a lot of water, and then the killing wave. They must have run, but where could they go to escape in the labyrinth of the slot canyon? The guide survived by somequirk of the turbulent stew of water, mud and stones that battered and stripped him, then thrust him onto a rock ledge above the flood. The others died, crushed and drowned not just by water, but also by the tremendous volume of brush, rocks and sand a flash flood carries. Even today, two of their bodies have not been found. Most likely they are buried in sand beneath the canyon's outlet.

I couldn't help thinking of those 11 as my old friend Bob Gibson and I bounced in theback of a pickup driven by one of the Navajo Indians who operate the concession at Antelope Canyon. At the time we visited, the tribe charged $17.50 for admission to either the upper or lower canyon. The lower canyon, the Corkscrew, crosses State Route 98 not too far below Lake Powell. It's a bit strenuous to visit, since it requires climbing up and down ladders to get to the best parts. We chose theupper canyon, called "the Crack," because it's the most-photographed part of Antelope Canyon, and we wanted to see for ourselves how the reality matches up to the images. Your admission also buys a 2-mile ride to the entrance of the Crack and an afternoon to yourself. Or you can hire a Navajo guide or purchase a tour from an expedition company in Page. For $40 or $30, you get stories about the canyon's geology and its history, especially the big flood of 1997. We were there in October without a guide to inform (or scare) us, months past the flood season and years after the killer flood, but we still searched the clear blue sky for clouds and worried that we couldn't see the weather over the distant mountains. I talked with the family of German

CANYON

tourists riding with us in the back of the truck. Had they heard of the flood? It turned out they hadn't. In fact, they didn't know much about Antelope Canyon. They were in the truck on a whim. They'd thought the ticket booth was one of the many roadside stands selling Navajo jewelry. They were in the market for a necklace until they saw the photos on display at the booth-the fantastically convoluted canyon with its walls in shadow, their colors lit by a few beams of sunlight. Photographers come from all over the world to shoot Antelope Canyon, its challenges of light and shadow offset by the chance to preserve a transcendent image of sculpted sandstone. But it's only a chance. Above Antelope Canyon, narrow canyon walls frame a ribbon of sky. The moment may pass before a photographer feels ready. Worse, it may pass before he or she recognizes it. The light proves easier for the rest of us to capture. We need only store it in memory. The land around the canyon is unremark-able. Broad washes lie around it. Vegetation grows sparsely, even by desert standards. The great smokestacks of the Navajo Generating Station rise behind the canyon. Even the wall it runs through is just a long reef of monolithic Navajo sandstone, appearing solid from a distance. But as we pulled closer, a crack became evident in the wall like the entrance to the cave of Ali Baba. Bob and I jumped out of the truck, eager to get to the other side before the magical opening closed. We squeezed past a few photographers and popped out the other side. We wanted to go beyond to a set of rarely visited narrows about a mile above the Crack. We figured we'd take it slow through Antelope Canyon on the way back, when most people would be gone. If we missed the last pickup, we could walk back to the highway in the evening. The day proved perfect. Not a cloud in the sky. Great walking weather, and after a bend or two, we lost sight of the generating station. Not exactly a wilderness experience, but an experience of the mind nonetheless, like visiting a museum where access to the exhibits isn't strictly controlled. The upper narrows weren't as spectacular as Antelope Canyon, but we did have them to ourselves. We scrambled up the remnants of one wall-now a spire isolated in the middle of the wash-and from there it was easy to imagine a flood running down the broad wash toward the Crack. Once, about 6,000years ago, there was no crack, just a floor of soft Navajo sandstone with a stream running across it.

Here's how you make a slot canyon. First, block out plenty of time. A few thousand years should do it. Water and sediment are going to have some work to do, and that's a slow business even when punctuated by an occasional flash flood. Actually, it's a littlesurprising that carving the Crack didn't take a lot longer. Much of the Colorado Plateau's geology evolved over millions of years. But then, Antelope Canyon is a delicate miniature compared to the great works of Grand Canyon and Monument Valley.

