A Land of Strange Standing Stones, Part 2: Kodachrome Basin State Park

There was a time not all that long ago when there was a part of the United States mainland that was still considered terra incognito. It was in 1948 that National Geographic explored this region and called it not a tour, but an expedition, complete with jeeps and supply caches, and explorers who gave new names to features, even though many of them already had been named by the resident ranchers.

Kodachrome Basin State Park (once called Thorley's Pasture) in southern Utah showed up at the end our our 40 mile gravel road journey through what I called a land of strange standing stones (it's also accessible from the north by a paved road out of Bryce Canyon National Park). For the second time in a day we were treated to the strange sight of vertical pillars of stone, but these had an origin quite unique from the spires along  Cottonwood Wash Road. It's an origin so unique that geologists haven't quite decided what it actually is.

The spires, called sedimentary pipes, are composed mostly of a mix of sediment from the lower members of the Carmel Formation that have penetrated into the overlying Entrada Sandstone. There are more than five dozen of them in and around the park, ranging in height from 6 feet (2 m) to 170 feet (52 m). They are composed of a more highly cemented rock, having been exposed as the surrounding sediments were eroded away It has been suggested that they are the result of hot spring activity, and that they might have been pathways for geysers (some have suggested that the park is sort of a Yellowstone in reverse). This is an intriguing and imaginative idea, but what was the source of the heat? There are no magma intrusions in the immediate region, and in other parts on the Colorado Plateau where intrusions do occur, such pipes aren't found.

Another possible explanation is that the pipes are liquefaction features, places where water rushes towards the surface from saturated layers below during the shaking from earthquakes. I like this explanation, since there are some major fault zones just a few miles away. But researchers say there is a time problem. They say that the pipes are very old features: they don't penetrate the overlying Henrieville sandstone, and are therefore probably Jurassic or early Cretaceous in age. The faults in the region didn't become active until less than about 15 million years ago. Maybe.

The most recent hypothesis is that the pipes formed from lenses of groundwater trapped in sabkha deposits, layers of evaporites like salt or gypsum along arid environment shorelines, which formed the Paria member of the Carmel formation. As younger sediments were laid down on top of the older layers, the pressure grew in the groundwater deposit, and water squeezed out, following the path of least resistance, generally upwards. This model is interesting, but has it been seen in other settings? Some of the petroleum geologists that have traveled with us find this to be a  plausible explanation.

But aren't mysteries great? Like the origin of the Grand Canyon, science thrives on unanswered questions. It's a fascinating place to visit and explore.

The sediments in which the pipes occur are mostly members of the Jurassic Entrada formation, which is responsible for some spectacular scenery in other parts of the Colorado Plateau, most notably at Arches National Park and Goblin Valley State Park. The bright orange layers are the Gunsight Butte member, while the high white and red striped cliffs are the Cannonville member, and the light tan layers are the Escalante member. The highest cliff ramparts are composed of Cretaceous Henrieville and Dakota sandstones, last seen at Grosvenor Arch.

For more information...

Get the park brochure here: http://static.stateparks.utah.gov/docs/kbspNewsBrochure.pdf

An excellent resource: Baer, J. and R. Steed. 2010. Geology of Kodachrome Basin State Park, Kane County, Utah. In Sprinkel, D.A. et al (eds.), Geology of Utah's Parks and Monuments, Utah Geological Association Publication 28, 3rd edition. Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Association, 467-482.

A Tale of Two Arches, But Not in Arches

Travelers in the southwest might get the idea that arches can only be seen in Arches National Park in Utah. It's true that Arches National Park has the largest concentration of arches in the world, and the world's longest arch is found there, but arches have formed all over the Colorado Plateau. I saw two notable examples last week, and they can be seen in today's post.

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has a rather spectacular version of one in Grosvenor Arch, about eight miles east of Kodachrome Basin State Park. The cliff is composed of Henrieville Sandstone (Jurassic in age), with a capstone of Dakota Sandstone from the Cretaceous Period.

It used to be called Butler Arch, but an expedition from the National Geographic came through the area in 1949, and they pulled strings to rename it after their boss. The biggest of the two arches is about 152 feet high, and 100 feet wide.

We heard an ungodly screeching all around us while at the arch, and it didn't take long to find the noisemaker: a bunch of cicadas. They look like horrifying beasts of Hades, but are essentially harmless.

Driving west from Grosvenor, we passed a nice viewpoint of Wiggler Wash, where the creek cuts through a fold, exposing the Entrada Sandstone and Henrieville Sandstone. The pink cliffs of the Aquarius Plateau can be seen in the far distance.

This was a tale of two arches, but I actually didn't mean the double arch of Grosvenor. The next morning we were at Bryce Canyon National Park, another place where arches form readily. One of them can be seen from a pullout in the southern part of the park. It's called Natural Bridge, but as the signs and irritated geologists will tell you, bridges span creeks, while arches form by other means. But it's pretty neat in any case.

