More Powell:
This is our only halfway-decent picture of Mesa Arch, and it's not even the whole arch.
Posted by David Fleck at 30 September 2006 08:59 AM
Below is the canyon through which the Colorado runs. We can trace its course for miles, and at points catch glimpses of the river. From the northwest comes the Green in a narrow winding gorge. From the northeast comes the Grand, through a canyon that seems bottomless from where we stand. Away to the west are lines of cliffs and ledges of rock – not such ledges as the reader may have seen where the quarryman splits his blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry mountains that, rolled out on the plain below, would stand a lofty range; and not such cliffs as the reader may have seen where the swallow builds its nest, but cliffs where the soaring eagle is lost to view ere he reaches the summit. Between us and the distant cliffs are the strangely carved and pinnacled rocks of Toom'pin wunear' Tuweap' [Land of Standing Rocks]. On the summit of the opposite wall of the canyon are rock forms that we do not understand. Away to the east a group of eruptive mountains are seen – the Sierra La Sal, which we first saw two days ago through the canyon of the Grand. Their slopes are covered with pines, and deep gulches are flanked with great crags, and snow fields are seen near their summits. So the mountains are in uniform, – green, gray, and silver. Wherever we look there is but a wilderness of rocks, – deep gorges where the rivers are lost below cliffs and towers and pinnacles, and ten thousand strangely carved forms in every direction, and beyond them mountains blending with the clouds.
This is our only halfway-decent picture of Mesa Arch, and it's not even the whole arch.
Right in the center of the image is the oddly-shaped and hard to see Washerwoman Arch. (Try looking at the larger image.)
The arch is cut out of a fin of rock that is splitting away from the cliff, so there's quite a drop-off just beyond the rock in the foreground.
(In contrast to the Black Box, something really bad could happen to you here, but you'd probably be found within a few hours.)
Posted by David Fleck at 30 September 2006 08:59 AM
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