The "Fingers" of Zion: Another Quiet Corner of a Crowded National Park

My last few posts have been about finding some quiet corners in one of our busier national parks, the one at Zion Canyon. Sometimes one finds solitude by following popular trails at less popular hours, or by following where the trams go (but not where they stop). One can also explore a number of roads in isolated corners, including the Lava Point Overlook, and today's destination in the Kolob Canyons section of the park. I didn't make it there last month, but paid a visit a couple of years ago.

The Kolob Canyons are a northwest outlier of the park, accessed from Interstate 15 between the towns of St. George and Cedar City. There is a small visitor center just off the freeway, and a five mile long road that winds over the ridge to a series of overlooks and trailheads.

The cliffs are composed of the same beautiful Navajo Sandstone that forms the cliffs of Zion Canyon, but here they form a 2,000 foot high escarpment with a series of incised canyons, sometimes called the Kolob Fingers. The escarpment is there because of the presence of a major fault that forms the boundary between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range Province, the Hurricane Fault.

The Kolob Canyons are considerably higher in elevation than the main canyon at Zion, and are proportionally greener as a result. The creeks that carved the canyons were smaller, but several form beautiful alcoves and slot canyons. Trails lead out in several directions, most notably at Taylor and LaVerkin Creeks.

A few of the canyons haven't cut down very far at all, leaving behind hanging valleys, and under the right conditions, high waterfalls. There was just the smallest trickle the day I was there.

There are actually two fault systems in the immediate vicinity. The more recent Hurricane Fault was caused by tensional stress as western North America moved northwest away from the rest of the continent. But during the late Cretaceous, the region was being compressed by subduction zone activity from the west. The Taylor Creek Thrust Fault formed at that time. It's exposed near the road in several places.

One of my future wishes is to explore some of the backcountry destinations of Zion National Park; there are gigantic arches and strange and wonderful slot canyons like the Subway to explore. One of the great adventures is to walk the entire length of the Narrows of the Virgin River. I haven't yet had that privilege...

The Kolob Canyons are of a character completely different than the main park at Zion Canyon, both in scenery, and in solitude. If you ever are traveling I-15 towards Cedar City, don't miss it!

Our journey this past June was almost over, but a few wonders still awaited us, out there in the Basin and Range and over Tioga Pass. Watch for the next post!

Volcanoes, Lava Flows, Fault Zones: What Park is This? You Might Be Surprised...

...unless you've been following my latest blog entries, anyway. The beautiful exposures of the crossbedding in the Navajo Sandstone (above) provides another clue; we are in Zion National Park, but in a section that is ignored by probably 95% of the park's visitors. As far as I'm concerned, it can stay that way in perpetuity, because it is one of the more beautiful spots on the Colorado Plateau, and I'm not too keen on seeing it crowded and busy. But I'll share it anyway, because anyone who takes the trouble to get out to Zion and wants to escape the crowds for awhile deserves to know of this place.

It's called the Kolob Terrace Road, and it takes one from the lowest elevations of the park to the highest, and from the end of the road at Lava Point Overlook, you get to look down into Zion Canyon. It is also the most geologically interesting part of the park, providing a look at the entire stratigraphy of the park, recent volcanic activity, and potentially active fault zones. For the biologist, it provides a range of biomes, from the desert to near alpine conditions. On a hot summer day, the high country is cool and green. There is even a small campground if you want to linger. Trailheads along the road provide access to "The Subway" and Kolob Arch, perhaps the second largest natural arch in the world.

The road starts in the village of Virgin and almost immediately does something unusual and spectacular. It climbs right up the middle of an inverted stream, a place where a lava flow filled a river canyon only to be attacked by erosion. The flow was resistant so new canyons formed on both sides, leaving the former bottom of a river as a ridge. It's a little tricky to see, but note how the land falls away on both sides of the road in the picture above. Some of the basalt crops out on the right. The rocks are the siltstone and shales of the Triassic Moenkopi Formation, one of the oldest layers exposed in Zion National Park

There are grassy meadows in Cave Valley, and intriguing "beehives" of Navajo Sandstone. The rounded dome-like forms aren't easy to see from the floor of Zion Canyon. At the end of Cave Valley we pass something unexpected: a cinder cone, Spendlove Knoll (below). It erupted about 220,000 years ago.