My posting will be very spotty over the next two weeks. I had so much fun on my one week exploration of Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion that I am headed back out there again, this time with two dozen students. We're making a huge loop through the plateau country, with no wi-fi motels, and rare access of any kind. I might actually have to breath the air, hike around for entertainment, and gaze at stars at night. I'll try to maintain a positive attitude!

Time Beyond Imagining Becomes a "Book" (or: "Where I've Been Hiding These Last Few Weeks)!

A best-seller if there ever was one! In fact, I think the first run will sell out (15 copies in the first printing, so not really a surprise). If you've been following Geotripper for very long, you will maybe have seen that one of my first blog series was called Time Beyond Imagining (link is here), and that it was a series that introduced the history of the Colorado Plateau over the course of around 70 posts. I always felt that all that writing should be rounded up into a single narrative some day, and that day kind of arrived when I decided to lead a trip through the plateau country with some geologists and their families from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. I started on the project 18 months ago and made a lot of progress, but the first trip in 2012 was cancelled, and I so let the project simmer for awhile.

We scheduled the course again this year, and by May we realized we had enough participants to run the trip, which meant I had a strict deadline...which unfortunately coincided with the end of the semester, AND the big move into our new Science Community Center. So I disappeared more or less for the last few weeks furiously writing and rewriting a narrative and field guide for the trip. It felt a lot like finishing my thesis way back when, but back then I was taking care of an infant. This time I had a son who is an expert anthropologist who wrote an extensive section for the book on the cultural history of the region. The book and guide went to the printer this evening, and we leave for Las Vegas on Friday.

The guidebook is imaginatively called "The Geology and Cultural History of the Western Colorado Plateau, with a geological road guide to Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks". It currently includes a section outlining the chronology of geological events and descriptions of the rock units on the Plateau, another on the cultural history of the different people groups in the western part of the plateau, and road guide for a six-day trip looping out of Las Vegas through the three national parks, and a lot of places in-between.

And there are some truly fascinating places in between! Our trip includes a journey to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on the Diamond Creek Road out of Peach Springs on the Hualapai Reservation. It will also include a visit at Antelope Canyon, a surreal labyrinth on the Navajo Reservation near Page, Arizona (picture below).

We will also explore a portion of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by following the forty-plus mile long Cottonwood Wash Road along the Cockscomb Monocline, a truly spectacular drive through some really distorted rocks.

The monument also includes the beautiful Grosvenor Arches in one of the most isolated corners of the country. As recently as 1949, the National Geographic Society called their visit to the region an "expedition" (which probably elicited a laugh from the local ranchers...).

Our trip will include a visit to one of the gems of the Utah State Parks system, Kodachrome Basin State Park. It contains extensive exposures of Entrada Sandstone with dozens of strange clastic pipes that tower over the trails and campground. The trip wraps up with a tour of Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park, though with a twist. We intend to take the road to Lava Point, which gets missed by the vast majority of Zion National Park visitors. When Zion Canyon proper is sizzling hot and dry, there are cool meadows and pine forests among the sandstone cliffs, and a lot of fairly recent lava flows and cinder cones.

In general, I've written the narrative portions at a fairly basic level (I included a "geology basics" at the beginning), and the road guides as to be understood by anyone with a geology class or two under their belt.

I would hope that there would be some interest in the book and road guide, but I know I'll need to do some serious fact-checking and mileage confirmations (the numbers never quite add up right, which has been true for every guide I've written) while on the trip next week. And I also need to find a cheap way to print it, because the 160 page guide ran $30 apiece at Kinkos (I know they call it something else now, but I can't remember what!). I would love any ideas you might have!

Despite the long nights and all, I've been having a lot of fun revisiting one of my favorite corners of the planet, and I'm thrilled to be hitting the road in a couple of days (one week with AAPG, and then two weeks with my students). I'll try to post some pics from the road, and not be quite as invisible as I have been the last few weeks.

I Guess "Fujicolor Basin" Just Didn't Have That Ring To It: Exploring Kodachrome Basin State Park

I'm not a real fan of corporate name sponsorship. I simply can't keep up with the names of Candlestick Park and whatever they're calling the stadium where the Lakers play in Los Angeles. When one hears the name of the little-known state park in Utah, it sounds like another case of corporate sponsorship gone crazy. But as I understand it, the story of the naming of Kodachrome Basin State Park was a bit more nuanced.

It's funny how a name can change the meaning and significance of a place. A hundred years ago, only a few ranchers and local Native Americans had ever even seen Kodachrome, and the ranchers referred to it as Thorny or Thorley's Pasture (I'm operating off dim memory here), and the beautiful valley was quite literally unknown to anyone from outside the region. In the late 1940's an exploration party from the National Geographic Society came through the region (imagine still exploring the United States only half a century ago!), and they were impressed with the scenery. They used their influence to rename nearby Butler Arch for their director (the arch is now called Grosvenor Arch). They gave the basin its name for the vivid color for a new bright film variety from Kodak. The article in National Geographic brought a lot of attention to the region, and tourists started seeking it out.

