This post marks a milestone: my 201st post on Substack. The 200th post was one of my bimonthly posts for paid subscribers. You didn’t miss anything; you’ll see its photo, reduced in size and quality, in a coupla weeks or so.
What paid subscribers get that you don’t, is full-resolution, full-quality images that you can print (or have printed) on a large-format printer and hang on your wall. Or you can use them for “wallpaper” on your computer screen. Or you can send them to one of the many places that makes beach towels, coffee mugs, jigsaw puzzles, etc. out of a photo.
I’ve already made several posts about the Colorado National Monument - but it just keeps on giving. The visit in this post is about a day at Ute Canyon.
On the way there, I stopped at the “Coke ovens” and took yet another shot:
The name “coke ovens” is a curious one. Apparently these things reminded someone of the kilns used to prepare coke at steel mills back East. Ute Canyon was just ahead.
Ute Creek flows down from a high point with radio & TV towers on it, named Black Ridge, across the top of the mesa. At the location of this photo, it is flowing across the concrete-hard Kayenta Formation rock…
… and a few yards ahead, will have eroded through it. Where the Kayenta Formation has been eroded through, a canyon results because Wingate sandstone is much softer than Kayenta stone, and erodes quickly without its protective cap over it. And yes, that is snow on the lower right; not white rock. It wasn’t quite winter yet, but winter was coming.
So at the very point where the Kayenta layer is eroded through, there is a steep dropoff which has a waterfall during the rare times of year there is water flowing through Ute Creek. Most of the time, this is a dry falls. Below this (of course) is Ute Canyon. Here is the top of Ute Canyon with the dry falls near the center.
If you look carefully, you can see the towers of Grand Junction’s radio and TV stations on a ridge in the upper right. That is Black Ridge.
The next layer above the Kayenta is the Entrada Formation. It erodes into interesting shapes sometimes.
Not very far down-canyon, there is a slab of Wingate sandstone that has sluffed off of the canyon wall. This happened because the formation under the Wingate, the Chinle Formation, is even softer than the Wingate, and erodes even more easily. As it eroded away from under the Wingate rock, there was no longer anything holding the latter up, and it broke away from the cliff.
There is an interpretive sign at this viewpoint that explains how many hundreds of years ago this slab is believed to have separated, and how many more hundreds or thousands of years it is expected to take to erode the rest of the way away. I don’t remember how many it said.
I went home out the east entrance of the Monument, where I was treated to a spectacular view of Devil’s Kitchen. Here’s what it looked like from above, as I came down from on top of the mesa:
The multi-colored deposits behind and above the Devil’s Kitchen are the mudstones of the Morrison Formation, which is the one with all of the dinosaur bones in it. In the distance can be seen part of the Grand Mesa, the largest flat-topped mountain in the world.
Yes, there is a lot to see in Grand Junction. For the next several years, it would be my Home Base from which I explored western Colorado, eastern Utah and a little bit of Wyoming.
Congratulations on #201 as it has been a wonderful journey, one I want to keep on going. There are so many places you have pictured that make me want to just go there and hang out for a long time. They seem so inviting. Perhaps one day I'll be able to.
I finally went to CNM last May. It is such a beautiful park!!! Thank you for sharing your lovely photos and words.