Cottonwood Gulch (Reflection Can.)
mile 77.0

Above the mouth of the San Juan Riv. looking into Willow Canyon and Hidden Passage

June 1961
Cottonwood Gulch (Reflection Canyon) is just over the wall in the foreground.  The San Juan River joins the Colorado in the lower left corner of the picture. Hidden Passage is in the center of the picture about a mile downstream from Cottonwood Gulch.  Music Temple is across the Colorado from Hidden Passage and a little downstream.  Its canyon is just behind that tall wall (the tallest in the Glen) on the left bank.  The entrance to Mystery Canyon is a couple of miles downstream from Music Temple and on the left, near the edge of the picture.

Lower Cottonwood Gulch.  A deep canyon, but not particularly narrow.

Above the mouth of the San Juan Riv. looking into Willow Canyon and Hidden Passage

June 1961
These graceful entrenched meanders are not deep by Glen Canyon standards, but they are photogenic.  The cover of Eleanor Inskip's, Glen Canyon Before Lake Powell has a photo of Reflection Canyon very similar to this one.  The July/August, '06 issue of Audubon Magazine shows this canyon as reexposed by the lowering of Lake Powell by drought.
This canyon is quite deep by ordinary standards: See the person in the picture below for scale.

Above the mouth of the San Juan Riv. looking into Willow Canyon and Hidden Passage

June 1962
The ridge dominating this picture is the small ridge in the lower right of the aerial photo above.  The photographer is under the dark overhang in the far right center of the canyon and shooting so as to take in in both upstream (left) and downstream (right).  At the far right in the downstream direction note the man waving his arms. (It's Sam Greene, physicist at Sonoma State, California)

Above the mouth of the San Juan Riv. looking into Willow Canyon and Hidden Passage

June 1964
From farther upstream.  The lower end of Cottonwood Gulch is now flooded by Lake Powell, as is the San Juan River in the upper, center-left of the picture.  The high wall on the right was the highest wall in Glen Canyon. It overlooked the confluence of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers.

Above the mouth of the San Juan Riv. looking into Willow Canyon and Hidden Passage

June 1962
One of the short swimming sections in the lower part of Cottonwood Gulch.
Roger Ulrich, astrophysicist UCLA; Sam Greene, physicist, Sonoma State

Go up to the San Juan River
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