A slot canyon is a canyon with a depth to width ratio of anywhere 10 to 1 to 100 to 1. That's a canyon that's between ten times deep and 100 times deep as it is wide. At its widest point, the Grand Canyon has a depth to width ratio of 1 to 18. Not 18 to 1; 1 to 18. If the Grand Canyon had a 10 to 1 depth to width ratio, it would be a tenth of a mile wide and a mile deep. That's pretty deep and skinny. If it had a 100 to 1 depth to width ratio, it would be 1/100th of a mile (or 53 feet) wide and a mile deep. THAT is a slot canyon.
The Grand Canyon was formed by the slow action of the Colorado River carving it's way through the Earth over millions of year. Not so with Antelope Canyon. Slot canyons are formed by sudden torrents of water moving at a very high rate of speed through soft rock (like sandstone). These sudden torrents of water are flash floods, which are typically only common enough to create something like Antelope Canyon in very dry locations where there is effectively no way for the land to absorb sudden large rainstorms. The carving of the rock is caused by the water moving at extreme speed and the fact that the water is carrying abrasive dirt and sand. Water carves out both large open canyons like the Grand Canyon and tall thin canyons that are slot canyons. But the action and the result is totally different.
Those flash floods, by the way, are still doing their work. If it rains at the wrong time, Antelope Canyon can be flooded with water to 25 or 30 feet deep in a heartbeat. Sound dangerous? Well, if there's nobody watching the weather, then I guess it is. But they typically only happen during monsoon season in July and August.
To get to Antelope Canyon, you need to do two things: (1) drive to the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona and (2) book a tour. You need to do the first because Antelope Canyon is on land owned by the Navajo. You need to do the second because since 1997, taking a guided tour is the only legal way to visit.
Before 1997, the Canyon was just open to anyone who could get themselves there. And there were side effects of that completely open availability. That meant trash, graffiti and those pesky and extremely dangerous flash floods. Since '97, it's been guided only.
We booked our tour through Roger Ekis' Antelope Canyon Tours who took us out into the desert to visit Upper Antelope Canyon. And, yes, there IS a Lower Antelope Canyon (and more). We picked our trip based on reviews off TripAdvisor and figured we didn't need to do both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons. Aren't they pretty much the same? We don't know that answer to that question necessarily.
When we checked those TripAdvisor reviews, by the way, most were super positive, but some were overly critical about what I will sum up as the staged photography nature of the tour. More than one review complained about what I interpreted as a scripted tour where everyone on the tour was tutored in photography of the canyon so that everyone would emerge with the best (and presumably the same) pictures of the place. I'm not a huge fan of believing negative reviews, particularly when the majority of the reviews of any experience are very positive. Still, there were concerns there.
Don't get me wrong, I wanted those best pictures. But I also wanted freedom to take more than the classic photographs that everyone went home with. I hoped I'd get that.
I also just wanted find out what this place was really like. The images that are shown online are completely context-less. How do you get to the Canyon? How do you get into it and out of it? What's it like to walk through? How tall is it? Are there ever any people in this thing because there are never any photos with people in them it seems. I assumed I'd get this.
 |
| Antelope head in the top photo. The bottom is the sunrise and sunset scene. |
So first of all...yes, the tour we took was heavily focused towards a series of what I'll call classic views of Upper Antelope Canyon. We were advised how to set the screen brightness and the filter on whatever version of the iPhone or Android phone that we happened to have with us and in a couple of spots, our guide actually took the same picture for each group on the tour. We have a vertical panoramic shot of us standing at the entrance to the Canyon and color and black and white versions of a spot where if you take the photo just right, it appears that you have angel wings. So does everyone else on our tour.
There's also a face in one spot, a couple of bears, an antelope, a sunrise / sunset scene and an alien. And the tour stops so everyone can take the exact same pictures. Everyone.
But you know what? If you didn't want to do any of that, that was fine too. If you wanted to do your own thing and take whatever pictures you like, you could. And so we did. We took part in most of the staged photographs but we also took pictures of whatever the heck we wanted. Our guide, Cindy, was just awesome. She was patient and thorough and even gave a very effective demonstration using water and the sand near the canyon of exactly how it was formed. The tour was honestly fantastic. And I think we emerged with some amazing photos.
But I really wanted to find out what the deal behind this canyon was. And we did that too.
