Geological Destination - Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

 Just outside of the town of Escalante in Utah is the Escalante State Park, also known as the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. The park sits on the shores of the Wide Hollow Reservoir, which is a great little reservoir to swim in or boat and fish. But the geological destination for this park is the Nature Trail, also known as the Petrified Forest Trail. Along the trail, large petrified trees are easily visible. Although not as densely packed with trees as Petrified Forest National Park, this is still a fantastic view of the logs in an unexpected location. 

Many of the logs are easily visible from the trail. The park itself preserves about 5.5 million tons of petrified wood across the 1,400 acres. These logs had been petrified, which is a type of fossilization specifically referring to trees. The wood molecules had been slowly replaced over time by molecules of minerals, in this case silica, also known as quartz. Over time all of the wood molecules would have been replaced with the silica creating a tree shaped rock that preserves many of the intricate details from the tree itself. These details include the tree rings and bark. 

The state park sits right in the middle of several National Parks including Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to the south and Capitol Reef National Park to the north. 

The logs sit within the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation from the Late Jurassic (~130-140 million years old).  The wood is thought to have eroded out of the overlying conglomeratic part of the Brushy Basin and tumbled down the slope to the lower mudstone, where it sits now. The mudstone then erodes much more easily than the harder, and heavier, quartz logs, so the logs remain behind as the other material is washed away/eroded over time.

The petrified wood layer within the Brushy Basin Member is one of the youngest layers of the Morrison Formation. This stratigraphic section is from the Utah Geological Association Publication of the Escalante State Park Geologic Trail Guide. 

During the hike you get a pretty good overview of the campground and the reservoir as well as the various layers of the Brushy Basin from the caprock of the area, the conglomeratic unit, to the underlying softer mudstone. 

The trees were deposited within a braided stream system, much like the above braided stream system from Banff National Park in Canada. These streams are often slow moving stream systems with periodic large amounts of water, so they are able to move a large array of sediment sizes from sand to gravels, and even large pebbles and boulders. These sediments are often more varied and larger than are frequently found in more meandering streams like the Mississippi River. The trees in this park would have likely grown up on the banks of the river, when they were uprooted and rolled along the river until they came to rest in the gravel and sand channel.

View of one of the logs highlighting the rings. The trees in the park are not of the best preservation to be able to identify them very well. However, some of the trees had been identified as conifers, however the level of preservation is not fine enough to be able to identify which species of conifer.

Geological Destination - Monument Valley Tribal Park

Back in November of 2019, while driving back from Arizona to the wife to do one of her Iron Man races, we drove through one of the Navajo Nation Tribal Parks, Monument Valley Tribal Park. As a runner, my wife wanted to get a shot of her running up the Forest Gump hill, while as a geologist, I just like looking at the pretty rocks.

Slightly downhill from us but essentially the same view in Forest Gump

As can be seen in the image, this is easily an icon geological location. The rock units within Monument Valley are essentially the same as the rock units within the nearby Canyon de Chelly National Monument, however the landscape is a bit different. Instead of the rocks being isolated within a canyon system like at the park, they are now elevated above the surrounding landscape. This is likely an effect of the Colorado Plateau, where this region had been slightly elevated compared to the areas further down south. A breakdown of the rock units within each of the mesas seen in the background is as follows:

Monument Valley geology. Image courtesy of the UGS.

The Shinarump, is part of the Chinle Formation, a Late Triassic (~225 million years old) yellow-grey river-deposited sandstone and conglomerate. 

Below the Shinarump is the Moenkopi formation. The Moenkopi Formation is an Early to Middle Triassic formation (~245 million years old) that is is predominantly made up of the reddish-brown shale. The Moenkopi was deposited within an intertidal environment, with alternating sea levels producing thinly bedded layers of mud (shale) and sand (sandstone). 

