Bryce Canyon
Open up and use your sense of wonder and imagination.
As we drive into the park we gradually gain 1200 feet of elevation. As we climb the vegetation changes - first the ponderosa pine to spruce fir and aspen. This is the top of the Grand Staircase at 6,000 to 9,120’ above sea level.
Mother Nature has had a really good time here. Sculpted by erosion, Bryce is filled with hoodoos. Hoodoos are colorful, strangely-formed rocks. Originally laters of sediments were laid down over millions of years because of a succession of inland seas, lakes, rivers streams and even dune filled desert. Limy sediments were carried from surrounding hills to settle in a basin. Over time, layers of limy mud, silt, and sand piled up, each layer buried by the next. Then they hardened and colored with iron oxides giving the red, yellow, and brown tints to the limestone. Manganese oxides lend a lavender/blue hues. Then surface layers eroded, exposing a new layer, and then the next, the next, etc.
The cause? Water would speed down the eastern edge of the plateau, carving away the layers. Seems ironic that water should play such an important part in a semi arid region. Currently, an average of one foot of rim every 65 years washes away. The rock between the gullies is more slowly eroded. Tributaries of the Paria River, ancient rivers carved the tops and exposed the edges of these massive blocks.
But water is not the only suspect. Almost every weathering process known to geology is partly responsible: fragmentation from freezing and thawing, wind and rain erosion, exfoliation (peeling of slabs or sheets of rock), oxidation of minerals in the rocks, hydration ( a form of chemical weathering), carbonation (another chemical weathering), organic weathering (roots and rodents), and solution weathering (the dissolving of softer rocks).
Bryce is not a canyon but a series of 14 amphitheaters made of horseshoe shaped areas cut into the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This Plateau, along with six others in southwestern Utah, were created 15 million years ago when pressure from within the earth caused rock beds to rise several thousand feet above sea level, crack alone fault lines, and separate.
As we drive into the park we gradually gain 1200 feet of elevation. As we climb the vegetation changes - first the ponderosa pine to spruce fir and aspen. This is the top of the Grand Staircase at 6,000 to 9,120’ above sea level.
Mother Nature has had a really good time here. Sculpted by erosion, Bryce is filled with hoodoos. Hoodoos are colorful, strangely-formed rocks. Originally laters of sediments were laid down over millions of years because of a succession of inland seas, lakes, rivers streams and even dune filled desert. Limy sediments were carried from surrounding hills to settle in a basin. Over time, layers of limy mud, silt, and sand piled up, each layer buried by the next. Then they hardened and colored with iron oxides giving the red, yellow, and brown tints to the limestone. Manganese oxides lend a lavender/blue hues. Then surface layers eroded, exposing a new layer, and then the next, the next, etc.
The cause? Water would speed down the eastern edge of the plateau, carving away the layers. Seems ironic that water should play such an important part in a semi arid region. Currently, an average of one foot of rim every 65 years washes away. The rock between the gullies is more slowly eroded. Tributaries of the Paria River, ancient rivers carved the tops and exposed the edges of these massive blocks.
But water is not the only suspect. Almost every weathering process known to geology is partly responsible: fragmentation from freezing and thawing, wind and rain erosion, exfoliation (peeling of slabs or sheets of rock), oxidation of minerals in the rocks, hydration ( a form of chemical weathering), carbonation (another chemical weathering), organic weathering (roots and rodents), and solution weathering (the dissolving of softer rocks).
Bryce is not a canyon but a series of 14 amphitheaters made of horseshoe shaped areas cut into the edge of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. This Plateau, along with six others in southwestern Utah, were created 15 million years ago when pressure from within the earth caused rock beds to rise several thousand feet above sea level, crack alone fault lines, and separate.