The first time I laid eyes on it, I was gobsmacked. “What in the world is THAT???” I said to myself.
It was at the end of this post: https://kenbarber.substack.com/p/a-big-road-trip-c44
And it was this shot:
I thought it looked like the Space Shuttle, sitting on its launchpad.
I didn’t have time to drive up to it and look. I was running late for getting back to base camp at Gunnison to rendezvous with my sweetheart, who was taking a bus to Gunnison, to celebrate my 60th birthday together.
Two and a half years had passed. Now, I was living a few miles away from it. ‘Twas time to go look at it up close and personal.
Geologists say that it’s either an old lava plug or a laccolith left over from the volcanic intrusion that formed the West Elk mountains. As you can see, it is dwarfed by its mother mountains.
There are roads and houses right next to it. Here’s another shot, a little closer in:
You can see the houses at the bottom of the photo. Here’s the view from those houses:
I stopped at the trail head, but all of that rubble at the base of it is Mancos shale — which was mud eighty million years ago, and is still incredibly sticky mud and clay today when it gets wet. It was wet. My boots weighed about 20 pounds each within about five steps of trying to walk through it. So I decided to forego the hike.
This feature is east of the town of Crawford, Colorado. The way home went west through the town of Delta. North of Delta is a gigantic pile of Mancos Shale that is interesting in itself. The locals call it the Adobe Badlands. I have some shots of that place to share in the future, but on this day I stopped and took a shot of the West Elks from the badlands:
Except for having to clean 20 pounds of mud off of my boots when I got home, it was a pretty good day.
Wow! This is fascinating and that mud!! No one dare get near without carrying an extra 40lbs! Beautiful images of a landmark I never knew about. Thank you Ken.
Beautiful! Are you familiar with Weavers Needle in the Superstition Mountains? Same grandeur, no mud...