Why the volcanism? We are near the edge of the Colorado Plateau, at the faulted boundary with the Basin and Range Province of western Utah and Nevada. The stretching of the crust and subsequent fracturing of the rocks has provided an avenue for the molten magma to reach the surface.

The scenery is on a grand scale. I'm pretty sure that some of the scenes from the 1979 film "Electric Horseman" with Redford and Fonda were filmed here (a movie I loved, and apparently Willie Nelson's acting debut).

The road continues up the hill, passing between two volcanoes, Spendlove Knoll and Firepit Knoll. Firepit is about 290,000 years old. In the distance one can see the cliffs of the Kolob Canyons, another isolated and rarely visited corner of Zion National Park. The road passes back and forth through the boundary of the park; you always know you are in the park because the road turns red (from the use of red cinders in the asphalt).

The rock outcrops of the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone are striking. The sloping layers are the crossbeds I mentioned above. They form on the steep leeward faces of sand dunes (the slip face), and the distribution of the Navajo and related formations show that this sand dune field once extended from Wyoming to Arizona, and from Colorado to California. There is no place quite like it today anywhere in the world.

Where did all the sand come from? Much of it probably came from the remnants of the Ancestral Rockies, or the incipient highlands related to subduction off to the west, but recent research suggests that some of the sand was derived from rivers with headwaters in the vast Appalachian-Caledonian mountain system in what is today the southeastern United States.

The road makes a long and very steep switchback (10 mph!) to climb another escarpment, and suddenly we are in a thick forest of ponderosa, firs, and aspen trees. Even in summer, the meadows were alive with colorful wildflowers, despite the parched conditions on the valley floors below.

About three miles before Kolob Reservoir, a gravel road goes right towards Lava Point. I love the understated entrance sign for Zion National Park. There should be more like it. It was less than two miles to the campground and Lava Point Overlook at an elevation of 7,980 feet. At this point, the plateau is coated with basaltic lava erupted just over a million years ago, before the carving of Zion Canyon.

And we arrived at the overlook. The view, like so many others on the plateau, is expansive, taking in landmarks as distant as the Paunsaugunt Plateau of Bryce Canyon, the Kaibab Plateau and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and the endless Basin and Range. The valley floor of Zion Canyon is hidden deep in the folds below viewpoint.

The lush greenery of the forests contrasts strongly with the barren slopes of Navajo Sandstone. It's a verdant world largely hidden from the majority of park visitors who never get out of the deep valley. It is a sight that also helps to explain an odd phenomena that often occurs in the middle of the night when one is camped in Zion Canyon in summer. It is almost like clockwork; at about 2 AM or so, a cool wind kicks up in what had been a warm and sultry night. It is a drainage wind, a mass of cool dense air with a source on the high plateau that is flowing down the canyon.

We finished at Lava Point and faced a hot three hour drive back to Las Vegas, where our travelers would be catching flights home. We still had another day of driving back through the Basin and Range, and our trip would be over. Look for one more post about Zion, though. Even though we didn't see it on this trip, there is another spectacular corner of the park to seek out. 

Want a Wilderness Experience in Zion Canyon? Go Where the Trams Go.

Not where they stop, mind you, but where the trams go. Zion National Park underwent a huge change in 1997 when the park service closed the upper canyon of Zion to private vehicles and instituted a system of free tramways. The change brought an end to my favorite activity of night hiking in the upper canyon, and it at first seemed inconvenient when dealing with large student groups. But it didn't take me long to deeply appreciate the changes that came about in the upper canyon as a result.

For one, the animals became far more easy to see. On summer days, every available parking spot and pullout along the road would be filled with people, and the animal life would simply hide out. Without the constant commotion, animals felt more comfortable being out, and the tram rides now offer chances to see rabbits, deer, coyotes, foxes, and turkeys, while the tram drivers report seeing other more rare animals like mountain lions and badgers.

