In reply to UKC Articles:
Brilliant article.
It's an awesome place, by any standards.
When I was there in the mid 1990s you needed a Wilderness permit to descend any of the gullies and the park rangers were on the ball. We were asked for ours shortly after we got back up to the rim. (Luckily we'd been good and we had one in the car.) Is this still the case?
Also, the river at the base of the canyon is paddleable. When it was first done in fibreglass boats, it took several days to complete the trip and apparently food dumps were left at the bottom of the gullies.
This link is for a vid of a far more recent descent and is well worth watching, if only to get a feel for the sheer scale of the canyon:
http://4cornerskayak.blogspot.com/2009/01/black-canyon-of-gunnison.html