During a loop between Las Vegas and Moab around the big colorful river, in August 2018, first, here is Bryce Canyon.
Incredible reservoir of wonders coming from the very long geological history of this region, this part of the great American West is a permanent spectacle, mainly in Utah, and marginally Arizona (from the north) and Nevada (from the east).
Yet here we limit ourselves to the strongest emotional loads (to speak "fashionable").
Let's take our discovery loop backwards ; because it fits with a growing gradation in the spectacular, the enchantment, the deep emotion.
And let the party begin!
Inexhaustible show, soon exhibitionist
North of Colorado, on a sandstone plateau around 2700 meters high, and where, even at the end of August the wind is chilly, here is Bryce Canyon.
We get the free pass for shuttles in the "Visitor Center" of Bryce Canyon City where is our accommodation, a short distance from an enclosure where rodeos are held regularly (which we will not see).
After crossing the park's entrance gatehouse with our $80 annual pass that gives access to all the national parks (Bryce Canyon is one of them), through the sparse forest, quiet antelopes with long ears graze peacefully, and are a first attraction.
At the announcement of viewpoints, we leave the shuttle to head on foot to the east.
And here, a youthful exaltation like that which takes you when smelling the iodized air as approaching the sea.
Let us hurry up.
Because suddenly the plateau stops and is deeply cut with a succession of immense circuses, vast natural amphitheaters that are burned with a swarm of very high and vertical needles of rocks, the "hoodoos"(1), innumerable and sumptuous hedgehogs, narrow ridges occupying like a jubilant crowd the deep bottom of these valleys.
And the party is inexhaustible.
(1) from Wikipedia: the "hoodoos", often called in French "chimneys of fairies".
Their name would have been attributed to them by European arrivals from the southeastern United States (and more likely the Caribbean), in reference to the voodoo cult, attributing magical powers to these natural forms.
Long before, here, Native Americans took them for petrified remains of ancient beings who would have been punished for doing wrong.
Bryce Canyon, not really a canyon but a multitude of very steep gorges which entangled, radiate, of which we lose track, short and hollow valleys in "V", deep at least 200 meters.
Along the "Rim Trail", this balcony path that runs along the top of the cliff, according to the successive viewpoints, this extraordinary chromatic symphony whose main tone varies between ochre and ivory is seizing everybody.
Some of these ridge-walls are so thin that one would think they are transparent.
Others seem ruins of an ardent temple of Angkor Wat...
... or the light top of tall disrepaired towers,...
... while others, aerial, adorn themselves at their top with elves' caps of astonishing whiteness.
For a long time, we delight with enthusiasm with these infinite variations when we go from one site to the next (from north to south: Fairyland Point, Sunrise Point, Sunset Point, Inspiration Point...), Changing light of the sun and heavy dark rains that fall in the distance enriches the panorama.
If the eye remains dazzled by seeing so much, it's more by this remarkable spectacular and aesthetic character, extremely photogenic.
Even the most clumsy photographer can't fail to get beautiful shots.
On the 2nd day, however, the fascination fades a little and gives way for a kind of captivating attraction, always alive, but which frays when advancing on the rim trail from a viewpoint to thr pther.
Trying to perpetuate the party is to take the risk of too much, of easy exhibition, as diverse as the landscapes are.
Without breaking as far the magic.
... but hangover is not far away
So to avoid a little hangover, there remains a desire, that of leaving our high vision, which toises and encompasses the panoramas, and to see now things from the bottom of the passages, to take the measure of the dimension of these fine erect colossi.
A desire to sink - modestly, to the extent of our abilities - in one of these white and ochre trails (Navajo Loop, "Queen Garden Trail"...) that zigzag between the hoodoos, sometimes menders like a white thread on a few ridges, to live from within the vertigo of the precipices and these flamboyant strangenesses, tomeasure the difficulty of the slope according to the intensity of the breath...
... to raise the head this time towards the summits of the thousand and one random compositions, resulting from the very slow erosion of the sandstone of various consistencies formed throughout eras (between -60 and -40 million years) by the wind, extreme temperatures, snow, frost, furious rains of short autumn floods.
In the midst of these indescribable carved forms grow amazing stubborn pines with very high peaks.
And up there the clear border of the rim trail pricked with other pines, to which we return.
.
The lively chipmunk does not care and nibbles, another first-rate show, tiny, facing the gigantic natural delusions.
Comments