The Grand Canyon is a large, long gash in the surface of the Earth. When you are standing outside the Grand Canyon you are on a very large and very flat high desert plateau and to look at the canyon you stand on the edge and look down. Want to walk into the Grand Canyon? Find a trail and walk down.
Antelope Canyon isn't that. It's effectively a very large sandstone lump (I was going to use the term boulder but it's way, way larger than a boulder) sitting on the surface of the Earth with a very large and not necessarily straight crack running straight through the middle of it. It honestly looks like some secret cavern or hideout from some fantasy or science fiction movie or series. I'm thinking Star Wars, Game of Thrones or Dune here. It's astonishingly different than the Grand Canyon. It's in fact probably as dissimilar as an experience as you could possibly get from two places with the word "canyon" in their names.
It's a heck of an entrance. And I swear I've never seen this is any of the pictures online.
The Navajo call Upper Antelope Canyon Tsé bighánílíni or "the place where the water runs through rocks". But they also refer to it as "The Crack", which is appropriate because that's exactly what it is.
 |
| The entrance to Upper Antelope Canyon. |
It's tall. We were told 120 feet tall at its deepest point. You are dwarfed by the rock but you also don't feel like you are at the bottom of something really deep, particularly because you can rarely look straight up to the sky because the rock twists and turns above you. You don't feel like you are in a canyon in the traditional sense.
It is also tight. There are places you can spread your arms and touch the smooth and at the same time rough rock walls (which are decidedly not anywhere close to vertical) on either side of you. Having said that, our group was I'd say 15 in size and I really didn't feel cramped for space that often. Touching, by the way, is encouraged.
 |
| The Canyon is tall. |
The time we were allotted in the Canyon itself was about 30 minutes. It honestly felt longer. This experience was not rushed in any way, although I'm sure it helped that we were on the last bus from the tour company we selected and I'm sure Cindy allowed us a little latitude to dawdle a bit.
We walked through the entire length of the Canyon. I'm guessing it was between a quarter and a half a mile long, then we walked out of the back side of the Canyon, up a sandy hill and back over the top of another piece of rock that was to the left of The Crack as we entered.
Did we see Lower Antelope Canyon while we were there? No we did not. We drove by it on the way to Upper Antelope Canyon but it's really nowhere near the place we visited. It's a totally different lump of rock with some sort of vertical fissure created by flash floods, rock and sand. There are apparently four additional parts of Antelope Canyon you can visit but it's not like they are contiguous or anything. They are likely just different sandstone canyons that look a little different. That's not what I imagined at all. I figured they would all be connected. Physically that is, not metaphorically.
 |
| Looking up at the branch of a tree in Upper Antelope Canyon. |
This place is magical. It is as breathtaking as the pictures I saw before I got here. And by breathtaking, I really do mean it. That first room that you step into is astonishing. It is simultaneously gorgeous in its form and awe inspiring in its structural beauty. I can't really remember feeling this same way recently about a place we've visited that wasn't built by man.
I can also confidently say that there's no way I want to be in a place like this during a flash flood. As we walked through the Canyon, we saw limbs of trees wedged into the crannies of the Canyon above us. And not like at eye level or on the ground. Try like 25 or 30 feet above us. That means the water level during a flood is really that high. Can you imagine the force of a 25 foot high wall of water coursing through a narrow slot canyon all of a sudden? I'm not sure I want to.
On the name...we didn't see any antelopes when we visited. Antelope Canyon is located near Page, Arizona, which was established in the 1950s when Lake Powell was formed by when a dam was built nearby. When the Lake was formed, it interrupted the travel patterns of the pronghorn that lived in the area. Proghorn are often referred to as antelope but are really no such thing. That wouldn't be the only misnomer out there about wildlife in the American west.
 |
| Exiting Upper Antelope Canyon. |
But...that's not the whole story. There are three more things. Yes, I know, three is a lot more things. I'll try to be brief.
First thing: The time.
When we booked our tour with Antelope Canyon Tours, every confirmation and reminder email we received (and there were a lot of emails...) prominently reminded us that our tour would operate on Phoenix time and to remember that. We figured this reminder was likely because the state of Arizona doesn't participate in Daylight Saving Time and that if you were coming from Utah (Page is just south of the Utah border) and didn't remember that the state immediately south of you was an hour behind you from March through October, you'd be an hour early.
