Exploring Lower Antelope Canyon

Today we took a tour of a slot canyon near Page, Arizona.  This canyon is called Lower Antelope Canyon.  It is located on tribal lands and is one of the most popular tours in the area.  We had a few reservations about taking a tour like this, but our experience was very positive and we would recommend it to anyone who is interested in opportunities to photograph slot canyons in this region.

We'll start with one of the most dramatic photos we got.  Kathy figured out how to get our smartphone to pick up colors from different parts of the spectrum, simply by turning its focus slightly.  This photo picks up the tans and blues, as well as some purples, that we saw throughout the canyon:

The tour we took was called "Ken's Tours."  We had to pay an admission fee to the tribal lands, and then pay a tour fee to this company.

Ours was a walking tour, which we liked best because it gave us the greatest chance to take our own photos.

As we walked out to the canyon, this is what we saw.  You may not believe it, but the slot canyon we walked through was below the narrow crack that runs left and upward from the lower right corner of this photo!  From above, one could miss entirely that there was a canyon below the surface of the ground.

The canyon lies under Antelope Wash, which runs from the plateau above Page, Arizona, down to Lake Powell.  The wash is so named because, in heavy rains, the water washes, or floods, down the course of the wash.  In this case, as the waters flood the wash, they also fill the canyon.  In 2013, a huge rainstorm caused flood waters to inundate the canyon, and someone caught this YouTube video of the flood raging through the wash and over the canyon.  Because of the dangers to visitors in a slot canyon, tours are not run when it rains.

Today, however, the weather was gorgeous - sunny and dry, so the tour was on.  We descended into the canyon by a 5-story stairway.  Here are some members of our group starting the journey down:

Once in the canyon, we all had ample time and room to take photos.  The tour lasted over an hour and traversed a half mile of canyon floor.  This is what we did most of the tour:

Kathy caught David in the act, too:

Here is Kathy climbing up a flight of stairs as we left the canyon:

Our tour guide, nicknamed "Boo Boo," was very knowledgeable and friendly, and he helped all of us by taking our photos and giving us ideas for dramatic shots.  Boo Boo took this one of us at the bottom of the canyon:

We put below what we thought were the other 9 of the 10 best photos we got from Lower Antelope Canyon, but if you're interested in seeing all of the ones we liked, you can follow this link to our Flickr album.  None of these photos was retouched or manipulated in any way.  The colors and light you see here are what we saw as we took the photos.