Apogee Photo Magazine

Searching for Slot Canyons

by Bob Hitchman

The slot canyons of the Southwest pose challenges for the photographer, but the rewards are worth the effort.

I recently returned to the deserts of the Southwest searching for more hidden desert canyons "the slot canyons" carved ages ago, in wetter times, by streams flowing toward the Colorado River. By squeezing through narrow openings and lowering myself on a rope, I reached this underground chamber, a wide spot where I spread the legs of my tripod and stepped back to frame a fantasy of deeply sculpted curves and patterns of stripes across the red sandstone walls.

The walls of this deep canyon, on the south side of Lake Powell, were illuminated by a glowing, golden light. Afternoon sun caught the rim of the narrow opening, hundreds of feet above me, and reflected into the twisted and curved grotto below.

Many of these narrow canyons can be found on the deserts of northern Arizona and southern Utah. Some call them "slot canyons" because they can be so narrow in places that visitors have to turn sideways to walk through them. Some are very deep and long. Buckskin Gulch in the Paria Canyon Wilderness Area is almost 500 feet deep in places and about nine miles long. In addition to narrow places to squeeze through, hikers can find mud holes and, occasionally, a rattle snake.

Two of the most beautiful of the desert slot canyons are located about five miles east of the town of Page, Arizona. Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons are located on the Navajo Reservation. You can obtain a permit at the locked gate and, after paying a fee, you will be driven to the entrance of Upper Antelope Canyon. Upper Antelope Canyon is easily entered but visitors to Lower Antelope Canyon must climb down several ladders to reach the bottom of the gorge. The muted lighting is best on a sunny day between mid-morning and mid-afternoon. The colors are all shades of reds, ochres, pinks, and oranges. The canyon is immense, overhanging, convoluted walls sweep upward and then turn back on themselves to create a cathedral of overhead chambers that bounce, reflect, and diffuse the warm, desert colors of sunlight without ever revealing the sky.

Exposure can be a problem for photographers in these deep and dark canyons. The low light levels require a tripod and long exposures on slower speed, fine-grained films. Fast films are too grainy and electronic flash is too harsh and the color of the light from an electronic flash is too blue. Exposure times may be anywhere from several seconds to many minutes long. Small apertures are necessary for good depth-of-field while using medium-length telephoto lenses to capture the patterns and textures high on canyon walls. Small apertures and low light levels mean long exposures. Contrast can be a problem. Bright highlights illuminated by direct sunlight on canyon walls should be avoided. Color slide films cannot record the great range of light found in these canyons.

I always base my exposure calculations on the brightest reflected highlight, not direct sunlight on the walls. With a one-degree spot meter, I measure the brightest highlight in my framed composition that has visible detail that I want to appear on my film. I take that one-degree spot meter reading and increase it by two stops. This may sound backwards, but you must increase the exposure of the highlights or they will be recorded as middle gray and the entire scene will be underexposed. If you take an exposure reading of the brightest, detailed highlight in your composition, and increase that indicated reading by two stops (actually increasing the time and not opening the camera's aperture), your highlights will be properly exposed, the middle values will be properly exposed, and you'll get some details in the shadows. The darker shadows in the bottom of the canyon may be recorded as totally black and under-exposed but your photograph will appear natural and properly exposed. Washed-out and over-exposed highlights on the walls of the canyons will not look natural. Always avoid including the sky or direct sunlight on the canyon rims in your photographs. Your film cannot possibly record the great range of light that your eyes can see.

The middle of summer is not a good time to visit, to explore, and to photograph the slot canyons. Temperatures can reach well over a hundred degrees F. and summer rains make August and September the most dangerous months to explore these canyons. Summer monsoons, sweeping up from the Gulf of Mexico, bring heavy rainstorms to the southwest. Most of the flash floods in the canyons occur during August and September. You do not want to be in the slot canyons during a flash flood. The last half of October and the first two weeks of November are usually dry and are a great time to photograph the canyons. This is also the peak of the autumn color on the desert. All the cottonwoods along the streams turn yellow in late October. By mid-November, the first winter storms can bring rain or snow to this part of the desert.

April can be cool and wet. May, especially the last two weeks of the month, is a safe time to enter the canyons. June is usually dry but can be quite warm in northern Arizona. Visitors to the area in the warmer months usually come for the boating on Lake Powell.

There are dozens of these narrow canyons hidden away, far from the paved roads across the deserts of the southwest. Some are on the Navajo Reservation and some are located on BLM land. Some are easy to reach with a 4x4 vehicle and others require a long hike across unmarked territory. Some are very difficult to enter and require rope-climbing and rappelling skills. Other slot canyons pass beneath highways bridges, unnoticed by passing motorists. I've explored many of these canyons and have recently completed another newsletter with descriptions and information on over a dozen more located in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

Robert Hitchman publishes the Photograph America Newsletter. If you want to know more about the slot canyons of the Southwest, you will want to read issues #7 and #42 of his newsletter.