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Dark Canyon Wilderness

United States of America

Dark Canyon Wilderness

Dark Canyon Wilderness is a designated Wilderness Area in the heart of southeast Utah's canyon country, part of the Bears Ears National Monument. The wilderness is named for its high steep walls that narrow in the lower section so that they block the light in the morning and late afternoon. The roug

hly horseshoe-shaped wilderness is made up of the upper part of 40-mile-long (64 km) Dark Canyon and two major tributaries, Woodenshoe Canyon and Peavine Canyon in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. These canyons all descend from pine-covered Elk Ridge northeast of Natural Bridges National Monument. Dark Canyon continues west within a U.S. Bureau of Land Management primitive area that is recommended for wilderness designation. The last four miles (6.4 km) of the main canyon drop steeply through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area into Lake Powell. On December 28, 2016 President Barack Obama proclaimed the 1.35 million acre Bears Ears National Monument, that includes both the Dark Canyon Wilderness and the adjacent Dark Canyon Primitive Area. Life zones range from ponderosa pine and aspen-covered high country to desert vegetation in the bottom of Dark Canyon. High terraced castle-like sandstone...

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