Kings Canyon size, geology and the Lost City domes

Kings Canyon size is easiest to grasp in a few numbers, since it is a gorge cut into sandstone. Tourism NT describes sandstone walls 100 m high, crevices filled with palms and views over the desert.¹ Tourism Central Australia puts the cliffs at over 100 to 150 m tall, shaped by millions of years of water, wind and sand erosion.² These figures are close but not identical, so read both as a guide to the scale rather than as a survey.

The canyon sits inside a much larger park. Watarrka National Park covers over 70,000 hectares, and the canyon sits inside it.⁵ A well-known way to take the canyon's measure is the Rim Walk, a loop of 6 km that usually takes around 3 to 4 hours and is graded moderate to difficult, Grade 4.⁶ The route opens with a climb of some 500 steep steps before it reaches the top.⁷

For a sense of position, Kings Canyon is about 300 km north east of Uluru and about 450 km south west of Alice Springs.⁸ Watarrka National Park is only 3 hours' drive from Uluru, which puts it within reach of a day trip.⁹ The table and chart below place the canyon beside Uluru and Kata Tjuta, so you can compare how each rock is built and how tall it stands.

Seen from the top of Kings Canyon, the domes are grouped under the name Lost City, a nod to their likeness to an old walled city.⁴ The trail runs through a stretch of them, so walkers on the rim get close to the weathered shapes and can judge their size against a person standing beside them.⁴ The domes sit on the plateau above the gorge, and they reward a slow pace and a steady camera hand.

The Rim Walk offers views from Cotterill's Lookout once the climb is done, and the trail then reaches the domes before the descent to the Garden of Eden.^22,23 Keep to the marked path and the colour-coded arrows, because the walks are well marked and the car park is the trail head for most of them.²⁴ The domes are not a place to wander off the track.

From the air, the picture changes. The 15-minute helicopter flight takes in the canyon, the Garden of Eden, the Lost City's weathered domes and the flat-topped Carmichael Crag.¹⁹ The matching listing, rated 4.8 from 93 reviews, is listed from $140. A flight and a walk show the same domes at different scales, and the helicopter page covers the detail.

Ask what Kings Canyon is famous for, and the answer comes in layers, depending on whether you ask a walker, a photographer or a geologist. It is known for the sandstone walls that rise 100 m from the creek, for the rim route that circles the top, for the domes called the Lost City and for the green rockhole of the Garden of Eden.^1,6,4,38 The views from the top stretch across the desert.¹

Evening has its own attraction. The Sunset Viewing Platform is at Discovery Resorts Kings Canyon, where the sun sets behind Carmichael's Crag.⁴⁴ It is a place to sit quietly after a day on the trail and watch the colour leave the escarpment. The walks add variety, from a gentle trail on the floor to the full rim loop.^45,6 Watarrka has walking trails, 4x4 tracks, camel tours and accommodation from camping to resort-style rooms.⁴⁶ Put together, those pieces explain why a visit here can fill a day or stretch to a long weekend.

The canyon is a companion to Uluru in the sense that both are Red Centre sandstone, though they differ in form. Uluru rises 348 m above the surrounding plain and began forming about 550 million years ago,^15,17 and Kata Tjuta is a formation of 36 dome-shaped rocks that rises to 546 m above the ground.¹⁴ Kings Canyon is a cut in the land and not a monolith, so walkers look down into it as much as up.