Antelope canyons must be one of the most famous slot canyons found in the Southwest. They are easily accessible from Arizona highway 98 a few miles from Page. They also happen to be on Navajo land, and as such their visit comes at an ever increasing price. We paid about $32 to visit both of them. This includes a tribal fee and then visit and guide fees.
The Upper Antelope Canyon is about 2 miles upstream from the road and you will be taken there in a 4WD vehicle by your guide. The track follows an unremarkable sand wash at the end of which there is a cliff and the canyon through a small plateau. The canyon takes only a few minutes to walk through, but a photographer could spend several days in there easily. We were not allowed that much time. In fact after a bit of haggling, we were given two hours, which was about the right amount of time given that the conditions were less than perfect - it was a partly cloudy day and still too early in the season for much of sunlight to penetrate to the bottom of the canyon-and we still had a visit of the Lower Antelope Canyon ahead of us.
Smoothed walls | Opening | Illuminated walls | Slit | Sandstone | |
Shapes | Window | Zdenek |