A Birthday Cake For Canyonlands

By Bennett Owen

Candlestick Tower, Canyonlands. Credit: Alaskan Dude

"We glide along through a strange, weird, grand region. 
The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock."

— Explorer John Wesley Powell, 1869.

On September 12, 1964, President Johnson officially declared Canyonlands a national park. Expanded over the years, it now comprises 527 square miles of southeastern Utah... an area slightly larger than Delaware.

In the parlance of geologists, “The park is characterized by sedimentary rock, which has been deformed by anticlines, synclines and monoclines.“  Yikes! It was the miners and cowboys of a bit more wistful nature that lent more imaginative nicknames to the outcroppings and chasms…

Mesa Arch –

Credit: Kloppster

Island In The Sky –

Credit: Rick McCharles

 Credit: Rick McCharles

Horseshoe Canyon –

Credit: Wolfgang Staudt

The Maze District –

Credit: deltaMike

Needles –

Credit: Rob Lee

Canyonlands isn’t on the A-list of national parks, probably because the most spectacular scenery is only accessible by four-wheel drive, horseback or foot.  And the remote backcountry can literally leave the unprepared adventurer “between a rock and a hard place.” A truth Aron Lee Ralston found out the hard way.  Outdoing anyone who ever left their heart in San Francisco, this is the guy who left his hand in Canyonlands…here’s his own account of a life and death decision and believe me, if you’re at all squeamish I’d suggest you just don’t watch…