Page, AZ
4,316ft elevation on the Glen Canyon rim. Built in 1959 to support construction of Glen Canyon Dam — one of the most ambitious civil engineering projects of the postwar era. The field sits between Lake Powell to the north and Horseshoe Bend to the southwest, with the dam visible from the pattern. Density altitude in summer is no joke — June through August routinely puts the DA above 7,000ft. The Antelope Canyon slot canyons are 5 miles east. Rainbow Bridge National Monument requires a boat from the lake. This is one of the most scenic GA destinations in the Four Corners region.
At Page, the Colorado River disappears behind a 710-foot curve of concrete: Glen Canyon Dam, the second-tallest dam in the country after Hoover, finished in 1966. Behind it the river backs up into Lake Powell, a reservoir 186 miles long with nearly 2,000 miles of shoreline, blue water wound deep into red Navajo sandstone canyons; from the air that contrast is the whole show. The steel-arch Glen Canyon Bridge spans the gorge right beside the dam. The town of Page exists only because the dam did; it started as the construction camp. Watch the waterline against the rock: two decades of drought have pulled Lake Powell far below its old high marks, and the pale bathtub ring on the canyon walls shows how far.
The Colorado River makes an almost perfect 270-degree horseshoe meander around a sandstone mesa near Page, AZ. The cliff walls drop 1,000 feet straight down to the emerald-green river. From above, the geometry is almost surreal — a perfect U-shaped canyon with a lone rock pillar in the center. Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam are just 5nm upstream. This area has some of the most dramatic geology visible from any aircraft anywhere.
Not actually a canyon — Bryce is a series of natural amphitheaters carved into the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah. The amphitheaters are filled with hoodoos: thin spires of pink, orange, and white limestone created by freeze-thaw weathering of the Claron Formation, a 50-million-year-old lakebed deposit. The largest concentration of hoodoos on Earth stands here — tens of thousands of them, ranging from a few feet to 200 feet tall. Park elevation runs from 8,000 to 9,100 feet, making Bryce a summer destination when lower Utah parks are sweltering. Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon homesteader who arrived in 1875, reportedly called the area "a hell of a place to lose a cow."
The most awe-inspiring flyover in American aviation. The SFRA has designated corridors for VFR flight — you can legally fly through the canyon at specific altitudes. The scale is almost impossible to process: the canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and over a mile deep. The Colorado River at the bottom looks like a tiny green thread. The east end near Desert View offers the widest vistas. The SFRA establishes specific corridors for VFR overflight.