Ventu/Lucker

The origin of Dushanzi Grand Canyon

At the starting point of the northern section of Duku Highway, there is a new magical and officially open scenic spot - Dushanzi Grand Canyon!

You may be unfamiliar with the Dushanzi Grand Canyon, but you may suddenly realize it when you talk about the Kuitun Grand Canyon. They are actually a "family" - it has to be admitted that Kuitun Grand Canyon is much more famous than Dushanzi Grand Canyon, but the name of this canyon is "Kuitun", which has nothing to do with Kuitun City, Yili Prefecture - this It is a U-shaped canyon. The river in the canyon is called Kuitun River, which generally runs north-south. According to the division of administrative regions, the west bank of the canyon belongs to Wusu City, Tacheng Prefecture, and the east bank belongs to Dushanzi District, Karamay City. However, the river at the bottom of the canyon is managed by Kuitun—because at the beginning of the founding of New China, the Seventh Division of the Construction Corps lived in Kuitun , the Seventh Division has been building and managing the diversion canal (Tianshan Xueshui) and power generation projects for this river. The water in the diversion canal nourishes the people of Wusu, Kuitun and Dushanzi.

Of course, later, people discovered that the most spooky part of this 20+km-long canyon was in Dushanzi, so the locals changed their name to Dushanzi Grand Canyon...

The first paid scenic spot in Dushanzi District

In fact, both the Dushanzi Grand Canyon and the Kuitun Grand Canyon have always been in an undeveloped primitive state. In June of this year, I drove the Duku Highway back and forth twice. I had never heard of the Dushanzi Grand Canyon. I said I would go to the Kuitun Grand Canyon to see it. Local friends also said that it was not worth seeing, and because of the danger, the canyon was closed by the local area.

In June, I drove the Duku Highway by myself, and I passed by Dushanzi several times, because I had the impression that there was nothing to see here except the oil refining base. At the end of October, I went to Dushanzi again and lived there. I was surprised to find that Dushanzi is an oil city that belongs to the category of "not bad money". indifferent. In 2019, the traffic flow of self-driving cars on the Duku Highway was blowout, and Dushanzi finally understood the hard truth that if there is traffic, there is money to be made——

At the zero-kilometer mark of the Duku Highway, a huge tourist center has begun to be built; the starting point of the Duku Highway and a 1-kilometer section of G217 before and after the zero-kilometer mark have been abandoned. Nestled next to the visitor center; 20+ kilometers away from the Duku Highway, road signs, road signs and even standard paved roads leading to the Dushanzi Grand Canyon have replaced the old grassland sidewalks; several viewing platforms in the canyon have been established, dangerous In the area, all safety fences have been set up; the Dushanzi Grand Canyon Visitor Center and parking lot have also been established; in the scenic area, the thrilling degree of the Duku large glass suspension bridge, the startling suspended plank road, and high-altitude bicycle riding , 100-meter-high cliff swing and other self-funded amusement projects were also officially opened to the public in September this year.

Of course, Dushanzi has invested so much, and tickets are charged, but it is more gentle, just 30 yuan, and you can watch it casually; those stimulating play items are voluntary, you can challenge if you are brave, and the price is that each item is paid. It costs 60-100 yuan.

The most worth mentioning is that the Duku large glass suspension bridge is the first 9D model in Xinjiang. However, this glass bridge is named "Duke", which is indeed suspected of rubbing off on the Internet celebrity traffic of "Duku Highway", because it is indeed too different from Kuqa, haha. However, the opening of this glass bridge with high-tech sound and light technology also officially announced that Karamay Dushanzi District has the first toll scenic spot 70 years after the founding of New China.

The bridge has a total length of 186 meters, a net width of 3 meters, and a drop of 120 meters from the bridge deck to the bottom of the valley. There is a lotus-shaped viewing platform in the middle of the glass bridge, which is the best place to enjoy the scenic view of the Grand Canyon. Feel the majesty of nature!

Different from the glass plank roads (bridges) that are flocked to be built in many scenic spots in China, the Duku glass bridge is equipped with high-tech 5D sound and light fragmentation effects. "Wherever people go, the glass is broken, and there is a "click" sound of glass breaking.

How would you go on the Duku glass bridge? Walking with the support of the "wall"? Kneeling? Or being dragged?

Anyway, I was striding forward, but accompanied by the sound of glass breaking "click click", there were bursts of sharp, crisp kicks from the center of my feet...