I must say I don't get corporate thinking sometimes either. Apparently Kodak was not happy with the copyright infringement, so when Utah sought to make a state park out of the basin, they called it Chimney Rock State Park. Kodak finally wised up and realized what a free marketing opportunity  they had, and consented to calling the park Kodachrome Basin. Over the years they have provided some support to the park. The park has outlasted the product; Kodak produced the last roll of Kodachrome film in 2009, and the company is struggling to survive in the digital age.

The park has two main attributes: the colorful Jurassic sedimentary rocks, and the strange columnar towers called sedimentary pipes. The sediments are mostly members of the Entrada formation, which is responsible for some spectacular scenery in other parts of the Colorado Plateau, most notably at Arches National Park and Goblin Valley State Park. The bright orange layers are the Gunsight Butte member, while the high white and red striped cliffs are the Cannonville member, and the light tan layers are the Escalante member. The highest cliff ramparts are composed of Cretaceous Henrieville and Dakota sandstones.

Lower parts of the basin expose Jurassic Carmel formation, most notably the Winsor member. The odd pipes occur mostly in the Winsor member, and the overlying Gunsight member of the Entrada.

The sedimentary pipes are one of those interesting mysteries that crop up in geology every so often. They are composed mostly of a slurry mix of sediment from the lower members of the Carmel, and penetrate the Entrada. There are around four dozen of them in and around the park, and they range in height from 6 feet (2 m) to 170 feet (52 m). They are composed of more highly cemented rock, so as the sediments are eroded away from around them, they end up standing out. It has been suggested that they are the result of hot spring activity, and that they might have been pathways for geysers (some have suggested that the park is sort of a Yellowstone in reverse). This is an intriguing and imaginative idea, but what was the source of the heat? There are no magma intrusions in the immediate region, and in other parts on the Colorado Plateau where intrusions do occur, such pipes aren't found (that I know of).

Another possible explanation is that the pipes are liquefaction features, places where water rushes towards the surface from saturated layers below during the shaking from earthquakes. I've liked this explanation in the past, since there are a few major fault zones just a few miles away. But researchers say there is a time problem. The latest studies suggest that the pipes are very old features: they don't penetrate the overlying Henrieville sandstone, and are therefore probably Jurassic or early Cretaceous in age. The faults in the region didn't become active until less than about 15 million years ago. I still like this explanation though...everyone knows that one's favorite hypothesis has to be the right one...I think.

The most recent suggestion is that the pipes formed from lenses of groundwater trapped in sabkha deposits, layers of evaporites like salt or gypsum along arid environment shorelines, which formed the Paria member of the Carmel formation. As younger sediments were laid down on top of the older layers, the pressure grew in the groundwater deposit, and water squeezed out, following the path of least resistance, generally upwards. This model has the virtue of being supported by most of the evidence...but I repeat the end of the last paragraph.

The park is a pleasant place to explore. In addition to the colors and unusual pipes close at hand, there are beautiful vistas to be had. On our reconnaisance trip a few weeks back we hiked out to Shakespeare Arch in a remote corner of the park. The short trail included panoramas of the White Cliffs to the southwest, the high cliffs of Navajo sandstone found around Carmel Junction and Kanab.

To the west, the pink strip on the horizon is the Claron formation, the Pink Cliffs of Bryce Canyon National Park.

We could also look up the slope to Kodachrome Basin itself. All in all a very colorful landscape.

The state of Utah has worked hard to make Kodachrome a destination for campers. The small 28 unit campground has flush toilets and showers. They sell firewood. And get this: when we arrived at our campsite, it looked like someone had raked our campsite. Feng shui in the wilderness! There is a small general store, a few rental cabins, and a new visitor center. If you have a large group, you can reserve one of two group campsites: the older Oasis site has been a favorite of ours for many years. The Arches site is newer, but is in an isolated corner of the park, with fewer facilities. I've had many commenters say that Kodachrome is their favorite campground on the Colorado Plateau. I put it near the top of my list, too.

We'll be stopping at Kodachrome during the AAPG tour that I am leading in July. If you want to join us, get the information here.

Get the park brochure here: http://static.stateparks.utah.gov/docs/kbspNewsBrochure.pdf

An excellent resource: Baer, J. and R. Steed. 2010. Geology of Kodachrome Basin State Park, Kane County, Utah. In Sprinkel, D.A. et al (eds.), Geology of Utah's Parks and Monuments, Utah Geological Association Publication 28, 3rd edition. Salt Lake City: Utah Geological Association, 467-482.

Shakespeare Arch is one more attraction in an already attractive place. It's at the end of pleasant half mile hike.