Below the Shinarump is the De Chelly Sandstone. The De Chelly Sandstone is a Permian age (~200 million years old) aeolian sandstone. Aeolian means that it is formed by blowing wind, in particular sand dunes, or a desert environment. When sand dunes are frozen in time, such as when they become rocks, and eroded you can see features termed cross-bedding. These rock preserve an ancient sand sea desert, known as an erg, that used to be located here. Sandstones are also frequently extremely hard rocks that are resistant to weathering. When they weather, they fracture into regular joints. Those are the vertical line patterns of the rocks as seen in the image above. It is also what produces the shear-walled rock mesas as we know them today. 

Below the De Chelly Sandstone, is the more erodible Organ Rock Shale. You can tell it erodes much more easily by the smooth slope that forms from the edge of the overlying sandstone. If the sandstone wasn't there to protect the shale, the shale would have eroded long ago. The Organ Rock Shale is another Permian formation (~270 million years old), that mainly comprised of mudstone (shale) and siltstones. They were deposited by streams within a tidal flat environment. The Organ Rock Shale then underlies much of the surrounding landscape which is then covered over with much, much younger (Quaternary) sediment (known as alluvium) transported in by winds and water from these and other surrounding rock formation.

Geological Destination - Ship Rock

Nearby to Four Corners Monument, and actually used during the original survey of the monument, is the monumental geological feature of Ship Rock. It is located in northwestern New Mexico, near the town of Ship Rock on the Navajo Nation. It is also known as Tsé Bit'a'í, or "the winged rock" in the native Navajo language.

View of Ship Rock from the south

Ship Rock is the volcanic remnant, or volcanic neck, of a prehistoric volcano that erupted ~30 million years ago. Ship Rock intruded within the much older Mancos Shale, a Cretaceous age (~90 million years old) formation made up of mostly claystone and siltstone with minimal amounts of sandstone and limestone that formed on the bottom of the Interior Cretaceous Seaway that once dominated the central portion of North America.

Geological map of Ship Rock, NM. Image courtesy of the NGMDB.

Part of the Navajo Volcanic Field, Ship Rock formed as what is known as a diatreme, a volcanic vent or pipe that was forced through flat-lying sedimentary rocks producing an expanded vent through explosive energy. The main portion of Ship Rock is composed of volcanic breccia, made up of a type of potassium-rich volcanic rock called "minette", which is thought to be formed from melting of the mantle. Ship Rock itself is ~1,600 feet wide at its widest and ~1,600 feet tall. When the volcano intruded into the Mancos Shale, it is thought that the current visible features were solidified ~2,500 to 3,300 feet below the surface of the Earth. However, the extreme weakness of the Mancos Shale has allowed extensive erosion to occur, carrying away the shale while leaving behind the much harder volcanic rock. 

View of Ship Rock from the south and the southern dike.

One of the more notable features of Ship Rock are the radiating features that emanate from the pinnacle itself. These were formed as volcanic features known as dikes. Dikes are vertical intrusions of magma into a surrounding bedrock. The vertical intrusion then hardens, leaving behind sheets of lava rock. Radiating outward from Ship Rock are six different dikes. These dikes can be seen on the geologic map above as red lines. However, due to the size of the southern dike and the distance to Ship Rock, I was only able to get a picture of the main southern dike.

View of the southern Ship Rock dike facing towards the south, away from Ship Rock.

View of the southern dike, facing towards the north, at Ship Rock

Closer up view of the southern dike.

It should be noted that Ship Rock is considered sacred to the Navajo, and while viewing the rock is allowed, climbing and hiking on the rock are prohibited.

A bit more of a distant view of Ship Rock. The two points on the right side of the photo are remnants of two of the smaller dikes that radiate out towards the northeast from Ship Rock.

On a recent trip to Canyon de Chelly National Monument, in the gift shop there was some additional information about Ship Rock and its Native origin story.

The story reads:

"Shiprock" 

(Naayee, Tse'bi taahi') 

Shiprock was once a Monster in our Navajo culture. Rock with wings (Naayee, tse'bi taahi') it was one of the most feared monsters of 10 different monsters in our Navajo Lure. If you look at it, a big piece of rock over 1000 feet was how tall the monster was. The Monster Shiprock would pick up people and drop them below into the jagged rocks and eat them. The Dine People feared him and the people wondered how these Monsters came to be. 

