Arizona,
Page, Lake Powell
and a geological wonder
The modern and very airy city of Page is spread out over a height in a vast hillock, the main street of which forms a sort of large horseshoe coming to connect on route 89.
From the top of its hill, the village overlooks a vast desert panorama all in this hue of red earth, where Lake Powell is hidden.
A sort of colossal termite mound overhangs the dam which holds it back, pierced by a dark cave.
The red desert is everywhere around, but is bordered or seamed here by the greenery allowed by irrigation from water of the lake.
Almost on the horizon to the east, a colossal dark boulder takes the shape of a Mayan pyramid (but here are the Navajo, and the "Navajo Canyon» overlooking the lake is very close to the northeast).
Above a hill of sediment, it's here the "Tower Butte”, whose base on the plateau is 1235 meters and the summit 210 meters above.
In the region, it can be seen from everywhere.
We understand why such natural monuments, immutable over generations, are strong symbols in the imagination and rituals of Native Americans.
Just like those of "Monument Valley» and others more still, snow-capped or ocher mountains, which delimit the Navajo countries.
Arizona,
Lake Powell
After crossing the bridge just downstream from the dam above an impressive and deep canyon whose vertical cliff walls are natural walls (?), The road runs along the south shore of the lake on a balcony, revealing superb landscapes.
Page, on his hill
Downstream, the dam and the bridge
A chilly and almost constant wind accentuates the color of the lake in Prussian blue, which marbles and streaks with long wavelets.
The contrast with the small coastal cliffs often indented, surmounted by steep mountains which here take on a silvery ash color is striking ; the same tone is found around Lake Mead seen when leaving Las Vegas to the east.
But as we have seen, Lake Powell has nothing natural about it, despite the sumptuous panoramas it presents.
Its dam retains the waters of the mythical river, the Colorado, which receives a little upstream of Page the waters of the Escalante River from the north and even higher upstream those of the San Juan River from the east.
The dam is thrown across the Glen Canyon on the Colorado (see its basin below) at the foot of the city of Page.
Built in 1963, it retains the waters of Lake Powell, which is the 2nd largest in the USA, after Lake Mead, a little further to the southwest, both supplying in cascade Las Vegas, California and other parts of Great Southwestern states.
The surface area of each lake of these two lakes depends of course on their water supply ; that of Lake Mead has been lacking for several years, to a lesser extent that of Lake Powell ; so that this year 2018, the surface of the latter perhaps exceeds that of the first, yet potentially larger.
According to the daily "Republic Arizona» of August 28, 2018, scientists indicate that Lake Mead is no longer full at 38% and Lake Powell at 48%. The level of the latter will have fallen by more than 30 meters since 2000, when it was almost full.
The debates alerting to this progressive drying up lead at least to calling for a comprehensive management policy for the Lake Mead + Lake Powell reservoirs.
300 km long when it is full, its coasts fold infinitely in no less than 96 canyons, on 3,136 km of banks, tightened like the bronchioles of lungs.
It took 11 years to fill up.
Opponents of the project, in addition to the negative effects on biodiversity, criticize the loss of water by evaporation and seepage, which would be considerable.
John Wesley Powell, Civil War veteran on the Unionist side, is a one-armed geologist (he loses his right arm in the battle of Shiloh).
From 1867 he led expeditions to the Rocky Mountains, the valley of the Colorado, then the first scientific exploration of the Colorado and Green Rivers.
In 1869, he explored the Grand Canyon in 3 months with 9 men and 4 boats, crossed nearly 1500 km and reached with half of his little troop to the Virgin River where het reaches the Pacific coast.
His explorations convinced him that the arid West was only cultivable on the 2% of its surface close to water sources.
Against his advice and under pressure from the railway companies, the Government authorized the implantation of agricultural farms, the viability of which quickly proved to be catastrophic and therefore impossible from the years 1920-30 ("Dust Bowl" In the US and Canadian Prairies).
Powell said of the region in 1890 : " here we have a curious set of wonderful features, sculpted walls, royal arches, narrow valleys ("glens»), hidden ravines, mounds and (natural) monuments. What of these characteristics will we name this site ? We decide to name it Glen Canyon . "
Powell's name was given in homage to a daring explorer and discoverer of the late 19th century, whose knowledge of the orography and sparse hydrography of the greater Colorado region is a sum in the history of the USA.
A cruise starts from the vast Wahweap Marina (an Indian word meaning "brackish water”) fairly upstream of the dam, well equipped, to which we come back on the way back.
By a very long sloping path, we achieved the quay from the "lobby» on the hillside ; on the way back as well as on the outward journey, it's possible to take a little train driven by a senior.
On this mini-cruise, almost exclusive (a handful of barely twenty passengers), the boat moves between banks which pass from silvery light to vivid ocher, which lower in short plains green with a grassy, follow along ocher or white dunes, flaccid successive petrified masses, surmounted by other reliefs in the manner of Monument Valley.
Some shores, high and steep like cliffs, make a huge millefeuille cake which we would have been sliced ; the lower part is a beautiful, almost appetizing white cream color, some 4 to 6 meters high. In fact, it is the height of water that the lake reaches when it is full.
Closer to the dam, another narrower inlet is formed by the river coming from "Antelope Canyon".
At this hour when the sun is declining, the play of shadow and light sometimes becomes magical, between jagged ribs in a maze.
The captain, an outgoing, dynamic and experienced woman, who has reached retirement age without taking it yet, comments at the same time along the course the genesis of the lake ; she is accompanied by another younger woman.
This little 2-hour cruise in the declining sun is in itself very fascinating.
