Horseshoe Bend is where the Colorado River curls a full 270 degrees around a lone sandstone butte, almost meeting itself before it flows on. From the rim you look down about 1,000 feet — some 305 metres — to the water, which wraps the red rock on three sides and leaves it marooned in the middle. Geologists call this an entrenched meander. The river first wound lazily across a nearly flat plain; then the Colorado Plateau slowly rose, and the water sawed straight down into the loops it had already traced. The bend lies about five miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam, near the town of Page, Arizona, and marks one of the last intact stretches of Glen Canyon, most of which now lies drowned beneath Lake Powell.
A short, shadeless trail of red sand climbs gently from the parking lot, past two shade shelters, and then brings you abruptly to the canyon edge. The river runs so far below that a raft on it reads as a single white speck. The water itself is a deep emerald green, cold and clear, and set against the rust-stained cliffs that contrast is what draws more than two million people here every year. The Colorado did not always look like this; the dam upstream changed its colour. At sunset the west-facing walls catch fire and the river darkens to indigo. Around midday the light falls straight into the canyon instead, and the water glows its brightest turquoise. A railed platform added in 2018 absorbs the crowds, though much of the surrounding rim stays open, bare and sheer, with nothing between you and the drop.