A mysterious path lies ahead

A tributary to the Owyhee River. This is one of my favorite spots in the west - mostly because its not featured in guidebooks or any literature whatsoever. Pure solitude.

My first trip to this canyon, I never got to see the narrows. It was the end of March and the main Owyhee was flowing at 8,000 cfs and chocolate brown. 8,000 is big for this river, I think the return interval is like 1 in 5 years for that volume of flow. So anyhow, the canyon was ice cold and had some deep rapids - no wading there!

The giant stone pillars are made of rhyolite tuff. Unlike the basalt more common to southern Idaho and Eastern Oregon, Rhyolitic lava forms single flows several hundred feet thick. So the pillars you see here are actually from a single cataclysmic eruption. The same fate awaits Yellowstone National Park. To learn more, look up information on the Yellowstone Hotspot.