My recent trip to Zion afforded me some extra time to explore some new places, and I took the opportunity. The day started with a normal tourist target, the Gateway to the Narrows and the Riverside Walk. It is pretty much the most popular walk in the park, and is well worth seeing, even if it is crowded.

Zion Canyon is relatively wide in the lower reaches because the layers beneath the Navajo Sandstone are easily eroded, undercutting the high cliffs and causing rockfalls. It's where the Virgin River flows entirely in Navajo that the canyon gets incredibly narrow and very deep, with vertical walls reaching 2,000 feet above the river. The Riverside Trail is a paved ADA accessible trail that follows the narrowing canyon, ending after a mile at the entrance to the Narrows, where no trails are possible, but people can explore miles upstream as long as they don't mind getting wet numerous times.

Lots of water enters Zion Canyon from cliffside springs, and the hanging gardens can be very colorful. The Columbines are some of my favorite flowers. Don't worry about the feeling that you are being watched. It's either a Mountain Lion, or one of the Rock Squirrels. I don't which one is more menacing...

The trail is just gorgeous. But if the crowds bother you, there is a neat little secret for finding seclusion in the midst of the very busy national park. Like I said, walk where the trams go. Not where they stop, but where they travel between stops. You can walk along the road, or in many places a foot path follows close to the river. A tram will pass every 10 or 15 minutes, but that will be it for the motorized noise. I had two more hours to play with so I decided to walk as far down the canyon as I could.

I first passed the empty parking lot at the Temple of Sinawava, the end of the paved highway. I remember so many harried efforts to find parking for four vans on trips in years past, with hundreds of people hanging about, unwilling to give up their precious parking spots. Today it was quiet, because the moment the tram pulls up, people get out and immediately disappear up the trail.

Walking down the road, I was immediately struck by how unfamiliar the canyon looked. Walking is slow, giving one a chance to look at cliffs from new angles and new perspectives. I never saw this sort of thing from a car window.

The cliffs seem to change character every few hundred yards, with some cliffs sheer and unbroken, and others broken up by jointing. The air was fresh and the canyon bottom was still cool as the morning sun had not yet reached the floor of the gorge.

The emerald green cottonwood trees provided a strong contrast to the reds and browns of the canyon walls, and all of it was reflected on the waters of the Virgin River. Even the sound of flowing cascades felt unfamiliar and strange, but it was delightful as well.

Zion has been compared to Yosemite, only it's red and without the glacial origin. Maybe. I like to see each park on its own terms. Zion is a beautiful and stunning canyon.

I noticed a park tram stopped in an unlabeled pullout. It turned out to be a ranger tour, and I found out about an attraction in the canyon that is not on any of the park maps. It's called Menu Falls, and it is a delightful small waterfall just a few yards from the road. There is even a trail and platform for viewing, but to get there you either have to walk like I did or take the ranger tour. The name derives from the fact that early menus at the park lodge had a picture of the falls on the cover.

I happened upon a park ranger with a spotting scope looking for California Condors. The birds were once very much on the verge of extinction, down to just 22 individuals in the 1980s, but with a captive breeding program, they are making a comeback. Today there are more than 400, with more than 200 returned to the wild. The numbers may be close to their pre-European contact population. They are truly a relict Pleistocene creature, though, and would have been far more numerous during the Ice Ages, when the larger megafauna like giant bison and wooly mammoths would have provided much more food.

I'm sorry to tease you with the picture though. It's actually a Turkey Vulture. The ranger hadn't seen any this season yet. The upper canyon is also a good place to watch for Peregrine Falcons.

Around the next bend, the Great White Throne came into view. One of the tallest cliffs in Zion, it rises 2,300 feet above the valley floor. No trails reach the summit.

Zion is not known for Ancestral Pueblan ruins, but they are there, in a few spots. I had always seen one briefly through the car and tram windows over the years, but this walk was the first chance I ever had to photograph it. It appears to be a single granary, but was on a pretty steep cliff, so I didn't investigate further.

