Narrows Overlook

Narrows Overlook is a viewpoint off North Rim Drive in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. A short, unpaved loop starts and ends at the parking area. It opens onto the narrowest part of the gorge, where the Gunnison is just 40 feet across at the river and the canyon rises 1,725 feet to the rim. If you're making the North Rim drive, this is a worthwhile quick stop for the scale of the place. Allow about 15 minutes for the roughly 0.3-mile loop.

From CO 92, turn onto Black Canyon Road about three miles south of Crawford; the final seven miles and the North Rim Drive are gravel. The North Rim road serves six overlooks, and a full drive takes about two to three hours. That's a long approach for a 15-minute stop, so build it into a broader North Rim visit. The roads aren't plowed and close to vehicles in winter and early spring. Services are limited: summer water fill-ups are at the campground and ranger station, away from this overlook, and there is no North Rim water in spring, fall, or winter.

The walls expose rock nearly two billion years old. Heat and pressure changed buried deposits into schist and gneiss; later, magma pushed into those rocks and cooled into the colored igneous bands you can see in the canyon. About two million years ago, the Gunnison started cutting into this hard basement rock. The river still erodes it at roughly an inch per century. Here that slow work has left a gorge 1,725 feet deep and only 40 feet wide at river level.

Start with a wide view from the rim, then keep a glimpse of the Gunnison low in the frame. The small ribbon of water gives the walls their scale and makes the canyon's narrowness easier to see in a photo.