Can you tell I was having some fun here with the interplay of late-afternoon light and deep shadow? The red hoodoo at right, and white, yellow and pink sediments elsewhere, all formed in a lake about 60 million years ago, laid down in water and now carved up by it. This 3-mile-wide, west-facing natural amphitheater of steeply pitched, deeply eroded, Eocene Claron (a.k.a. Wasatch) formation badlands composes Cedar Breaks National Monument, a marvelous little wonder much-less visited than the sometimes overwhelmed national parks of Zion and Bryce Canyon nearby. Cedar Breaks effectively is a miniature, higher-elevation, western outpost of Bryce: the same geologic formations and erosion processes of flash floods and freeze-thaw, just starting from a 10,000-foot plateau of forests and meadows.
2 SSE Brian Head UT (8 Aug 17) Looking SSW
37.6565, -112.8344Light and Shadow: Cedar Breaks
Can you tell I was having some fun here with the interplay of late-afternoon light and deep shadow? The red hoodoo at right, and white, yellow and pink sediments elsewhere, all formed in a lake about 60 million years ago, laid down in water and now carved up by it. This 3-mile-wide, west-facing natural amphitheater of steeply pitched, deeply eroded, Eocene Claron (a.k.a. Wasatch) formation badlands composes Cedar Breaks National Monument, a marvelous little wonder much-less visited than the sometimes overwhelmed national parks of Zion and Bryce Canyon nearby. Cedar Breaks effectively is a miniature, higher-elevation, western outpost of Bryce: the same geologic formations and erosion processes of flash floods and freeze-thaw, just starting from a 10,000-foot plateau of forests and meadows.
2 SSE Brian Head UT (8 Aug 17) Looking SSW
37.6565, -112.8344