Rocks
Our route from Rapid City begins by going over the southern end of the Black Hills, and over the rolling grasslands of WY. At this time of year, most of the land looks like the fur of a Steiff Teddy Bear. I watch this roll on by, daydreaming as I drive. As the rocks come out more often, and as the road cuts and bluffs begin to show the colors of the past layers, I wonder about their history in an idle way. Looking at rocks, picking up rocks and saving them for a while is something I have a habit of doing. Later, I find them and can’t identify them or where they came from, so I leave them behind. I guess I am a sort of miniature glacier.
As we work our way southwesterly, past the badland hills of Rock Springs, we are heading for the wildest rock show in the west, maybe even in the world. And as we get further into it, I get more and more determined to learn more about these rambunctious rocks.
Flaming Gorge-Coming at this big reservoir from the east, the flaming part is not as obvious, but once you drop down into it and drive across the big dam, you can see the red rocks. This is the Green River that cut down through the layers into the red ones, and created a canyon that is now flooded. Still pretty spectacular from a pure scenery point of view, and as we look back, it is clear there has been some underground excitement here. Instead of the horizontal layers of different colors that we will see in the next three canyons, here the layers are kicked up at an angle, and cut and torn where the edges broke away from their long sleep.
Briefly and so over simplified as to horrify a geologist, there was a huge sea here, and later big lakes. Silt, tiny animals and plants, and later blowing sand formed layers and under the weight of what was added later became rock. As the solid top plates of rock floated island-like on the liquid layers below, they collided. Some times causing a great tipping up, sometimes just raising up a whole huge section thousands of feet as one mass slid under another. These restless edges are an easy exit for volcanoes, and a likely place for earthquakes too, and there will be newer mountains of fresh rock, layers of ash, and evidence of the violence of a sudden upward thrust.
The Colorado Plateau is a huge uplift of the old striped sea/ lakebed. At its edges, you can see theses layers clearly, and anywhere a river starts working on it, these layers get brought out into daylight with astonishing results. Each layer has a name, and somewhere a detailed and jargon filled description of what it contains and what its personal life has been like. All I really care about is why are they all those wild colors?
Bryce Canyon- Not really a canyon, this is actually the eastern side of a wide valley. Water has chewed away the layers in an idiosyncratic way here. On the top, a fairly tough skin, and below that, vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet. The top skin has kept some parts protected, but the rest has “melted” into a 50-60 mile bewildering field of dribble castles, mini mesas, gothic tombs and deep folds. The pillars are called hoodoos, to rhyme with voodoo, because it is too spooky and colorful to be natural. A rancher who settled in the valley below, apparently immune to the spectacle, said” It’s a hell of a place to lose a cow”.
On to Zion, we are dropping down the stairs of the uplift, along the Sevier River valley. On our left, “Pink Cliffs (Bryce is part of this layer), Gray Cliffs, White Cliffs, Vermilion Cliffs and Chocolate Cliffs. Apparently, the most vibrant colors happened in the lake time, as rivers washed minerals in. Iron, oxidizing or under pressure, makes the nearly tomato red, manganese the purple, sulfur-yellow, copper-green. After following the river bottom a ways, we turn west and begin to climb.
Zion is a really truly canyon,, and we are approaching the rim at 6200 feet. The Virgin River that carved it is down at 4,4,00 feet. The 1928 road in from the east drops gradually and then goes through a tunnel with portholes that we can’t stop at anymore and then a series of tight switchbacks. Any vehicle taller than 13’1’’, or over 40’ long can’t make it at all, and many can only go with the road closed one way ($15) so they can go in the middle of the tunnel. Another example of an engineering marvel built at great expense just for us tourists.
There are three major layers here in Zion: a thin soft bit of the same orange as Bryce, which sits at the top, in a few places. Next, the major layer ranges from white to red in soft swirls that are not always parallel, nor equal in hardness. Instead of the deposits of salt sea or freshwater lake, sand dunes drifted here once, blown by winds that carried slightly different colored dusts. The upper part, mostly white, has washed into shapes like an upside down cow’s udder sometimes, especially at checkerboard Mesa. In other places it looms like a citadel.
Down at the bottom, the lowest layer is deeper red, harder yet which means the bottom is darker red, and narrows to a slot canyon. Since most of the canyon is one type of rock, the sides are nearly vertical, only at the top do the domes form. Cathedrals, a city of window-less, door-less temples. One of these, with a flat top, is called Angel’s Landing, a heli-pad for Gabriel. There is a hiking trail all the way to the top, which makes me shudder to think about.
The river, a creek really, burbles and splashes innocently at the base of the sheer cliffs, and people take off their shoes to paddle. You can even hike up further, walking in the creek with the right shoes. Rain water that fell up above thousands of years ago seeping thought the porous sandstone, drips out of the rocks and flowers have found a foothold there, yellow columbine, red penstamon.