I reached the Weeping Rock tram stop, and time had run out. I'm pretty sure that next time I get the chance, I'll be walking down canyon from there. Who knows what else there is to discover?

Seeing Actual Daylight at Emerald Pools in Zion National Park

There is a somewhat odd relationship between me and Zion National Park. I love the place, I've been there probably 20 times in the last two decades, but I haven't seen a whole lot of the park. The problem is that I'm usually there with a large group of students, and our possibilities for exploration are therefore somewhat limited. Our visits tend to include a stop at Checkerboard Mesa on the east side of the park, a possible hike to the Zion Arch Overlook, camp, a look at the visitor center first thing in the morning followed by 4-5 hours of free time where students ride the trams to the upper canyon and hike either to the Gateway to the Virgin Narrows, or the much tougher hike to the top of Angels Landing. I opted for Observation Point one year (and was that a tough hike). But then we are on the road to Grand Canyon, and that's it.

I've seen more of the park in the last two years, as I've led a different group with a slightly more relaxed schedule, which has allowed us to explore different parts of the park. We've seen Lava Point Road, and the Kolob Canyons, for instance. But one place I haven't seen in a quarter century is a common tourist destination just a short walk up one of the side canyons: Emerald Pools. The funny thing is, I've been there a couple of times, but I haven't exactly seen it.

What happened was this. Between my first visits (aside from childhood vacations) in 1984 until 1997, we used to use the evenings after dinner for night-time explorations of the upper canyon. We took night hikes! The trail to Emerald Pools was ideal, because it was paved and could be followed in almost total darkness. A night hike is not really a night hike if you have use flashlights, after all. Mind you, in saying this, I did almost walk face first into a porcupine that was climbing in some shrubs overhanging the trail.

Those night hikes are among my most treasured memories. The stars, framed by the high canyon walls, would sparkle. Some years we watched the full moon rise over the cliffs. During a few memorable years we experienced lightning storms, the booms of thunder reverberating across the canyon walls. At night, the Emerald Pools echoed with the surprisingly loud call of frogs, and in the coolness we could smell the moisture in the air, a treat in the desert environment. And one year, a slab of rock three feet across fell from the top of the alcove, landing just a few feet from some of our students.

What changed in 1997 was the introduction of the trams in upper Zion Canyon, and the elimination of private cars. For many reasons, this was a great innovation (some reasons to be mentioned in the next post). But from the beginning the trams stopped running at 10 PM, making night hikes impossible without a very long walk down the canyon to the campground. So I haven't been to Emerald Pools since then, and I have never seen them in daylight! I couldn't really tell you what they look like. That changed finally during our trip a few weeks ago. I had a few spare hours in the late evening, so I took the tram to the trailhead and started up towards the pools.

You may notice that the features are called "pools" and not lakes. There are three sets of pools, the Upper, Middle, and Lower. The Lower Pools are reached within an easy half mile stroll, the Middle Pools are maybe a fifth of a mile farther with some climbing and steps, and the Upper Pool is up a tough sandy and rocky trail something like a half mile higher. The lower pools lie at the base of a huge alcove and aren't much to look at, but the small waterfalls coming over the lip of the alcove are a treat. The trail winds around the back of the alcove behind the two trickles of water (a wonderful sight when the full moon shines into the alcove, by the way).

I listened to the frogs for a few moments and headed up to the Middle Pools just behind the edge of the cliff at the top of the alcove (check out the guy in red for scale in the picture below; and yes, he is past the "danger" signs where he is not supposed to be).

The little pools nicely reflected the sun shining off the cliffs across the canyon. The Emerald Pools lie in a cool "micro-climate" where the sun rarely penetrates. Note the conifer trees in these pictures; they normally grow a thousand feet higher in elevation.

I could see that the sun was getting low on the western horizon (not directly of course, but from the shadows across the canyon). I knew if I wanted to see the Upper Pool I was going to have to hoof it pretty fast. I was only there once before in the dark, and wanted to see it in what passes for daylight. As I climbed higher, the view across the canyon became more and more interesting.