As the story goes, during this terrible time, the people (men and women) separated from each other causing conflict over who was going to be the leader. From there, they all went their separate ways. The men had problems without the help from the women and the women became promiscuous which resulted in deformed babies. They were ashamed of it, so they hid their babies. The deformed babies became Monsters. 

Changing Woman came to the rescue of the Dine. She too had babies (twins), one born for water and the other born for the sun. The twins asked their mother who their father was, finally she told them. And they began their plan to visit their father Sun, who helped them by forming them into humans. 

The Sun tested them to see if they were his real kids. Luckily, they passed all the tests given. As the end approached, their father asked why they came. The twins told him that there are many Monsters killing the Dine and they had come for weapons to kill the Monsters. 

The father Sun was worried and gave each twin a weapon and they came back down on a rainbow. The twins killed all the Monsters including the one Monster which is known today as Shiprock.

Drawing of the Monster which became Shiprock.

References
https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/mapview/?center=-108.755,36.663&zoom=12
https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/tour/landmarks/shiprock/home.html

https://www.nps.gov/articles/diatremes-and-maars.htm

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/navajo-volcanic-field

Geological Destination - Four Corners Monument

Being located at the junction of four states, Four Corners Monument might just as well be considered a political park. However, geology is everywhere and therefore this is a perfect example of a geological park as well. The Four Corners Monument is a Navajo Tribal Park that designates the boundaries between the states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also designates the boundaries between the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation. We visited the park on my birthday back in March of 2019. 

Me, laying across all four states at the monument. 

It has been said, by many people, that this point does not actually represent the point of intersection of the four states. These people are wrong. As noted by NOAA:

"... the Four Corners monument was established at the point he [surveyor Chandler Robbins] determined, to the very best of his ability and using the available technology, to be the prescribed location of 109 degrees 03 minutes West longitude and 37 degrees North latitude."

This precise location, however may be off by ~1,800 feet to the west of the monument. However, since this point was surveyed as the junction of the four states, and approved by the governments of the four states as well as the federal government, it IS the location of the junction, regardless of what the original intention of the surveyor may, or may not, have been.

It should also be noted that acclaimed geological landmark, nearby Ship Rock, was used as one of the marker locations for the designation of the Four Corners Monument. My next post will be on Ship Rock.

A closer look at the geodetic survey marker, designating the actual Four Corners point.

The Four Corners Monument sits within the Colorado Plateau. An area that is being forced upwards by the subducted Farallon Plate. 

Location of the Colorado Plateau. Image courtesy of Woodward, 1973.

Starting ~100 million years ago, along the west coast of North America was a subduction zone. This is where one plate goes beneath another plate. In this instance the Farallon Plate subducted, or went beneath, the North American Plate.

Graphic of the Farallon Subduction. Image courtesy of the NPS.

Over time the majority of the Farallon Plate was completely subducted, including the mid-ocean ridge (aka spreading center), leaving behind a new type of plate boundary along the coast of California. Instead of a subduction zone, there now was left a transform plate boundary, where one plate slides passed another one. This plate boundary is better known as the San Andreas Fault. Remnants of the Farallon Subduction Zone still exist along the coasts of northern California, Oregon, and Washington. 

Over the past ~10 million years, the subducted Farallon Plate was still a very hot plate, and therefore wanted to rise up underneath the North American Plate. Because of this, the Farallon Plate started to push upwards on North America, creating a region of the continent that is rising vertically upwards compared to the surrounding regions. This is the Colorado Plateau.

The geological features of the Colorado Plateau surrounding the Four Corners Monument. Image courtesy of Woodward, 1973.