I imagine what the spring thaw is like in here, the river showing its teeth, red brown with silt, throwing boulders and sticks. A good thunderstorm will make the river do this too, making a deadly trap for hikers. Still, it’s hard to under stand how this pretty stream could make this city of cliffs and temples and white topped towers. Its scale is portentous, and the early mostly Mormon settlers named the peaks: The West Temple, Altar of Sacrifice, Towers of the Virgin, The Four Prophets and the Great White Throne. Maybe the Virgin River had some divine help.
As we work our way southwesterly, past the badland hills of Rock Springs, we are heading for the wildest rock show in the west, maybe even in the world. And as we get further into it, I get more and more determined to learn more about these rambunctious rocks.
Flaming Gorge-Coming at this big reservoir from the east, the flaming part is not as obvious, but once you drop down into it and drive across the big dam, you can see the red rocks. This is the Green River that cut down through the layers into the red ones, and created a canyon that is now flooded. Still pretty spectacular from a pure scenery point of view, and as we look back, it is clear there has been some underground excitement here. Instead of the horizontal layers of different colors that we will see in the next three canyons, here the layers are kicked up at an angle, and cut and torn where the edges broke away from their long sleep.
Briefly and so over simplified as to horrify a geologist, there was a huge sea here, and later big lakes. Silt, tiny animals and plants, and later blowing sand formed layers and under the weight of what was added later became rock. As the solid top plates of rock floated island-like on the liquid layers below, they collided. Some times causing a great tipping up, sometimes just raising up a whole huge section thousands of feet as one mass slid under another. These restless edges are an easy exit for volcanoes, and a likely place for earthquakes too, and there will be newer mountains of fresh rock, layers of ash, and evidence of the violence of a sudden upward thrust.
The Colorado Plateau is a huge uplift of the old striped sea/ lakebed. At its edges, you can see theses layers clearly, and anywhere a river starts working on it, these layers get brought out into daylight with astonishing results. Each layer has a name, and somewhere a detailed and jargon filled description of what it contains and what its personal life has been like. All I really care about is why are they all those wild colors?
Bryce Canyon- Not really a canyon, this is actually the eastern side of a wide valley. Water has chewed away the layers in an idiosyncratic way here. On the top, a fairly tough skin, and below that, vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet. The top skin has kept some parts protected, but the rest has “melted” into a 50-60 mile bewildering field of dribble castles, mini mesas, gothic tombs and deep folds. The pillars are called hoodoos, to rhyme with voodoo, because it is too spooky and colorful to be natural. A rancher who settled in the valley below, apparently immune to the spectacle, said” It’s a hell of a place to lose a cow”.
On to Zion, we are dropping down the stairs of the uplift, along the Sevier River valley. On our left, “Pink Cliffs (Bryce is part of this layer), Gray Cliffs, White Cliffs, Vermilion Cliffs and Chocolate Cliffs. Apparently, the most vibrant colors happened in the lake time, as rivers washed minerals in. Iron, oxidizing or under pressure, makes the nearly tomato red, manganese the purple, sulfur-yellow, copper-green. After following the river bottom a ways, we turn west and begin to climb.
Zion is a really truly canyon,, and we are approaching the rim at 6200 feet. The Virgin River that carved it is down at 4,4,00 feet. The 1928 road in from the east drops gradually and then goes through a tunnel with portholes that we can’t stop at anymore and then a series of tight switchbacks. Any vehicle taller than 13’1’’, or over 40’ long can’t make it at all, and many can only go with the road closed one way ($15) so they can go in the middle of the tunnel. Another example of an engineering marvel built at great expense just for us tourists.There are three major layers here in Zion: a thin soft bit of the same orange as Bryce, which sits at the top, in a few places. Next, the major layer ranges from white to red in soft swirls that are not always parallel, nor equal in hardness. Instead of the deposits of salt sea or freshwater lake, sand dunes drifted here once, blown by winds that carried slightly different colored dusts. The upper part, mostly white, has washed into shapes like an upside down cow’s udder sometimes, especially at checkerboard Mesa. In other places it looms like a citadel.
Down at the bottom, the lowest layer is deeper red, harder yet which means the bottom is darker red, and narrows to a slot canyon. Since most of the canyon is one type of rock, the sides are nearly vertical, only at the top do the domes form. Cathedrals, a city of window-less, door-less temples. One of these, with a flat top, is called Angel’s Landing, a heli-pad for Gabriel. There is a hiking trail all the way to the top, which makes me shudder to think about.
The river, a creek really, burbles and splashes innocently at the base of the sheer cliffs, and people take off their shoes to paddle. You can even hike up further, walking in the creek with the right shoes. Rain water that fell up above thousands of years ago seeping thought the porous sandstone, drips out of the rocks and flowers have found a foothold there, yellow columbine, red penstamon.
I imagine what the spring thaw is like in here, the river showing its teeth, red brown with silt, throwing boulders and sticks. A good thunderstorm will make the river do this too, making a deadly trap for hikers. Still, it’s hard to under stand how this pretty stream could make this city of cliffs and temples and white topped towers. Its scale is portentous, and the early mostly Mormon settlers named the peaks: The West Temple, Altar of Sacrifice, Towers of the Virgin, The Four Prophets and the Great White Throne. Maybe the Virgin River had some divine help.
posted by Thistledown24 at 8:50 PM
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