After a few moments I was huffing and puffing (my walking exercises have been mostly on level ground; I can go for miles but those upward steps tested my aerobic capacity). It didn't take too long to reach the Upper Pool, which was the closest thing to a "lake" along the trail. It's actually big enough to swim in, although they ask you not to.

The water is coming from the Navajo Sandstone, one of the most unique and scenic formations on the Colorado Plateau. The sandstone is porous, and groundwater migrates downwards through thousands of feet of rock. When the water encounters an impermeable layer, perhaps a lens of limestone, it moves sideways. If the impermeable rock is exposed in a canyon wall, the water will flow as springs. That's where all the water in this side canyon is coming from. You can see the springs in the cliff above the pool in the picture below.

It was getting darker, and the time was edging uncomfortably close to the departure of the last tram down the canyon. I beat a hasty retreat down the trail, stopping a moment to catch another shot of the waterfall and alcove.

The last rays of the sun were leaving the highest cliffs as I emerged into the main canyon of the Virgin River. Evidence from lava flows downstream suggest that this entire incredible canyon has been carved within the last million years. Such an extraordinary place!

One can look at this relatively small river and wonder how it could have happened so fast, but of course most of the work is done during flash floods, and mass wasting has done much of the work of widening the canyon. I crossed the bridge and headed down the canyon for a late dinner and short swim.

It's been a lot of years, but I finally know how the Emerald Pools of Zion National Park look in daylight. And so do you, but I highly recommend seeing for yourself!

This is One Really Big Underground Cavern...The Miao Room in Gebihe Cave

Maybe you've noticed, but I'm not commonly known to promote commercial enterprises here at Geotripper. Spam comments get immediately squashed, and book reviews and commercial links are very rare. But sometimes, something very spectacular crosses my virtual desk. National Geographic asked if I wanted to link to one of their stories, and I usually pass, but this was pretty incredible.

From National Geographic (July 2014 issue), Empire of Rock, © Carsten Peter/National Geographic

The story is in part about the laser imaging of the Miao Room in Gebihe Cave in China's Guilin Province. This landscape has fascinated me for a long time, even before my geology education. I have a vague memory that it might have been part of one of Disneyland's 360 degree round movies decades ago, and I have perked up whenever a movie uses the region as a backdrop. The new National Geographic issue (July 2014) has some incredible pictures of the explorations underground in the region, including the imaging of the second largest underground opening in the world, equivalent to 22 football fields. Some of the stalagmites on the floor of the cave are 150 feet high! Please check out this link for an absolutely stunning "fly-through" of the cave (scroll slowly, and be amazed!): http://www.nationalgeographic.com/china-caves/supercaves/

I toured Carlsbad Caverns once, and realized that day that there are caves, and there are caverns. Exploring the caves of the Sierra Nevada is an incredible experience, but those caves are close and intimate. A place like Carlsbad, with the ceiling of the cave 300 feet above, so far away in the darkness that it mostly can't be seen, is an otherworldly experience. I look at the laser imaging of the Maio room and can only be in awe; the ceiling of Maio is more than twice as high as Carlsbad!

From National Geographic (July 2014 issue), Empire of Rock, © National Geographic.

CREDIT: JUAN VELASCO, MARTIN GAMACHE, AND LAUREN JAMES, NGM STAFF. ART: STEFAN FICHTEL, IXTRACT GMBH. SCAN DATA PREPARATION: JOE BEECHING, 3D LASER MAPPING

SOURCES: ANDY EAVIS, TIM ALLEN, RICHARD WALTERS, PETER SMART, DANIELA PANI, JANE ALLEN, AND MARK RICHARDSON, CHINA CAVES PROJECT; ZHANG HAI, INSTITUTE OF KARST GEOLOGY, GUILIN, CHINA

