Southern Utah
Last weekend I went down to Southern Utah. My friends Darren, Scott and Brian had taken a group of students down, and I was invited to join. It had been several years since we had all photographed together so I just had to go down.
I met up with them all at Goblin Valley, where we camped the two nights I was down there. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Goblin Valley:
The unusual stone shapes in Goblin Valley result from the weathering of Entrada Sandstone. They consist of debris eroded from former highlands and redeposited on a former tidal flat of alternating layers of sandstone, siltstone and shale. The rocks show evidence of being near an ancient sea with 1) the ebb and flow of tides, 2) tidal channels that directed currents back to the sea and 3) coastal sand dunes.
Joint or fracture patterns within the Entrada’s sandstone beds created initial zones of weakness. The unweathered joints intersected to form sharp edges and corners with greater surface-area-to-volume ratios than the faces. As a result, the edges weathered more quickly, producing the spherical-shaped ‘goblins’.
That place was like none other I’ve ever seen in person. I hardly knew how to react to the place, and found it extremely difficult to find a way to photograph this foreign place, but I did manage to make a few photographs:
Saturday morning we got up early and made some more photographs of the valley. I thought it would be a little easier to capture the place after I’d had some time to think and ponder over the unique geology, but it was still a big challenge.
After we’d spent some time amongst the Goblins, we went back to camp, ate breakfast, and got gear loaded into the vehicles to go first to Hanksville, and then to Horseshoe Canyon for a hike down to the Great Gallery. Again, the incredible geology was so overwhelming that I couldn’t think real creatively, and only made maybe half a dozen photographs:
I think I need at least another two trips down there before I really feel comfortable with the place.
Despite the lack of photographs, the trip was awesome. In every sense of the word.
