Driving Park Road 5 down into the canyon — the switchbacks the CCC built, and the ~280-million-year story written in the colored rock layers.
Here we go — over the edge and down. Take this road slow, keep it in a low gear, and mind the curves, because Park Road 5 drops you six hundred feet from the rim to the floor in a hurry, with some tight switchbacks along the way. And as you descend, you are driving down through time itself — so let your eye read the walls.
Every colored band in this rock is a chapter of Earth's history, and you're reading them top to bottom, oldest at the bottom. The deep brick-red layers are the oldest, near two hundred and eighty million years old, from a time long before the dinosaurs, when this was a coastal plain of red mud and shallow salty seas. That rusty red color is iron, quite literally rusting in the rock. Above it are brighter oranges and yellows and whites — layers of sandstone and clay laid down by ancient rivers and windblown dunes across the ages. Watch for a formation the locals call the Spanish Skirts, where the layers ripple down the slopes in soft folds of color like the flounces of a dancer's dress.
The whole canyon is a giant book, and the river has cut clean through it and laid the pages open for you. Keep easing down toward the floor; you'll feel the air change and the walls rise up around you as you go. In a moment we'll be down among the cottonwoods along the river that did all this carving.
Photo: Peter Fitzgerald · CC BY-SA 3.0
