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10 <br />Black Canyon actually extends from the present site of Blue Mesa Dam <br />(near old Sapinero, Colorado) to the junction of the North Fork of the <br />Gunnison, a distance of about 50 mi (80 km). Hansen (1965) noted that the <br />river fell about 2,150 ft (655 m) in this stretch, an average rate of <br />fall of about 43 ft per mi. The steepest area is along the 12 mi of <br />river within the Gunnison National Monument which was established in 1933 <br />(Beidleman 1963). Starting from the upper end of the Monument boundary <br />near the Tunnel (Fig. 4), Warner (1963), a member of the original <br />U.S.G.S. survey of the Monument in 1934, reported that for the first 2 <br />mi the river drops 40 ft per mi. In the third mile, the drop is 75 ft; <br />fourth--55; fifth--110; sixth--200; seventh--260; eighth--140, with a <br />70-ft drop in 700 ft; ninth--50; tenth--40; eleventh--40; twelfth--50. <br />Within the Monument, the gorge depth ranges from 1,730 to 2,725 ft, <br />while the width narrows to 1,100 ft at the rim and as little as 40 ft <br />at the bottom. At the latter site, the river completely inundates the <br />chasm floor, and is locally called the Narrows. Needless to say, the <br />approximate 28-30 mi of tailwaters that now remain in the Black Canyon <br />are some of the most steep, wild and scenic areas in Colorado. Most <br />people who have gone on a "float trip" through the Monument area will <br />attest to the fact that it was not really a "float trip" but a hike with <br />a boat for crossing deep areas that could not be hiked around. Some <br />of the best authenticated accounts of early trips through the Black <br />Canyon have been reported in Beidleman (1959a) and Vandenbusche (1973). <br />Kinnear and Vincent (1967) noted that the region including the <br />Gunnison National Monument, topographically, is a transition zone between <br />the Southern Rocky Mountains to the east and Colorado Plateau to the <br />west. They further noted that the Black Canyon acts as a barrier to