59 Fun Facts About Canyons of the World

Which river cuts the Iron Gates, the gorge that divides Serbia from Romania?

The Danube: a dam built across the gorge around 1970 raised the river and drowned Ada Kaleh, a mid-stream island of Turkish houses with its own mosque.

From which language does the word 'canyon' come?

Spanish: cañón also means a tube or pipe, the usual explanation for the gorge sense, though some dictionaries allow that it began as an older word built on calle, a street.

Why do deep, sheer canyons form more readily in dry regions than in wet ones?

Little rain wears the walls back: a stream fed from wetter country upstream keeps sawing downward, while the dry cliffs beside it stay steep and angular instead of slumping into a broad valley.

What defines a box canyon?

Steep walls on three sides and one way in: the town of Telluride sits in one, yet Butch Cassidy robbed his first bank there in 1889 and still got clean away.

What term describes a river that lies at the bottom of a deep canyon and cannot shift its course?

Entrenched: on a floodplain a river wanders and changes course at will, but one that has cut deep into rock is walled in and can only go on cutting downward.

The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, often ranked as the deepest on Earth, lies in which Himalayan region?

Tibet. The gorge around the peak Namcha Barwa proved so impenetrable that 19th-century surveyors could not follow the river through it to see where it came out.

The Yarlung Tsangpo is the upper course of which great river?

The Brahmaputra. To prove the link, the surveyor Kinthup threw 500 marked logs into the Tsangpo in the 1880s, but his contact had died and nobody downstream was watching for them.

Nepal's Kali Gandaki Gorge separates Dhaulagiri from which 8,000-metre peak, encircled by a famous trekking circuit?

Annapurna. The river held its course as the Himalayas rose around it, cutting down so far that it now runs more than five kilometres below the summits on either side.

The Kali Gandaki region is famous for shaligram fossils, revered by Hindus as a form of which god?

Vishnu. The sacred black stones are fossil ammonites, the coiled shells of sea creatures, found today in a riverbed high in the Himalayas.

Colca and Cotahuasi, two canyons each about twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, are in which South American country?

Peru. Both lie in the country's far south, where farmers in the Colca valley still work stepped terraces that were built before the Incas.

Which bird is the star attraction of Colca Canyon, gliding past the walls at close range?

Andean condor. Early in the morning the birds ride thermals rising from the canyon floor and glide past the Cruz del Cóndor lookout on the rim.

In which US national park do hikers wade up the Virgin River through a canyon called The Narrows?

Zion. In The Narrows the river is the trail: hikers wade upstream over slippery boulders between sheer walls that stand only 20 to 30 feet apart in places.

What is the largest canyon in Africa?

Fish River Canyon is about 160 km long, yet the river that cut it now flows only after the summer rains and shrinks to a chain of pools for the rest of the year.

The river that carved Namibia's great canyon ends by joining which river on the South African border?

The Orange River. Hikers on the canyon's five-day trail finish their walk at ǀAi-ǀAis, a resort whose hot springs rise in the bed of the tributary itself.

Why is South Africa's Blyde River Canyon unusual among great gorges?

It is green, full of subtropical vegetation: Mpumalanga bills it as the world's largest 'green canyon', and its Three Rondavels peaks are named for the round huts they resemble.

What does 'Blyde' mean in old Dutch, a name given by Voortrekkers in 1844?

Glad or happy: the trekkers had given their leader's party up for dead and named a nearby stream the Treur, or 'mourning', before the men caught up with them alive.

Which Tanzanian Rift Valley site yielded the hominin fossils excavated by Louis and Mary Leakey?

Olduvai Gorge. In 1959 Mary Leakey found a 1.75-million-year-old skull there, whose huge back teeth earned it the nickname Nutcracker Man.

The Tara River Canyon, which UNESCO credits with the deepest gorges in Europe, lies mostly in which country?

Montenegro. In 1942 partisans blew up an arch of the canyon's great road bridge to stop an enemy advance, and the engineer who helped them was later shot on the bridge itself.

A Justin Bieber music video sent so many fans to a canyon in which country that officials closed it in 2019?

Iceland. Fans flocked to Fjaðrárgljúfur after Bieber dangled his feet over its cliffs in the video for I'll Show You, and the ranger said some tried to bribe her to open the gate.

Guinness World Records has listed Greece's Vikos Gorge as what?

Deepest relative to its width: at one point its walls fall about a kilometre while the rims stand barely further apart, though champions of rival gorges contest the claim.