The longest, which lasts 7 hours, a whole day, penetrates much further upstream of the meanders of the lake. It's even more famous for its landscapes, and especially for this arch which is said to be the largest in the world, the "Rainbow Bridge National Monument", a little downstream from the confluence between the San Juan river and the Colorado.
Arizona, the wonders of
Upper Antelope Canyon
Next to Page, on the opposite side of the slope leading to Lake Powell, so to the southeast, is the Upper Antelope Canyon (also known as "Slot Canyon", that nothing lets guess when we observe the semi-desert plateau under which it is hidden.
The meeting point is a very large area of fine white sand, where tourists from all over the world are concentrated, under light roofs protecting benches, while waiting for 4x4 departures.
The guides, exclusively Navajo, call visitors by name in small groups.
50 yards under the scorching sun, on a large nearby mound, half a dozen makeshift toilets, next to the large parking lot barely demarcated on the hot sand floor.
We discover the worst version of dry toilet ; the pits, under this heat which would be stifling and deleterious without this dryness of the air, were not emptied the day before. Several disgusted visitors seek to the back of rare bushes.
However, those that we will see everywhere on most of the other sites, perfectly designed, fixed on the rock, play their role very well, in this country where it hardly ever rains.
At the back of one of these powerful pick-ups, we are brought in a convoy along a large, dry, shallow wadi, where fine sand flies off as we pass.
Here is finally what appears to be a wide and high cul-de-sac at the foot of which the small valley widens out. The vehicles stop at a distance, and everyone walks towards the sacred lair.
Upper Antelope Canyon is another example of a hidden geological treasure.
Like the Lilliputian man visiting the immense fantasmatic sex of a "woman-landscape" (Tournier in "The alder king" or the surrealists, or Almodovar in "the shrinking lover", or even"The origin of the world" but well shaved ...), you have to penetrate - to get to the end of the context - on foot at the bottom of a high and very narrow canyon.
Despite prohibition to touch the walls, barely respected, we feel they are not friable. We are astonished to note the hardness of this sandstone with deceptive appearances.
The path over a few hundred meters is on a flat sandy bottom which rarely widens, zigzags between the walls, and sometimes requires to slow down when the many groups under the leadership of their respective guide must cross (since the path of return is the same).
Not to mention some of these groups dedicated especially to photography, and which we have to wait until they have completed THE photo of the century, before going any further. Their coach even causes small falls of sand which flows with a regularity of fluid, for the only visual effect.
We hardly dare to imagine the congestion of the site in full season.
But upon entering, barely looking up, everybody is immediately seized with the happiness of contemplating the wonderful and fantastic natural sculptures of fixed sand, adorned with an extraordinary diversity of tones, from ocher to flamboyant gold passing through ivory or bistre.
Enough to damn the best of artists !!
To the point that astonishment, dazzling, sometimes expresses by barely restrained exclamations.
The draping of strata crosses with an astonishing lightness the traces of vertical flow (because there are some).
The tilt of the sunlight is one of the keys : the rays enter only up there, 20 to 30 meters above, and their inclination is optimal between 10 and 12 am, brightening sumptuously the colors, highlighting the edges and the curves.
On the course, some standard frames are known only to the guides, for example for a heart-shaped cutout, or some other place where each couple sits, stupidly looking up to a bright opening up there, just for a sappy effect of shadow and raised chin ...
Elsewhere, more original, a huge raspberry-lavender coated tongue, like the thick paste of the merchants of the Foire du Trône ...
But how do such geological phenomena form?
Apart from the framing effects, however, nothing is more natural than these geological wonders.
And the nagging question comes : how?
Everything is cut, hollowed out, eroded, carved in Navajo sandstone.
This one was originally made of dunes accumulated during the Jurassic period 160 million years ago, then packed, solidified.
With uplift of the Colorado Plateau, the sandstone was raised and exposed on the surface.
The very visible swirling striations which mark the rock, called "crossed stratifications", are the indication of an old environment of sand dunes.
The region is however semi-desert. Weeks and months go by without precipitation. Except from the beginning of July to the end of September (the season called here "monsoon") where strong storms discharge enormous quantities of water in a few hours, even a few minutes. The violence of the phenomenon is devastating, immediately fills the height of the canyon with powerful, irresistible flows, digging and digging further. It can also happen in spring and winter.
Let us place ourselves at the origin, with a still intact surface of this sandstone. A small fracture is created, a mini-fault. It becomes the preferential field of action of the even tiny chemicals effects and erosion, locally breaking the cohesion between the sand particles.
Let us add some flash floods specific to the region, often very short and violent ; sand and rocks wash away dig, strip the sandstone, widen and deepen the passage.
On the plateau above the canyon, a flood flash accumulates in a big natural basin. The water rushes towards the nascent canyon. With the narrowing of the passage and the drop, the flow picks up speed and power, further deepening the canyon.
Let us reproduce hundreds of thousands of times over tens of thousands of years of such events. Here is created this type of narrow and deep canyon, with fabulous colors.
So, for the unfortunate visitors who have not had the caution to read the weather forecast or local alerts, no salvation.
Thus, the lower part of the Antelope Canyon ("Lower Antelope Canyon") was filled to the surface of the plateau during a storm on August 2, 2013.
Normally, this one can be visited, but its crossing is reserved for confirmed "hikers", we are not.
Another shorter side canyon offers the same wonders.
But we have to tear ourself away and get back on the pick-up platform, heckled by the mischievously chaotic conduct of our Navajo guide, a young, dynamic and friendly young woman.
