EPOD - a service of USRA
The Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) highlights the diverse processes and phenomena which shape our planet and our lives. EPOD will collect and archive photos, imagery, graphics, and artwork with short explanatory
captions and links exemplifying features within the Earth system. The
community is invited to contribute digital imagery, short captions and
relevant links.
Below the Wasatch Range’s Storm Mountain
November 24, 2022
RayB_bigcott832c_19oct22 (002)
RayB_bigcott837c_19oct22 (003)
Photographer: Ray Boren
Summary Author: Ray Boren
Geologic forces spanning millions of years — from estuarine
deposits and metamorphic pressures to mountain building and
never-ending erosion — are exposed in beautiful Big Cottonwood
Canyon, a cleft in the Wasatch Range southeast of Salt Lake City,
Utah. Accessible examples of these phenomena are found alongside a
graceful curve in the canyon highway below ominously named Storm
Mountain. Here, tinted in shades of oxidized red and darker black, are
layered Big Cottonwood Formation rocks, as illustrated in the first
photo, taken on October 19, 2022.
The eye-catching outcrops at Storm Mountain include quartzite,
a dense, quartz-rich sandstone, and argillite, a clay-rich
mudstone. The layers were originally laid down over 720 million years
ago, during the Neoproterozoic. They were subsequently uplifted,
folded and steeply tilted beginning about 75 million years ago,
creating this rugged landscape. The quartzites were originally
deposited in rivers and tidal channels, while the argillite comes from
calmer deposits — both evidence of an ancient, seaside estuary that
preceded the mountains themselves.
A second photograph, taken the same day from below an overhang in the
rocks and above the curving highway, partly shows Storm Mountain’s
steep, craggy face, to the left. The peak rises some 2,100 feet (700
meters) above the canyon, topping out at 9,528 feet (2,904 meters)
above sea level. The perspective also hints at the season under
way: The leaves of stream-side mountain maples, cottonwoods, oaks and
other deciduous trees and bushes have turned autumnal shades of red and
yellow, for their production of chlorophyll has ceased with the
arrival of fall’s cooler temperatures and shorter days.
Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah Coordinates: 40.6373 -111.6330
Related EPODs
Below the Wasatch Range’s Storm Mountain Beautiful Alpine Lakes
in the Sierra Nevada Range Quechee Gorge in East Central Vermont
Limestone Stratification near Modica, Sicily Strawberry Moon
and Etna Exhaust Kodachrome Basin State Park, Utah
More...
Geography Links
* Atlapedia Online
* CountryReports
* GPS Visualizer
* Holt Rinehart Winston World Atlas
* Mapping Our World
* Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
* Types of Land
* World Mapper
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Earth Science Picture of the Day is a service of the Universities
Space Research Association.
https://epod.usra.edu
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