On which Greek island is the Samaria Gorge, a national park since 1962?

Crete. The gorge was made a national park mainly as a refuge for the kri-kri, a rare wild goat, and at the Gates its walls close to about four metres apart.

The river in Provence's Verdon Gorge is known for which distinctive colour?

Turquoise-green. The river leaves the gorge straight into the Lake of Sainte-Croix, a reservoir filled in the 1970s after the old village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon was demolished to make room.

Which river carved the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado. It only began cutting down after the whole region had been lifted into a high plateau, so the canyon is far younger than the rocks in its walls.

Roughly how many years of Earth's geological history are exposed in the Grand Canyon's walls?

2 billion, near enough: that is roughly the age of the oldest rocks at the bottom. Even the youngest layer, at the rim, is older than the first dinosaurs, so no dinosaur fossils turn up there.

Who led the 1869 boat expedition that made the first known passage through the Grand Canyon?

John Wesley Powell had lost his right forearm at the Battle of Shiloh seven years before he led four small boats down the river; one sank in a rapid, taking food and instruments with it.

Who said of the Grand Canyon, 'Leave it as it is'?

Theodore Roosevelt. Bills to make the canyon a national park kept failing in Congress, so in 1908 he declared it a national monument by proclamation; park status finally came in 1919.

García López de Cárdenas, the first European known to see the Grand Canyon, was scouting for which conquistador in 1540?

Francisco Coronado. Hopi guides led his scouts to the rim, but three soldiers sent to climb down got only a third of the way to the river, and the party, short of water, turned back.

What name do geologists give the gap in the Grand Canyon's rocks where a vast span of time is missing?

The Great Unconformity. The missing rock was not skipped but destroyed: older layers were lifted up and worn away by erosion before new sediment buried the surface, like pages torn from a book.

Which gorge on the Snake River is often called the deepest in North America?

Hells Canyon. After a long fight over who should dam the Snake, a power company built three dams in the area, and in 1975 the gorge became a national recreation area.

Where did radar reveal a 750 km canyon in 2013, thought to be the longest on Earth?

Under Greenland's ice sheet. Hidden beneath about a mile of ice, the canyon is thought to be older than the ice itself, a river valley carved before Greenland froze over.

Antelope Canyon, the famous slot canyon in Arizona, lies on whose land?

Navajo. Visitors may enter only with an authorised guide, partly because rain falling dozens of miles away can send a flash flood through the narrow slots with little warning.

Antelope Canyon's smooth, flowing walls were carved out of what kind of rock?

Sandstone. Floodwater loaded with sand races through the narrow passages and scours the soft rock, deepening the corridors and rounding off every hard edge.

The film 127 Hours retells Aron Ralston's ordeal in a slot canyon in which US state?

Utah. Pinned in Bluejohn Canyon, Ralston broke his own forearm, cut it off with a dull pocket knife, then abseiled 65 feet and hiked out to find help.

Copper Canyon, larger than the Grand Canyon, lies in which Mexican state?

Chihuahua, Mexico's largest state. Its gorges are so hard to reach that the usual way in is a railway that crosses part of them.

What is the popular railway through Copper Canyon called?

El Chepe. Conceived in 1880, the line was held up for decades by the Mexican Revolution, money troubles and the terrain itself, and opened only in 1961.

The Rarámuri, the indigenous inhabitants of Copper Canyon, bear a name that may mean what?

The running people is one reading; another gives 'those who walk well'. Either way, Rarámuri runners are famed for kicking a wooden ball through races that can last a couple of days.

Waimea, a deep gorge on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, is nicknamed what?

The Grand Canyon of the Pacific. Waimea means 'reddish water' in Hawaiian, after the red soil washed from the canyon by a river fed from one of the wettest peaks on Earth.

Sumidero Canyon, with walls up to 1,000 metres high, lies in which Mexican state on the Guatemalan border?

Chiapas. Legend says the last Chiapa warriors, cornered above the Grijalva River, threw themselves from the canyon walls rather than submit to the conquistadors.

Kazakhstan's Charyn Canyon lies about 200 km east of which city?

Almaty. Wind and water have carved the canyon's red rock into towers known as the Valley of Castles, and a relic grove of Sogdian ash nearby is said to date from the Ice Age.

What is the Aboriginal name for Kings Canyon in Australia's Northern Territory?

Watarrka. The English name honours no monarch: the explorer Ernest Giles named the creek below in 1872 after a friend, Fielder King.