So, there, I have promoted a National Geographic article, for the first time. I don't mind doing so, because National Geographic is no doubt one of the reasons I became a geologist. I still have vivid childhood memories of reading the article about the 1964 Alaska Earthquake, and early articles about Mt. Everest and Leakey's discoveries in Olduvai Gorge. They make their copyright requirements just onerous enough that it has to be a really spectacular article, and this met my specifications. One last requirement is that I have to show the cover of the latest issue, so here it is:

The Superlative Land of Strange Standing Stones (Part III): Bryce Canyon National Park

One of the mysteries of the origin of the Grand Canyon involves the fact that early rivers flowed in the opposite direction of the Colorado River that exists today. Some of those early rivers ended in lakes that covered hundreds or thousands of square miles, and the deposits from those lakes form some of the most vividly colored rocks on the Colorado Plateau. And it's not just the color.. Erosion has sculpted the freshwater limestone of the Claron Formation into one of the craziest landscapes in North America.

Welcome to Bryce Canyon National Park, part III of our tour through the Land of Strange Standing Stones. In the first entry, we were checking out strange erosional forms left after groundwater moved through crushed rocks on the Cockscomb Monocline along Cottonwood Wash Road. In the second, we explored the strange sedimentary pipes of Kodachrome Basin State Park. We've now moved a few miles west onto the Paunsaugunt Plateau, one of the faulted mesas in the High Plateaus province of the Colorado Plateau. Headward erosion along the edge of the plateau has produced the bizarre landscape of Bryce "Canyon" (there is no actual canyon; the park is instead a series of erosional amphitheaters).
Natural joints and fractures in the limestone are exploited by water and ice, producing the pillars of stone called hoodoos. The rate of headward erosion is rapid, amounting to feet per century. Many places in the world erode this way, but few if any display the sheer number of fins, spires and hoodoos. There are tens of thousands of them in the park.

Sometimes people on a strict schedule visit the park, go to a single viewpoint and say "okay, hoodoos and Bryce Canyon checked off the life list", and rush on to the next park. One can miss some pretty incredible things by doing so. For one, the tour buses rarely go past Inspiration or Bryce Points. The views are spectacular at the main tourist parking lots, but the main park road goes fourteen miles farther, past nearly a dozen other viewpoints.

View north from Rainbow Point

Rainbow Point, for instance, is the highest viewpoint in the park (at 9155 feet, it is a thousand feet higher than the more popular viewpoints). From it and adjacent Yovimpa Point, one has an incredible view extending from the Wasatch Front to the north, Navajo Mountain to the east, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to the south (part of the view from Rainbow is seen above, and Yovimpa Point is below).

View southeast from Yovimpa Point, towards Navajo Mountain and the north rim of Grand Canyon

Likewise, Natural Bridge is an incredible 85 foot arch that is missed by many park visitors who don't venture beyond the busier parking lots. Every time I mention the feature I feel compelled to point out that natural bridges usually have watercourses of some kind. This one is best described as an arch.

And then there is the fact that every viewpoint at Bryce Canyon is on the rim, which means that every tourist who visits only the viewpoints is an outsider looking in. There is nothing quite like walking among the towering rocks and seeing them from below. I didn't walk below the rim on this particular trip, but I encourage you to check out my post from a previous trip, when I walked the Navajo Loop through Wall Street Canyon. It includes some of what I think are my best ever pictures from Bryce Canyon.

There are also the animals. I caught a nice Say's Phoebe at Natural Bridge (above), and we saw a small herd of Pronghorn Antelope in the woods and meadows back of the rim.

There is a colony of Utah Prairie Dogs next to the park road, and I've had no luck catching a picture of any of them for years.

We didn't have any such adventures on our latest trip, but I must say there is nothing quite like experiencing the summer monsoons of Bryce Canyon. In July and August, moisture-laden air moves north out of the Gulf of Mexico, and sweeps up against the plateau margins, producing spectacular thunderstorms and flashfloods. One of our family memories involved a terrifying lightning storm and cloudburst that produced a lake in our tent, and a six foot wide river below our campsite just a few hundred feet from the rim.

Bryce Canyon is worth a second look if you've ever rushed through in the past, and if you've never seen it in person, make sure to make the time to really explore it! Pictures just don't do it justice.