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

A river flows from an Andean slope in Peru at 4,886 meters above sea level to the Pacific Ocean, traveling 388 kilometers through sections called Pacco Pacco, Chilimayo, Colca, Majes, and Camana. Along the Colca section, it cut through a rock massif to create the Colca Canyon, a nearly 100-kilometer-long narrow crevice whose walls rise to 4,150 meters on one side and 3,600 meters on the other, and it is considered the deepest canyon on Earth. The river and canyon take their names from Incan granaries built on rocks, called qolqas or colcas, which stored food and sometimes entombed prominent members of the ancient community. The canyon was first mentioned in 1929, when George R. Johnson, an American aviator and chief photographer of the Peruvian Naval Air Service, spotted and photographed the abyss beneath the peaks of Coropuna and Ampato. He returned two years later with the American geologist Robert Shipee, and together they made aerial photographic documentation of Cuzco, the Urubamba Valley, Huancayo, Arequipa, and the Colca Canyon. Photographs from inside the canyon were published in National Geographic magazine in 1934, bringing worldwide attention to a canyon said to be twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Since then, the Colca Canyon's impenetrable and inaccessible nature has attracted explorers. The Spanish professor José Arias, working with Professor Max Weibel of Switzerland, studied a short section of the Colca and concluded that it was the deepest canyon in the Americas, and perhaps on Earth, though only a thorough exploration of its interior by experts using kayaks and rafts could confirm it; half a century later, such men arrived at the entrance of the Colca River canyon on an expedition from Poland.

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