Ron Blakey, a geology professor at Northern Arizona University, says the cutting of this slot started when a monstrous sand dune dammed the streambed's course in the basin above. The dune grew about 40 feet high. You can see its vestiges today above the bedrock Navajo sandstone near the entrance to the Crack.

A deep lake formed behind this natural earthen dam. Think of that lake storing up the energy of the water until one day a flood washed into it. Then the water's power was

released, and since there was a lot of water, there was a lot of power. Enough to cut a narrow channel in the sandstone bedrock. A long series of relatively small floods could have cut the canyon gradually. Water takes the steepest path it can find, and in that land of rock, a narrow seam would have been preferred over relatively flatter ground.

On the other hand, catastrophic floods can't have been uncommon during the last several thousand years, and just a few of those might have sufficed to cut Antelope Canyon in less than a hundred years. A narrow breach in the dune could have released a forceful hoselike stream of water and sediment sufficient to cut through the dune and blast out the sandstone downstream. Go to Glen Canyon Dam and look at the floodgate outlets if you want to see how the hydraulic force of released water can cut sandstone. The work of carving a slot canyon requires many tools and never really ends. Erosion continues today in Antelope Canyon, but more subtly, on a less grand scale. The '97 flood is the only one of its kind on record, but even infrequent floods of that magnitude can have a dramatic effect over long periods of time. Smaller seasonal floods scour the floor of the Crack nearly every year, lowering it a bit and leaving its bottom smooth and flat. No doubt the classic forces of rain, freeze and thaw work on the Crack to some extent, despite the little rain and infrequent cold. Some of the mechanisms of erosion are unique. You will see a few small boulders stuck in alcoves at various heights in the walls of the Crack and other slot canyons. When floods reach the alcoves' level, the boulders rattle around in their niches, thus expanding them. The results are a fantastic combination of sweeping curves and hollows and sharp edges amid surfaces of surprising smoothness. The Crack was empty of people when we returned from our walk at midafternoon. Once again, I was struck by the mystery of the narrow seam in the blank rock wall. Inside, the sandstone at first glowed with diffused light. This time through, I noted the tactile impression of the wallsalmost as powerful as the light. Of course, you must be careful about touching the walls, since hands, over time, can be a powerful force of erosion, but it's very hard to resist lightly brushing the gritty, timeworn stone with your fingertips.

The convoluted walls also play tricks with sound. After a while, Bob and I had filled the slot with amplified hoots and hollers sufficient to wake any genies or the local kids who sometimes hide in the darkest parts to startle passersby with unearthly squeaks and whistles. No species of imp could be seen in the Crack when we went through, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. One pitch-black section of about 20 feet felt so eerie that I traversed it several times just to make sure I hadn't missed something in the dark. Many visitors use flashlights when entering the darkest passageways.

The bends cut by erosion weren't limited to the horizontal; the flood paths also twisted vertically over time-trending right and down for a while, then left, then eventually back-so that much of the bottom is overhung by shelves of sandstone blocking the sky.

Finally, we wandered out the other side, where the normal afternoon light dazzled us. The last pickup truck was due to arrive soon, so we sat in the shade of the great sandstone wall to wait in this world made of sand. I filtered the sand through my hands, the same sand that we drove through with the German tourists that morning, the same sand that buried the victims of the '97 flood. I thought of all the wild places I've visited that involved sand or water, or both. Climbing, canyoneering, rafting, bushwhacking, long-distance ocean swimming. None of that would have helped in a big flash flood in Antelope Canyon. We are all hapless tourists when seen under the aspect of floods, erosion and eternity. There is so much we can't control, but only admire, so much that is strange. I walked back to the entrance of Antelope Canyon. "Open sesame," I shouted into the depths, and the crack seemed to open just a bit more. AH