What does the Dushanzi Grand Canyon look like?

Dushanzi Grand Canyon and Kuqa Grand Canyon are gifts of nature at the north and south ends of the Tianshan Mountains along the Duku Highway, but the painting style of these two Grand Canyons is quite different. If the Kuqa Grand Canyon is famous for its majesty, then the Dushanzi Grand Canyon is unique in its weirdness.

Dushanzi Grand Canyon is a river formed by the melting of snow water in Tianshan Mountains. After hundreds of millions of years of galloping and erosion and years of heavy storms and snow erosion, the cliffs on both sides of the river present a series of thrilling natural and historical pictures. The breathtaking spectacle of water erosion.

The current tourism facilities in the Dushanzi Grand Canyon can only be regarded as newly built in general. The reason is that this canyon extends southward for about 20 kilometers from the foot of the Tianshan Mountains in the north. The area where tourists can safely visit is close to the south side of the canyon. The valley bottom here is 300-400 meters wide, and the valley shoulder is about 1000 meters wide and relatively flat. The vertical cutting height of the shoulder is only 70 to 80 meters, and the length of the tour route is less than one kilometer.

However, the most thrilling part of this canyon, the scenic spot has not been taken out so far. Because this section is located at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains in the north, the width of the valley bottom there is very narrow, only about 100 meters, and the valley shoulder is also very narrow and steep, the widest is only four to five hundred meters, and the vertical cutting height from the valley bottom to the valley shoulder can reach 200 meters. ! Because the terrain is dangerous and tight, safety protection measures cannot be achieved overnight. Therefore, after walking through the big glass bridge to the end (north side), the northward area is closed and tourists are strictly prohibited from entering.

Fly the drone in the closed northern area of ​​the Dushanzi Grand Canyon, and fly along the canyon towards the northern Tianshan Mountains for three kilometers, only to find that the Dushanzi Grand Canyon is by no means as simple as a simple U-shaped canyon on the river bed—God Vision Belt The details of the canyon walls from here look infinitely strange-it looks like a record specimen of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event tens of millions of years ago!

In the aerial photography of the Dushanzi Grand Canyon, due to the strong wind, the drone is always in danger of losing control. When the man-machine was flying in the canyon at a negative altitude (lower the altitude to the valley to take pictures of the details of the valley wall), it lost control and fell due to the strong wind. I drove to the entrance of the canyon in Su territory. After negotiating with the Kuitun River Management Office of the Seventh Division, I was allowed to go down to the bottom of the valley to search. Although the GPS positioning indicator of the drone has been flashing, I searched for it twice in a row. The folds are very steep, and there is no way to climb up, so I have to give up. This is a later story.

Badlands are not derogatory terms but rare landforms

In other words, a lot of information has introduced that the unique appearance of the Dushanzi Grand Canyon was carved out of the valley wall by the alluvial action of snow and rainwater from the Tianshan Mountains. This uncanny masterpiece of nature is most vividly displayed in the Taitung area of ​​Taiwan, where the world-class landform landscape that combines ugliness, fantasy and strangeness - the Liji bad land is formed by the erosion of rainwater. , Erosion Valley, its sword-like magical landforms are shocking.

Coincidentally. Dushanzi Grand Canyon has not yet been developed and is in an absolutely primitive state. The landforms on both sides of the canyon (near the foot of Tianshan Mountain) are typical bad places from a geoscience point of view!

In terms of geological origin, the above-mentioned rivers rushing out of the Tianshan Mountains formed layers of platforms (there are currently 9 layers of platforms) with sediment accumulation in front of the foot of the Tianshan Mountains. Under the erosion of snow and heavy rain, a combination of plateaus, hills, beams, ditches and gullies similar to the loess landform is formed. Due to the lack of vegetation, serious water and soil loss, this combination of landforms is also called "bad land" in geomorphology. Bad land is also called "bad land" because there is no grass growing.

There are also badlands of different scales in the granite areas of Hong Kong, such as Sha Tin, Lion Rock, Devil's Mountain, Tai Lam Chung, Castle Peak, Lamma Island, etc., as well as Sai Kung and Pat Sin Leng areas.

Tips: According to "Modern Chinese Dictionary"——

Plateau (yuán) refers to the highland formed by erosion in the Loess Plateau area of ​​Northwest China, which is platform-shaped, with steep sides and a flat top.

Miao (mǎo), a loess hill in Northwest China. The top is gentle and the slope is steep.