Word: canyoneering
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...proposals. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt introduced him to the glories of the Antiquities Act, which allows the President to declare an area of historic or scientific interest a national monument without having to go through a potentially hostile Congress. Roosevelt used the act in 1908 to protect the Grand Canyon. Standing on his predecessor's shoulders, Clinton chose the South Rim of the Grand Canyon as a backdrop for his declaration in 1996 of the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah...
Surprisingly, little more than a generation ago this jewel didn't even exist. Lake Powell was not formed until after 1963, when the government built a huge dam in Glen Canyon to control the waters of the Colorado River and generate hydroelectric power for the growing Southwest. The project outraged environmentalists and archaeologists because it submerged ancient homes, wall writings and burial grounds of the ancient Puebloans. It took 17 years for the Colorado River and other tributaries to fill the gorges and turn Lake Powell into the nation's second largest man-made lake. (Only Lake Mead, which borders...
...front of us, some three miles into the desert, stood Tower Butte, a massive rock formation rising 900 ft. and resembling Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Everywhere we looked we could see a stunning variety of sandstone canyons and buttes, some visible at more than 30 miles. As the sun descended, the canyon colors changed from burnt red to deep purple, then a mixture of lavender and pink...
Though we were enjoying the here and now, it was evident that the past is present everywhere at Lake Powell. The topography has been shaped by 2 billion years of geologic activity. Dinosaurs that walked the earth 150 million years ago have left tracks in Glen Canyon. Scattered along the lake's canyon walls are ancient petraglyphs chiseled by the Anasazi pueblo dwellers some 700 years ago. The lake is named after Major John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who led the first scientific expedition into this region in 1869. Some of the rocks here still bear his initials...
...next three days, we ventured into the desert, surveying exotic plants and animal life, always on the lookout for rattlesnakes, scorpions and coyotes. Afternoons were filled with trips in the speedboat, voyages of discovery. We would weave our way between narrow cliff walls a thousand feet high and explore canyons with such intriguing names as Forbidden Canyon, Dungeon Canyon and Hidden Passage. At every turn, we would find a surprise--a bizarre rock formation or a solid rock amphitheater suspended above...