The Colorado Plateau is made up of many of the world's most beautiful landscapes because of these geological forces playing around in the region. Looking specifically at the Four Corners region, anyone who has been to the Four Corners Monument will also notice that this area is a relatively flat, mountainless plain. This region is known as the Four Corners Platform. The platform is a relatively flat region that sits as an intermediary between adjacent basins and uplifts. In an area surrounded by mountains and canyons (and several anticlines (A-shaped bends in the rocks)) this region just happens to be in the middle of it all forming a flat surface. 

Geological Map of the Four Corners Monument. Image courtesy of NGMDB.

Looking at the rock units that cover the Four Corners Monument, they are represented on the map above by the symbols Jmw and Jmb, These are both members of the Upper Jurassic Age (~585 million years old) Morrison Formation. The Brushy Basin Member (Jmb), which covers the actual monument, is an interbedded green, purple, and grey mudstone and siltstone with grey and tan sandstone and conglomeratic sandstones. Known for its dinosaur fossils, the Brushy Basin Member was deposited from prehistoric rivers (fluvial) and lakes (lacustrine). The underlying Westwater Canyon Member (Jmw), is a yellowish-grey sandstone containing conglomeratic lenses and dark-reddish-brown siltstone. The Westwater Canyon Member is also a fluvial (river) deposited unit.

References

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.544.8012&rep=rep1&type=pdf

https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/INFO/fourcorners.shtml

https://bluffutah.org/four-corners-monument

https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/mapview/?center=-108.996,36.967&zoom=10

https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_4550.htm

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0037073889900705

https://sed.utah.edu/Morrison.htm

Geological Destination - Dead Horse Point State Park

 Just outside of Moab, UT, lies a State Park with fantastic overlooks and great geology. We stopped at Dead Horse Point State Park on our way to Canyonlands National Park back in March of 2019. The two parks are pretty close to each other and we had heard good things about the state park. And we were not disappointed.

The name of Dead Horse Point comes from a legend where cowboys would fence off wild mustang horses along the overlook, taking what horses they wanted and leaving the horses they didn't penned up to die of thirst. But despite the grizzly imagery, this is a beautiful location.

Looking off towards the southeast from the overlook is the Colorado River far below. Between us and the river lies 100 million years of geological history. From top (youngest) to bottom (oldest) the rock units go like this:

Entrada Formation: Jurassic (150 million years old) - This is a sandstone formed from a coastal dune environment. These are what the arches at Arches National Park are found in.

Navajo Sandstone: Jurassic (175 million years old) - Wind deposited, prehistoric "petrified" sand dunes from an ancient erg (sand sea), colored a light tan or white color. The units also preserve phenomenal cross bedding features from the sand dunes. These rocks form the majority of the rock formations in Zion National Park.

Kayenta Formation: Late Triassic (180 million years old) - A series of sandstones, shales, and limestones from a meandering river environment that frequently preserves dinosaur tracks. This formation is very well observed in the nearby Canyonlands National Park.

Wingate Sandstone: Triassic (200 million years old) - Like the Navajo, another wind deposited preserved series of sand dunes, however usually with more of a red tint to the rocks (rust). 

Chinle Formation: Triassic (210 million years old) - A stream deposited series of mudstone, sandstone, and conglomerates. Well known for containing uranium deposits, petrified wood, and fossils. You can see some of the ancient uranium mines in nearby Capitol Reef National Park.

Moenkopi Formation: Early Triassic (230 million years old) - A tidal flat deposited series of brown to red mudstones. The rocks will often feature ripple marks and raindrop imprints. You can see this formation especially well along the western entrance to Capitol Reef National Park.

Cutler Formation: Permian (250 million years old) - Comprised of sandstone and conglomerate, this formation was deposited along a coastal-marine beach with off-shore sands and non-marine alluvial floodplain deposits intermixed. The most notable feature of the Cutler is the White Rim Sandstone.

Honaker Trail Formation: Pennsylvanian to Permian (286-320) - Down at the level of the river lies this shallow sea deposit comprised of dark grey limestones with fossils. 

Off in the distance to the east of the Point are some Solar Evaporation Ponds. These are rather striking in the sea of reds and browns that I'm glad they had an interpretive sign to help understand what you are looking at. 

