UnCaged Travels: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
East Portal Road
Gunnison Tunnel
August 20, 2017

We decided to revisit the nearby Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to see the things we missed the first time two years ago. Of course, we did take time to revisit the overviews for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The walls of the canyon are unique with the different rock formations. These rocks blend from one to another because of variations in the heat and pressure which occurred when some rocks were buried deeper than others. It all sounds highly scientific to me but all means that these transformations began over millions of years ago because of extreme heat and pressure squeezing some rocks between and through other rocks. It is interesting to know that most of the rocks exposed along the length of the Black Canyon are at least 500 million years old and have a wide of variety of minerals. Go to the park website if you want a more in depth description of the history.

The East Portal Road is extremely steep road with sharp turns and 16 percent grades that switchbacks down the canyon to the Gunnison River. Once at the bottom you are at the rivers edge and also the beginning of what is called the Gunnison Tunnel. The Gunnison Tunnel is a 5.8 mile (9.3 km) irrigation tunnel constructed between 1905 and 1909 by the Bureau of Reclamation. At the time of its completion, it was the longest irrigation tunnel in the world. On July 22nd, 1979, the Gunnison Tunnel was entered into the National Register of Historical Places. We were not able to get close to the opening of the tunnel as it is fenced off from the public but I did find an online photo of it. The history of the tunnel and the town of East Portal is also a good history read if you so desire.

Entrance to Gunnison Tunnel (taken from internet)

Entrance to Gunnison Tunnel on left just after the buoys.

Entrance to Gunnison Tunnel on right between buoys and buillding

We had heard that the fishing was good at this location and that bear sightings were reported. Well, we did not fish. We will leave that for another day. BUT ..... we did see bears. FOUR BEARS TO BE EXACT. This made my heart sing with excitement. I just love wildlife sightings.

Our first sighting was a bear swimming across the river. Once it reached the other side it had its nose in the air intensely searching for something that it was smelling. Shortly it gave up and back across the river toward us it swam. We were out of the Jeep but quickly hustled to the Jeep when it reached our side of the river bank. It went right by our Jeep and travelled up the road until it came to a clearing where it could escape into the sparse trees. WHAT A RUSH.

The second sighting was a momma bear and two cubs crossing the road. We did not want to get between the momma and cubs so we stopped way before we were close to them. The cubs were slow about crossing the road.