The Colca Canyon w Peru - The deepest canyon in the world

The Colca Canyon w Peru - The deepest canyon in the world. 40th Anniversary of the First Descent of the Colca Canyon in Peru. , There is a river that flows from Andean slope in Peru at 4,886 meters above sea level down to the Pacific Ocean. The river travels 388 kilometers and its sections are called Pacco Pacco, Chilimayo, Colca, Majes, and Camana. Along the section of the Colca, the river has cut through the rock massif creating a nearly 100-kilometer-long narrow crevice: the Colca Canyon. The walls of the canyon climb up to 4,150 meters on one side and 3,600 meters on the other. It is considered the deepest canyon on the Earth., The name of the river and the canyon comes from the Incan names for granaries built on rocks, called qolqas or colcas, used to store food and sometimes entomb the bodies of prominent members of the ancient community. The canyon was first mentioned in 1929 when the abyss, overlooked by the peaks of Coropuna and Ampato, was spotted and photographed by George R. Johnson, an American aviator and chief photographer of the Peruvian Naval Air Service. Intrigued by his unusual discovery, he returned to the canyon two years later with the American geologist Robert Shipee. Together, they made aerial photographic documentation of Cuzco, the Urubamba Valley, Huancayo, Arequipa, and the Colca Canyon itself. Pictures from inside the canyon were published in National Geographic magazine in 1934 alerting the world to the existence of a canyon twice as deep as the famous Grand Canyon in Arizona., Since that initial discovery, the impenetrable and inaccessible nature of the Colca Canyon has made it a place of interest for many explorers. The Spanish professor José Arias, who together with professor Max Weibel from Switzerland, managed to study the short section of the Colca, summed up his finding like this: "Colca Canyon is the deepest canyon in the Americas, if not the deepest on the Earth. However, this can only be confirmed by a thorough exploration of its interior with the help of kayaks and rafts. This can only be done by experts or madmen who will be favored by luck. Those men appeared at the entrance of the Colca River canyon half a century later on an expedition from distant Poland.