Unlike river-cut canyons, submarine canyons are thought to be formed mainly by what?

Turbidity currents and landslides. Loose sediment builds up at a canyon's head until it slumps, and the muddy avalanche that follows races downslope, scouring the canyon deeper.

Which submarine canyon off California has walls a mile high, rivalling the Grand Canyon?

Monterey Canyon. Its head lies just off the harbour at Moss Landing, where marine laboratories have grown up to study a deep sea that starts almost at the shoreline.

Which African river flows straight into a huge submarine canyon that begins inside its own estuary?

The Congo. Because the canyon starts within the estuary, the river builds no delta: nearly all its mud is swept straight down the canyon to the deep Atlantic sea floor.

The largest known canyon in the Solar System cuts across which planet?

Mars. Its great canyon system runs for about 4,000 km, and much of it is thought to be a giant crack: the crust split beside a huge volcanic bulge, and erosion widened the gap.

The largest known canyon in the Solar System is named after which spacecraft?

Mariner 9. The orbiter arrived in 1971 to find its target wrapped in a global dust storm, and only when the dust settled weeks later did its cameras reveal the canyon.

Which US national park, despite its name, is not a canyon at all but a row of giant natural amphitheatres?

Bryce Canyon. No river carved it: water freezing and thawing in cracks ate back the edge of a plateau into horseshoe-shaped bowls filled with rock spires.

Which ancient city do visitors reach by walking through the Siq, a narrow, winding gorge?

Petra. Visitors emerge from the Siq in front of the Khaznah, the so-called Treasury, which is thought to have been carved as a tomb.

What does the Afrikaans word 'kloof', common in South African place names, mean?

Ravine. Kloof is akin to the English 'cleave', and the town of Kloof near Durban was first named Kranzkloof, 'cliff ravine', after the gorge beside it.

Britain's oldest near-complete human skeleton, a hunter who lived some 10,000 years ago, was found in which gorge?

Cheddar Gorge. Cheddar Man was dug from Gough's Cave in 1903, and DNA read in 2018 suggested that he had dark skin, dark hair and blue eyes.

Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the world's deepest river canyons, lies on the upper course of which river?

The Yangtze, known on this stretch as the Jinsha. Legend says a hunted tiger escaped by leaping the gorge at its narrowest point.

Which national park in Wyoming has a 'Grand Canyon' of its own, below a pair of great waterfalls?

Yellowstone. Hot springs and geysers cooked the canyon's rock until it turned soft and brittle, which rangers liken to baking a potato, so the river could cut it deep.

Which iconic Bristol structure spans the Avon Gorge?

Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel won the job at 24 and called it 'my first child, my darling', but riots halted the work and it was finished only in 1864, after his death.

The Fraser Canyon, which explorer Simon Fraser fought his way down in 1808, cuts through which Canadian province?

British Columbia. Fraser believed he was following the Columbia; only when he reached the sea and took his latitude did he learn he had braved the canyon on a different river.

Tethys, an icy moon scarred by the 2,000 km canyon Ithaca Chasma, orbits which planet?

Saturn. The chasm is named for the island kingdom of Odysseus, and one theory is that it split open when water inside the moon froze and expanded.

Vid Flumina, which cuts canyons on Titan, is a river of what?

Liquid methane and ethane. Titan is so cold that water ice plays the part of bedrock, and radar showed these rivers of liquid gas have cut canyons hundreds of metres deep into it.

Which bridge crosses the River Tarn's gorge valley in southern France?

Millau Viaduct. At 343 metres it stands taller than the Eiffel Tower, and it was built to end the summer traffic jams in the town of Millau on the road from Paris to Spain.

Which Scottish body has owned Corrieshalloch Gorge, near Ullapool, since 1945?

The National Trust for Scotland. The Gaelic name is usually rendered 'ugly hollow', an odd label for a mile-long slot gorge cut by glacial meltwater, among the most spectacular in Britain.

Which 1991 road movie ends at the rim of the 'Grand Canyon', in a scene actually filmed near the town of Moab?

Thelma & Louise. The story runs from Arkansas to the Grand Canyon, but it was shot almost entirely in California and around Moab, where the final cliff is now nicknamed Thelma and Louise Point.

Palo Duro Canyon, 'the Grand Canyon of Texas', has a name that translates as what?

Hard stick, or more freely 'hardwood': the name refers to the tough shrubs and trees that grow in the canyon, a rare supply of wood on the open plains of the Panhandle.