Description of the salt deposits being mined.

This entire area is part of the Colorado Plateau and is the reason that we have the Colorado River formed within the canyons as you can see here. Over 10 million years ago the Colorado River was flowing along a gently sloped floodplain, being allowed to meander as it needed to. Then the area was forced upwards. This occurred when the Farallon Plate, a large plate that was subducted below North America off the western coast of the the US, began to push upwards on the region. As the region was forced upward, the rivers that were formally allowed to meander naturally, started to erode downwards into the underlying bedrock. This downward erosion locked the rivers in place, creating a feature known as an entrenched meander. Besides just here, you can see this feature all over the Colorado Plateau including at the Grand Canyon National Park, Natural Bridges National Monument, and Goosenecks State Park.

Geological Destination - The Bingham Canyon Mine

Identified as the largest open pit mine in the world, the Bingham Canyon Mine, also known as the Kennecott Copper Mine, is a local attraction here in Salt Lake City. The mine sits within the Oquirrh Mountains, on the opposite side from where I live. I had the frequent hopes of grabbing a good photo of the mine taking off from the Salt Lake airport and that time finally arrived when flying down to Las Vegas a couple of years ago. 

View of the Bingham Canyon Mine facing west

In the photo above you can see the mine nestled within the Oquirrh Mountains. The mountains in the background are the Stansbury Mountains with the Tooele Valley (where I live) located in between. 

View of the Oquirrh Mountains facing the western side of the mountains

Above is a view of the Oquirrh Mountains from the western side of the mountains (facing east). The Bingham Canyon Mine is located on the other side of the mountains towards the right (southern) edge of the picture. 

Another shot of the pit a little further along in the flight path.

Per the Utah Geological Survey, the Bingham Canyon Mine:

"...  is one of the largest and most efficient mines in the world. It has produced more copper than any other district in the U.S., accounting for over 16% of total U.S. copper production. In addition to copper, the mine produces gold, molybdenum, and silver. KUC’s combined annual value of these metals peaked in 2011 at $2.9 billion."

Currently the Bingham Copper Mine is the 2nd most active copper producing mine in the US and one of the top gold producers in the US as well. 

Geology

The rocks within the Oquirrh Mountains were deposited a long time ago during the Paleozoic (250 to 540 million years ago). Much of these rocks were deposited in marine environments as Utah represented the edge of the North American continent. Eventually the land started to be raised up and dried off and then around 100 million years ago the Farallon Plate started to subduct beneath the North American Plate.

Diagram of the Farallon Plate subduction zone along the western United States. Image courtesy of the NPS. 

The pressure of the Farallon Plate pushing on the North American Plate did two things. First, it compressed the North American Plate, creating a "wrinkle" in the surface producing mountains along the western part of the US. Second, as the Farallon Plate was subducting, it then started to melt. That melted rock eventually rose up and created a line of volcanoes. Around 30 to 40 million years ago, that line of volcanoes was located within Utah. Magma was slowly injected into the Oquirrh Mountains, predominantly into the 300 to 350 million years old rock formation known as the Oquirrh Group. These rocks, laid down in the Carboniferous (i.e. the Pennsylvanian and the Mississippian), are composed mostly of quartzites and limestone beds. This magma body slowly cooled to form what is known as the Bingham Stock, an igneous body identified as a monzonite porphyry. In addition to the magma body itself, is that the hot magma produces a lot of hydrothermal fluids within proximity of the magma body. These hydrothermal fluids move the heavy metals (such as gold, copper, silver, etc.) from within the magma and redeposit them within the surrounding landscape. 

Model for the magma-hydrothermal mineral deposits. From Groves and Santosh, 2015.

Cross Section of the Bingham Canyon Mine from Kennecott, 1991. Image courtesy of the Society of Economic Geologists. 

Stratigraphic column of the Bingham Pit Mine from Kennecott, 1991. Image courtesy of the Society of Economic Geologists.

