Page, Arizona has its Antelope Canyon including crowds and guided tours that whisk you through. Waterhole Canyon is not quite like Antelope Canyon but it is a reasonable alternative especially since very few people know where it is. No tour buses here!
It’s a bit tight but not claustrophobic.
The entry is rather ordinary.
Using a tripod for longer exposures helps to reveal the natural hues.
There is no paved parking lot. No signs. No shuttle buses. No entrance booth. No park rangers. No rails along the canyon rim. No guides. No hot dog stands. No mules to take you into the canyon. No Visitor Center. No visitors! Edward Abbey would approve of this place. In fact, it’s hard to find Coal Mine Canyon listed on any map. You’re suppose to look for the windmill near a farmhouse and water tank south of Tuba City. And that’s the way it should be.
Coal Mine Canyon could easily be its own National Park. It is in a remote part of Northern Arizona on the border of the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations. There are remnants of coal deposits in the canyon that the Hopis mined in the past. But hues of orange, magenta, gold, cyan and yellow dominate the canyon walls. Abstract shapes, patterns, and warped lines grab your attention.
My next post will be of the canyon next door to Coal Mine, Ha Ho No Geh Canyon. These images and more are available as downloadable files or signed prints at Dawn2Dawn Photography
The rock formation in the center is called The Ghost. Indian legend has it that a mist forming a ghost of a beautiful Indian woman would rise up from the canyon floor during a full moon. Her husband and child fell to their deaths along the canyon rim and she would visit the canyon every night searching for them until she eventually died. It just so happened that the day I was there, a full moon would be rising. But I had to get going as I don’t believe in ghosts.
There was one other visitor there, a photographer.