Jaap van 't Veen's photos with the keyword: Kanab

Wire Pass Slot Canyon starts at a parking lot, accessible from US 89 though a 13 km’s long quite bumpy dirt road. The first km’s the trail is following the meandering Coyote Wash with low red coloured rocks of Navajo Sandstone. Slowly but surely the rocks become higher and closer to each other. Before we did realize we were in the Wire Pass Slot Canyon, a very impressive slot canyon. Sometimes just one meter wide and a couple of times we saw tree trunks which were trapped between the rock walls. At one point we could hardly get any further through a large boulder that almost blocked the trail. After about 700 meters the canyon became wider and culminated in a large open space (main image) with huge rock walls, which on one side were beautifully illuminated by the sun. The cliffs are marked with several big horn sheep petroglyphs. The Wire Pass Slot Canyon ends here at the confluence with the Buckskin Gulch, the longest slot canyon of the USA.

Paria Rimrocks are part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It is a quite unknown area of fantastic rock formations just north of US 89, nearby the crossing of the Paria River. The Paria Rimrocks are easy accessible through a short trail. The area has an scenery based on bands of rock in many different colours; yellow, purple and red are the most prominent. In the rimrocks the layers are mostly white and red-brown. The differing hardness of the strata have created a great expanse of cliffs, plateaus, canyons, washes and badlands. The more unusual feature of the rimrocks is the many balanced boulders, known variously as hoodoos, goblins, toadstools or mushrooms, where flat blocks of hard sandstone are perched atop narrow columns of softer rock.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park is situated at an altitude of 1,800 metres; the dune field is 14 km² large. It became the status of a state park in 1963. The (more or less) coral pink coloured sand of the dune field consists of grains of sand, which - as a result of erosion – come from Navajo Sandstone of the Moquith and the Moccasin Mountains. The strong wind, which is characteristic for this area, finds its way through the narrow opening between the two mountain ranges. The tunnel effect ensures that the speed of the wind is increased to the point where grains of sand can be carried along (this phenomenon is called venturi affect ). After the wind has passed through the notch and reaches an open valley, its power decreases considerably, causing the sand to be deposited. The Coral Pink Sand Dunes are estimated at 10.000 to 15.000 years old. They are not very high, the highest are about 12 meters. The area has relatively much rainfall. This is why there is plenty of vegetation present on and around the sand dunes, which is quite amazing to see. The dunes and hills of sand can move as much as almost 20 meters a year.