So we are cruising along Arizona Highway 89 and all of a sudden the time on Waze jumps forward an hour. Arrival time is now 10:05 a.m. for a 9:50 a.m. tour time. What the heck? Did we somehow get delayed? Did we actually leave Flagstaff later than we thought we left? We were a little freaked out. We can't be late for this tour, can we? We checked the time in Flagstaff and in Page and both locations showed an hour earlier than Waze (which was really operating off the phone time) showed.
So we decided to check the time zone map of Arizona. As it turns out, not all of Arizona refuses to participate in Daylight Saving Time (see map below borrowed from the Department of Transportation website). The northeast corner of Arizona DOES observe Daylight Saving Time. But not the WHOLE northeast corner; there's a little piece of the northeast corner that is not connected to the rest of the non-DST-observing part of Arizona that also refuses to acknowledge Daylight Saving Time. And we happened to be traveling from the DST-denying portion of Arizona and through the DST-compliant piece of Arizona to the smaller DST-denying portion of the state.
We weren't late. The time changed back to Phoenix time 1.6 miles from Antelope Canyon Tours' office. But as people who don't like to be late EVER, this was a little freaky.
Second thing: The bags.
The other reminder that we received (over and over and over again) in emails from Antelope Canyon Tours before we showed up in Page was that no bags were allowed on the tour. Check that...no opaque bags. Clear bags are cool. And they DO sell clear bags in the gift store.
We run into this kind of thing when we attend sporting events and we assume it's so people can't bring bottles of alcohol into the event but why would anyone bring booze on a Canyon tour in the middle of the day? So we asked when we checked in. The answer? People sometimes bring their trash and leave it up at the Canyon. This made no sense to us. It's OK for me to bring trash in a clear bag that I might leave for good out in the Canyon but it's no good if the bag in not clear?
But when we boarded the bus, we were reminded no non-clear bags and we were also asked to shake our water bottles. Huh?
As it turns out, the issue isn't trash, it's ash. Like ashes of deceased loved ones. Why anyone who is not Navajo feels like they should bring their dead relatives' remains out to this place is beyond me. But apparently people do it. And when they do, the Canyon has to be closed, cleaned and blessed before it can re-open. Don't bring human remains here, people. Please!!
 |
| Navajo Taco, Hope's Frybread. |
This trip had one more foray into Navajo culture and history besides just visiting Antelope Canyon. On our way up to the Flagstaff area, we stopped for lunch at Hope’s Frybread, a Navajo-owned restaurant in Mesa, just east of the Phoenix airport. I’ve had frybread before, most notably on my 2001 vacation to Arizona in the fall of that year. I can still remember the frybread topped with pineapple I had outside the San Xavier Del Bac Mission on the Tohono O’odham reservation just south of Tucson on that trip. Frybread is basically flour and water made into a crude dough and then deep-fried in oil. It was invented by the Navajo in the 1860s but it is very decidedly not an historic native American food. It was invented out of necessity based on cruel treatment of the Navajo by the United States government.
The Navajo, like many (or is it all?) Native American peoples, were eventually confined to a non-traditional territory by the government of the United States. “Non-traditional” in that previous sentence really means pretty much undesirable and way smaller than lands they had previously lived off. The best parts of their former land, of course, were taken for use by American settlers of European ancestry. Confinement meant just that: don’t leave the assigned area. But some Navajo didn’t want to obey rules they had no part in making, which brought punishment from the men (usually Army officers) assigned to keep the Navajo in their assigned spot in the new American southwest.
The punishment for 10,000 Navajo for a few of their people leaving their assigned territory against the Army’s orders? A forced 300-mile march from the west side of what is now New Mexico to the east side of that same state with a subsequent internment for about four years. It’s now referred to as the Long Walk of the Navajo. Of the 10,000 forced to walk across the southwestern desert, approximately 35% of those died either during the Long Walk or during captivity.
A major cause of death was starvation, a result of the inadequate rations provided by the government to the Navajo. Part of the meager provisions made available to the Navajo were flour, lard and sugar, which Navajo women used to make a kind of dough from flour and water which they could then deep-fry in the heated lard. That frybread is the origin of the stuff we ate on our way to Flagstaff and is regarded as a symbol of Navajo resilience. Rather than allowing the substandard ingredients they were forced to live with, the Navajo women in the 1860s turned those raw materials into something that allowed their people to survive. I see it as an eff you to the United States Government and I love that.
So before we headed north to Flagstaff and Upper Antelope Canyon, we had a Navajo Taco at Hope's. Ground beef, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomato and some kind of spicy sauce atop bread improvised from substandard ingredients. It kept me fed and nourished until Flagstaff.
