Bluejohn Canyon | |
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Location of Bluejohn Canyon within the State of Utah | |
Floor elevation | 4,839 ft (1,475 m) |
Geography | |
Location | Canyonlands National Park Wayne County, Utah United States |
Coordinates | 38°22′42″N110°16′41″W / 38.37833°N 110.27806°W |
Bluejohn Canyon (often mistakenly referred to as "Blue John Canyon") is a slot canyon in eastern Wayne County, Utah, United States. It is on BLM land just south of the boundary of the Horseshoe Canyon Unit of Canyonlands National Park. [1] [2]
Bluejohn Canyon is probably named for a 19th-century outlaw by the name of John Griffith, who reportedly kept stolen horses in the area. He had one blue eye and one brown eye and was known by the nickname "Blue John". [3]
Though often mistakenly believed to be within Canyonlands National Park, Bluejohn Canyon is actually on BLM land southwest of the Horseshoe Canyon Unit of the park and 42 miles (68 km) south of the town of Green River. The main fork of the canyon, approximately 11 miles (18 km) in length, runs north-northeast from the Robbers Roost Flats, and is a tributary of Horseshoe Canyon. The main fork also has several tributary canyons of its own. [4] Traversing the entire length of Bluejohn Canyon requires technical canyoneering skills and equipment.
Bluejohn Canyon came to international attention in 2003 as the place where outdoorsman Aron Ralston was forced to amputate his own right forearm with a multi-tool after it became trapped by a boulder. Ralston's five-day ordeal was described in his autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place [5] and was depicted in the 2010 film 127 Hours . [6]
Wayne County is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,486, making it the fourth-least populous county in Utah. Its county seat is Loa.
A canyon, gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cut through underlying surfaces, eventually wearing away rock layers as sediments are removed downstream. A river bed will gradually reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water into which the river drains. The processes of weathering and erosion will form canyons when the river's headwaters and estuary are at significantly different elevations, particularly through regions where softer rock layers are intermingled with harder layers more resistant to weathering.
The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) is a United States national monument protecting the Grand Staircase, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Canyons of the Escalante in southern Utah. It was established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton under the authority of the Antiquities Act with 1.7 million acres of land, later expanded to 1,880,461 acres (7,610 km2). In 2017, the monument's size was reduced by half in a succeeding presidential proclamation, and it was restored in 2021. The land is among the most remote in the country; it was the last to be mapped in the contiguous United States.
Canyoning is a sport that combines several outdoor sports like rock climbing, hiking, swimming, and rappelling. A canyoneer travels down canyons using a variety of techniques that may include other outdoor activities such as walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling (rappelling), and swimming.
Canyonlands National Park is an American national park located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 12, 1964.
Aron Lee Ralston is an American mountaineer, mechanical engineer, and motivational speaker, known for surviving a canyoneering accident by cutting off part of his own right arm.
Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (100 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (10 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.
The Dirty Devil River is an 80-mile-long (130 km) tributary of the Colorado River, located in the U.S. state of Utah. It flows through southern Utah from the confluence of the Fremont River and Muddy Creek before emptying into the Colorado River at Lake Powell.
The San Rafael Swell is a large geologic feature located in south-central Utah, United States about 16 miles (26 km) west of Green River. The San Rafael Swell, measuring approximately 75 by 40 miles, consists of a giant dome-shaped anticline of sandstone, shale, and limestone that was pushed up during the Paleocene Laramide Orogeny 60–40 million years ago. Since that time, infrequent but powerful flash floods have eroded the sedimentary rocks into numerous valleys, canyons, gorges, mesas, buttes, and badlands.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a 2004 autobiographical book by American mountain climber Aron Ralston. It details an incident that occurred in 2003 when Ralston was canyoneering in Bluejohn Canyon in the Utah desert, where he became trapped for five days.
A slot canyon is a long, narrow channel or drainageway with sheer rock walls that are typically eroded into either sandstone or other sedimentary rock. A slot canyon has depth-to-width ratios that typically exceed 10:1 over most of its length and can approach 100:1. The term is especially used in the semiarid southwestern United States and particularly the Colorado Plateau. Slot canyons are subject to flash flooding and commonly contain unique ecological communities that are distinct from the adjacent, drier uplands. Some slot canyons can measure less than 1 metre (3 ft) across at the top but drop more than 30 metres (100 ft) to the floor of the canyon.
Horseshoe Bend is a horseshoe-shaped incised meander of the Colorado River located near the town of Page, Arizona, United States. It is also referred to as the "east rim of the Grand Canyon."
The Robbers Roost was an outlaw hideout in southeastern Utah used mostly by Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch gang in the closing years of the Old West.
The Subway is a small, uniquely-shaped slot canyon within the Zion Wilderness in Zion National Park in northeastern Washington County, Utah, United States. The National Park Service limits access to the canyon via a permit system.
Horseshoe Canyon, formerly known as Barrier Canyon, is in a remote area west of the Green River and north of the Canyonlands National Park Maze District in Utah, United States. It is known for its collection of Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) rock art, including both pictographs and petroglyphs, which was first recognized as a unique style here. A portion of Horseshoe Canyon containing The Great Gallery is part of a detached unit of Canyonlands National Park. The Horseshoe Canyon Unit was added to the park in 1971 in an attempt to preserve and protect the rock art found along much of its length.
Coyote Gulch is a tributary of the Escalante River, located in Garfield and Kane Counties in southern Utah, in the western United States. Over 25 mi (40 km) long, Coyote Gulch exhibits many of the geologic features found in the Canyons of the Escalante, including high vertical canyon walls, narrow slot canyons, domes, arches, and natural bridges. The upper sections of Coyote Gulch are located within the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, while its lower sections are located in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
127 Hours is a 2010 biographical psychological survival drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Danny Boyle. The film stars James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, and Clémence Poésy. In the film, canyoneer Aron Ralston must find a way to escape after he gets trapped by a boulder in an isolated slot canyon in Bluejohn Canyon, southeastern Utah, in April 2003. It is a British and American venture produced by Pathé, Everest Entertainment, Film4 Productions, HandMade Films and Cloud Eight Films.
The Devils Garden of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in south central Utah, United States, is a protected area featuring hoodoos, natural arches and other sandstone formations. The area is also known as the Devils Garden Outstanding Natural Area within the National Landscape Conservation System.
Ekker Butte is a 6,260-foot (1,910-meter) elevation summit located in the northern reach of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, in Wayne County of Utah, United States. It is situated seven miles southeast of Buttes of the Cross, six miles northeast of Elaterite Butte, and less than two miles outside the boundary of Canyonlands National Park, where it towers over 1,400 feet above the surrounding terrain. Distant views of this remote butte can be seen from the Grand View Point and Green River Overlooks at Island in the Sky of Canyonlands National Park. This geological landmark is named for the pioneering Art Ekker family which operated the nearby Robbers Roost Ranch and grazed cattle on land adjacent to the nearby Maze. Arthur Benjamin Ekker (1911–1978) took Robert Redford on a tour of nearby Robbers Roost, the hideout of outlaw Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.
Media related to Bluejohn Canyon at Wikimedia Commons