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The week before Memorial Day weekend in 1996, I flew to Las Vegas to pay a visit to a trio of National Parks that I've been meaning to visit for a long time: Zion, the Grand Canyon, and Bryce Canyon.
I picked up my rental Ford Contour and headed northeast on the I-15. When you're headed for the relative solitude of national parks, the last thing you really want to do is spend a lot of time in Las Vegas. In between my visits to Zion and the Grand Canyon, I managed to fit in a visit to Bryce Canyon National Park.
Bryce is an outstandingly beautiful and colorful park. Small and narrow by National Park standards, its main road is only 18 miles long. It is set at an elevation ranging from approximately 6,200 to 9,500 feet. Although Bryce has 50 miles or so of trails, the park seems to have been geared to encourage driving tours--along the main road are pull outs with vista points are parking lots. There are, however, opportunities to take short walks to see the famous hoodoos up close. A "hoodoo" is a pillar of rock, usually tall and unusually shaped, left by erosion.
(Below):
The view from Sunrise Point.
The air in southern Utah is reputed to be so clean that, on a clear day, one can see for over 100 miles and that, at certain vantage points within Bryce Canyon, the views are restricted only by the curvature of the earth.
(Below):
Bryce Ampitheater, as seen from Sunset Point. On the northeastern
horizon is the highest plateau in north America, the Aquarius
Plateau. Although many of the Bryce Canyon's sites can be seen
from viewing areas near parking lots, trails provide an even more
intimate look at these amazing formations.
Bryce Canyon was named for Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon Scottish immigrant who in 1875 settled in the valley near what is now the park. Mr. Bryce one described the canyon as a "helluva place to lose a cow!"
(Right): The formations take on a
totally different perspective when viewed from near
the canyon floor. The shadows have a dramatic effect on the
appearance and character of the park. In general, the flat
shadowless sunshine of high noon is the worst time of the day to
view, and take photographs in the park.
(Left): 2 hikers are dwarfed by
massive
Wall Street, located along the 1.4-mile Navajo Loop Trail. The
walls are so narrow at points that only a small piece of the sky
is visible overhead. Two 750-year old Douglas firs survive in a
narrow chasm at the end of the walls.
The geology that led to the formation of the towering hoodoos and other strange formations within the park is quite interesting and allows one to appreciate the park at many different levels. Bryce had its beginnings when sand, gravel and sedimentary deposits that filled ancient lakes within the low-lying Colorado Plateau compressed and hardened into sedimentary rock. In fact, the iron and manganese oxides from these deposits are responsible for the area's brilliant hues. The Colorado Plateau gradually rose over 5,000 feet starting from about 16 million years ago. At this point, the Paria River and its streams became the primary sculpting agent, etching gullies whose walls got steeper and steeper as the river and its tributary streams got deeper into the plateau. Water left in the rocks were subjected to constant "freeze-thaw" cycles (that is, water froze at night, causing it to expand, breaking rocks, allowing still more water to seep in, freeze and break more rocks, and so on). Since the rocks were of varying hardness, erosion took place at varying rates. In fact, this natural sculpting process continues to the present day and will continue until the plateau is flattened at some point in the future.
The Paiute Indians believe that the formations are former "Legend People" who were bad and were turned into rocks: some standing in rows, other sitting down or holding on to others.
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Last Updated: May 23, 1998
