Gorge-ous: the world’s grandest canyons – in pictures

Covering millions of acres of land in remote southeastern Oregon, some people have dubbed the Owyhee Canyonlands ‘Oregon’s Grand Canyon’.

Leslie Gulch is a canyon found within the Owyhee Canyonlands and is largely composed of ‘tuff’, which is rhyolite ash that was deposited after an eruption an estimated 15.5m years ago.

The petition by Oregon asks for the Owyhee Canyonlands to be safeguarded as a national monument like its better-known cousin, the Grand Canyon.

With drops of over 3,500m (11,500 feet), the Colca Canyon in Peru is one of the world’s deepest, almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.

Fish River canyon in Namibia is Africa’s largest and one of the largest in the world. Formation of the canyon is thought to have started about 350m years ago.

The Unesco-protected Tara River Canyon in Montenegro is one of Europe’s biggest. It’s dissected by the Tara, which is also known as the ‘tear of Europe’, thanks to its crystal clear waters.

Another of Europe’s most famous is the Vikos Gorge in Greece, which is also known by some as Greece’s Grand Canyon. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it takes the much sought-after “deepest relative to its width” crown.

Size isn’t everything when it comes to canyons and Kazakhstan’s Charyn Canyon is proof of that. Thought to be about 5m years old, the striking red, pink, and orange colours are due to interactions between atmospheric conditions and the sedimentary red sandstone.

The Ilhara Valley in Turkey’s Cappadocia region is also a canyon famous not for its size or depth, but for the settlements and churches built into the volcanic rock face by Byzantine monks, who are thought to have first settled there in the seventh century.

Around 10 times shallower than the world’s biggest, the UK’s own ‘Grand Canyon’ – Cheddar Gorge in Somerset – is probably more famous for the cheese that shares its name.