I stood speechless admiring its sheer natural beauty! They were visually stimulating, narrow and tapering structures densely populated, extraordinarily shaped, resembling cathedrals that stood up 200 ft, as far as my eyes could see them and beyond ........ Welcome to the Bryce
Canyon National Park in the colorful state of Utah, North America -
Home for the Hoodoos!!Hoodoos are pillars of
rocks that are left by erosion.
erosion in simple terms means wearing away of a substance. So what causes erosion of Hoodoos? Primarily, it is wind, rain, and
freeze thaw cycles!
Bryce Canyon , is actually not a canyon(a valley that is walled by cliffs) but a series of amphitheatres that are excavated by erosion of the plateau. This erosion has exposed colorful and unique geological structures which are orange, red and white colors of rocks that provide spectacular views when sun is plentiful called Hoodoos.
Millions of years in the making at Bryce...A large system of shallow lakes covered the area's basin floors and
during many years of its existence, wind has laid down large quantities
of lakebed sediments in this system Climatic changes have caused the lakes to expand and shrink through time and during this process it has deposited sediments with different thickness and composition that are stacked above one another. These loose sediments over a long period of time became hard to form solid rocks resulting in what is known as the Claron formation .The Claron formation is made up of four different types of rocks .They are: 1. Limestone - A sedimentary rock composed mostly of calcium
carbonate (CaCO3)
2. Siltstone- A rock composed of hardened silt, a fine sedimentary
material.
3. Dolomite - Sedimentary rock consisting mostly of the mineral
dolomite, calcium magnesium carbonate (CaMgCO3)
4. Mudstone - Mud that has hardened into rockEach rock type erodes at different rate and has different resistance to
erosion
Interesting weathering force at Bryce .......
The primary weathering force is
Frost Wedging. It is caused by the repeated freeze-thaw cycle of water in extreme climates.
Freeze-thaw action- It simply means the Hardening -Softening action and occurs mainly when temperatures frequently fluctuate above and below freezing point
Most rocks have small cracks in them and are called
joints
Rainwater seeps into these
joints and the water inside the joints freeze during night
As water freezes into ice, it expands. Obviously, starts exerting pressure on the walls of the rocks.
At a point when the rocks cannot resist this pressure, they give up the resistance and they shatter
Bryce Canyon region experiences short duration but high intensity rain. As new water is added ,more ice is created at night, tearing the joints apart further
Repeated freeze and thaws even split the rocks (Note: this region experiences over
150- 200 freeze/thaw cycles each year)
Humans can preserve the
Hoodoos to a very large extent by staying on the trail built by the park foundation. Remember, just walking up to the base of a hoodoo can shorten its life span by weakening its foundation. Erosion continues every minute, every day and every year and you cannot stop the nature from doing it! Forces of erosion, which work very slowly, may wash away the whole amphitheater one day. But certainly this won't happen for millions of years. So, there's plenty of time to travel to this unique geological wonder and enjoy its natural splendor.
It is hard to describe the beauty of the hoodoos in words and is better represented in pictures though pictures also cannot really capture the natural and exquisite beauty of the hoodoo formations.
How to get there...
Bryce Canyon is about 270 miles from the Salt Lake City, UT and approximately 5 hours drive on the road.
More abstracts about the Nature's war field