So what you are left with is an isolated region that has a high concentration of metallic ore deposits. Many of the more prolific ore deposits across the globe have formed in a similar way (hydrothermal fluids surrounding a magma body) and therefore understanding how the Bingham Canyon mine formed helps us to understand where other ore deposits originated from.  

Geological Destination - Red Cliffs Recreation Area Utah

 

One the great things about Utah is that even when not going to the National Parks, there's literally countless little geological oases that one can find themselves in. One of my favorites is a little campsite/park called the Red Cliffs Recreation Area just outside of St. George, Utah. The park straddles the line between two geological formations, the Kayenta Formation and the Navajo Sandstone, with the boundary between the two running right through the middle of the campground.

Starting within the campground, the Silver Reef Trail almost immediately takes you to one of the paleontological highpoints of the area, the Dinosaur Track Site! These dinosaur tracks are located in the uppermost reaches of the Kayenta Formation. The Kayenta Formation is an Early Jurassic (~190 million years old) mix of reddish-brown sandstones, siltstones, and conglomerates that interbed with each other. These were deposited within a meandering river environment and one of the notable features within the deposits are … dinosaur tracks. 

The lighting on these at the time wasn't fantastic but you can still make them out. I also tried to adjust the contrast and lighting on the picture to emphasize them. Dinosaur tracks are a type of trace fossil. Trace fossils, which I go over HERE, are evidences of behavior of animals without the actual animals being preserved; things like worm burrows or fossilized poop or footprints. Trace fossils are also named like regular fossils but instead of being a genus and species, they are named with an ichnogenus and an ichnospecies (ichno meaning trace). The dinosaur tracks found within this park are identified as Grallator and Eubrontes. It should be noted that the makers of any trace fossils is often up to conjecture. Very rarely do scientists find the animal associated with the trace but often it can be narrowed down by the size and build of the animals around at the time compared to the trace morphology. 

A great place to learn about dinosaur tracks is the nearby St. George Dinosaur Discovery site, which has tons of footprints with many of them preserved in place (in situ) and the building is literally built right on top of them. Of the tracks found at Red Cliffs, Grallator is a 4- to 8-inch-long, three-toed print, that probably belonged to a slender, meat-eating dinosaur such as the 10-foot-long Megapnosaurus. Eubrontes (seen in the center of the picture above) is a larger 13- to 18-inch-long, three-toed print, which is thought to be made by a large meat-eating dinosaur such as the crested Dilophosaurus (think the original Jurassic Park but much, much bigger). 

Above the Kayenta Formation is the Navajo Sandstone creating a amphitheater around the campground. Here is a view over the campgrounds with the Navajo Sandstone in the background. The Kayenta Formation is forming the rocks on the very edge of the left side of the image.

The Navajo Sandstone is a rather famous sandstone, being found in many of the national parks in southern Utah creating fantastic geological outcrops, such as those seen here. The Navajo Sandstone is a very thick (~1000 feet) eolian sandstone from an ancient sand sea known as an erg that formed during the Early Jurassic (just slightly younger then the Kayenta Formation at ~180 million years old). This sand sea was larger than the present day Sahara Desert. 

The Navajo is very well known because of the desert features that are so well preserved in it. The most notable is the cross bedding, which is seen in the pictures above and below. Cross-bedding is a depositional feature of sand that forms during the creation of sand dunes. When wind blows sand, the sand bounces along the ground rolling up the side of a dune (the windward side of the dune). Eventually, it reaches the crest of the dune, and falls over the crest of the dune (the slipface or leeward side of the dune). On the slipface, the grains of sand all form into little parallel rows that curve down at the base. These curved lines are what we see when we are looking at cross beds. 

A cross-bedding diagram. Image courtesy of Teach the Earth.

The different sets of curved lines represent different generations of sand dunes that passed through this area. As winds change, frequently with different seasons, the sand dune migrate in different directions along with the wind. These changing sand dune migrations cause the erosion of previous sand dunes, however the bases of some of the sand dunes may be left behind, which is what is then preserved into rock. Then future sand dunes travel over the old dunes, creating new cross beds. 

