as we remember the years from 1962 to 1972
| Cathedral Canyon, Sept, 1962 -- from Klondike Bar sheep trail. |
| Sept. 1964 The spectacular entryway to the narrow canyon is under water. The huge stream alcoves are now all gone. Watching Cathedral drown was a wrenching experience for those who had explored this unforgettable and irreplaceable canyon. |
| From the air.. |
| 1972. From Navajo Point we see that nothing is left of the lower part of the canyon, the part which had the gigantic stream alcoves and sharp twists in slot canyons hundreds of feet deep. The reservoir now extends far up the canyon and into the part we had found relatively uninteresting, "just run-of-the-mill Glen Canyon spectacular." This is the part which motorboats can now readily reach, and it is more spectacular than most all of the world's spectacular canyons. But here the reservoir gains us nothing except for a little easier access, but it's access into what to us was boring after what we had traveled through in those lower reaches. (The reservoir did greatly increase accessibly to a very few of the upper parts of canyons such as Mystery and Music Temple -- but it added nothing that was not already there, and the climbing challenge was always an accessibility option.) |