As a canyoneer you read about all these great canyons, but sometimes it's hard to get a good mental map of where they are in relation to more common points of interest. The USGS topos usually label canyons and routes that took their name from an old established canyon name, like Heaps, Imlay, and Behunin Canyons. However, names like Das Boot and Misery Canyon were created by the canyoneering community and are nowhere to be found. Fortunately, the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) from the USGS includes most of these canyons, allowing us to create our own map:
(Keep reading after the map for a little bit more on the creation process)
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| Click here for a higher-resolution image |
The Process
I really wanted to show of the majesty of the landscape, to show how the canyons cut sharp clefts into the landscape. I found 1-meter elevation data from the USGS for the Park, but it had some annoying artifacts that appear to come from the lidar data or processing:
However, it smoothed up quite nicely at this scale using the MDenoise program created by Sun et al (2007) while still retaining a lot of the sharp details of the sheer red-rock cliffs:
I added a slope layer as well, symbolized as flat = white to steep = black and made it about 80% transparent. This doesn't show up much in the canyons, but brought out a little bit more detail in the lower cliff face of Zion Canyon.
Then, I created a custom color ramp based on the colors from the NPS' geology guide for the park to echo the actual rock layers and formations. It does a decent job, but can't quite do it justice without some representation for the vegetation on the plateau tops. It's also not properly indexed; the slight tilt in the strata relative to a flat sea-level "zero elevation point" means that, on opposite ends of the park, you could see different formations at the same elevation. In this map, every point of a given elevation is the same color.
The roads and rivers layers should hopefully help orient you to places you remember if you've visited the Park: the switchbacks up to the tunnel, and the end of the road at the Temple of Sinawava. I've let the flow of the labels, along with the hillshade, reveal the canyons themselves by setting the canyon lines to "No Color." Finally, a couple points of interest, like The Sentinel and Angels Landing, are identified to give a little bit more context and orientation.
And a Little Bit of Map Philosophy
All maps are, to an extent, an abstracted representation of reality. Some try to eliminate this as much as possible, using satellite imagery and high-accuracy polygons for every feature imaginable. Others embrace their abstractness, using labels in place of lines and funky symbols that represent an entire town.
With its color ramp and hillshade, I want this map to straddle the border between representational and realistic. The colors don't match exactly with what formations are found in the exposed strata at any given exact place in the canyon. But, with the whites and greens capping the domes and plateaus and the changing shades of tans and brownish-reds descending to the canyon floor, your mind (hopefully) is reminded of the grand wonders that exist in the real world.
I hope we never lose the ability to be amazed of these wonders.