These sand grains are cemented with other minerals, often calcite or silica (quartz), creating the rock known as sandstone. Because of the nature of these rocks, the cement will often not fill all, or even most, or the pore spaces, creating a very porous rock. This is one of the reasons that sandstone is a popular water or oil/gas repository known as an aquifer. 

The Navajo Sandstone is also known for these pockmark features along it's surface. This is a type of weathering known as honeycomb weathering. Honeycomb weather is produced as water wicks into the porous rock and dissolves the calcite cement holding the grains together. Eventually the dissolution of the cement allows for the grains to be washed away with future rain events. 

One of the cool features of southern Utah is the ability to hike these gorgeous rock units that have remained mostly intact due to the low amounts of precipitation that the area gets. This low amount of precipitation also produces such gorgeous features such as these slot canyons which are a small hike towards the north of the campgrounds called the Red Cliffs hiking trail. The hike continues up the canyon, however it gets a bit harder from here as evidenced by the hand and footholds carved into the rock on the right and the rope used to get up to the top of this little waterfall.

But as the hike continues it is a gorgeous way to soak in the geology. And generally I have noticed that the crowds are fairly small, especially due to the small size of the campgrounds. Sandstone has a tendency to fracture along naturally occurring joints in the rocks. The joints are then further widened by streams flowing through the area creating the slot canyons as they are seen today.

A little bit of a ways to the south of the Red Cliffs Recreation Area is the Quail Creek Reservoir, which is a great place to spend the afternoon. They allow boating and swimming, but what I want to focus on is this great anticline across the water. We are looking towards the northeast but the anticline cuts right through the middle of the reservoir basically towards where I am standing. These are Triassic age rocks of the Moenkopi Formation and the Chinle Formation, which are older than the rocks found just to the north in Red Cliff Recreation Area and would be located below those rocks. 

Geological Destination - The Tallest Mountains in the World

 One of the definite geological destinations in my "Must Do" list was visiting the "Tallest Mountain in the World". Now, that's not Mount Everest, which is the highest point above sea level. When measuring the tallest mountain in the world, you need to measure it from the base of the mountain. So here are some of the "tallest" stats:

Highest point above sea level: Mount Everest (at 29,029 feet [8,848 meters]).

Point furthest from the center of the Earth: Mount Chimborazo (at 20,564 feet [6,268 meters]). The Earth is not a perfectly round sphere. The equator bulges a bit so the Earth is a bit larger around the middle than if you measured it around the poles. For that reason Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador ends up being 6,800 feet further from the center of the Earth than Mount Everest.

Tallest Mountain on Earth: Mauna Kea (at 13,803 feet [4,207 meters]). Now, since the bases of both Mount Everest and Mount Chimborazo are on crustal rocks, it causes the heights of both of those mountains to be approximately their elevation above sea level. However, since Mauna Kea is based on the ocean floor, it ends up being a much, MUCH, taller mountain, with the entire height of the mountain measuring at more than 33,500 feet [10,210 meters]. 

Mauna Kea as viewed from the Saddle Road.

Biggest Mountain on Earth: Mauna Loa (elevation at 13,448 feet [4,100 meters]). Second to Mauna Kea as the tallest mountain in the world, Mauna Loa is the most massive mountain on Earth. Overall, it takes up 9,700 cubic miles of mountain. This is much more than Mount Everest or any other crustal mountains since those are often mixed together as parts of mountain ranges, where Mauna Loa is essentially one massive mountain, with the other four volcanos merging together to form the Big Island of Hawaii. .

Mauna Loa as viewed from the Saddle Road

Viewing the two tallest mountains on Earth: As you can see by the pictures above, there is a road, Saddle Road, that traverses the center of the Big Island where you go across the saddle between the two tallest mountains in the world and can get a photo of both of them from a pretty good vantage point. You can also drive most of the way up Mauna Kea and hike the rest of the way, however I wasn't able to do that on this trip. Perhaps next time. And, as a side note, you can see here that even in late March, there is snow on Hawaii.