Breathtaking Colors

Take Highway 89 East from Kanab, Utah for about 33 miles. Just before the Paria River, there’s a dirt road that takes you to what geologist Hellmut Doelling calls “the most sublime geologic area in the world.”

225 million years ago in the late Triassic Period, ancient rivers and lakebeds deposited layers of sand, mud, clay, and silt. Over the eons, it was compressed into a 425- to 930-foot-thick layer of stone.

Dissolved minerals in the water percolated through the stone. The iron oxides, manganese, cobalt and other minerals created a breathtaking riot of colorful layers. 

The flood plain of the Paria River later exposed those layers for us to enjoy.

This is also the location of the ghost town of Pahreah. The old cemetery is still there and contains about 20 graves. One can only imagine the hard life there in the 1870s until the town was abandoned in the late 1890s. But did they have a view!

The Shot

Fellow photographer Jon Christofersen and I were there last August. We had the place to ourselves for the six hours that we walked around, gawked, and photographed.

Even though I had photographed the Gingham Skirts Butte (what a descriptive name!) on a previous visit, the colors made it impossible to ignore. Instead of capturing the entire Butte, I concentrated on a portion of it that I found pleasing.

With a little bit of help from Photoshop, the colors I remembered came to life on my computer display at home.

Thanks for looking,

Chuck Derus

https://cderus.zenfolio.com/