COLORADO

Dolores Canyon

Colorado, south of Paradox Valley. Looking upstream (south). The petroglyphs we were trying to reach are supposed to be below those cliffs in the distance, but we were out of time--and the old Jeep trail did not prove to be practical for bicycles! In fact, it's pretty much washed out thru here, even tho Google still shows it as a "road." The partly bare shrubs along the river, to the left, are tamarisk (Tamarix spp.), which are showing the effects of the tamarisk beetle, imported to control them!

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Taken on Saturday September 3, 2016
Posted on Wednesday September 21, 2016
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15 comments

Thérèse said:

Grandiose

8 years ago ( translate )

slgwv replied to Thérèse:

Indeed! Thanks!

8 years ago ( translate )

Gudrun said:

A striking landscape with all that red rock! The place names are cool- Paradox valley:-)))

8 years ago

slgwv replied to Gudrun:

Thanks! The Paradox Valley was named by Albert C. Peale in 1875, a member of one of the surveying expeditions that was a precursor to the USGS, because of the "paradoxical" course of the Dolores. It cuts directly across the valley perpendicular to its long axis, flowing out of this canyon on the south and into another canyon on the north. You'd expect a river to be along the long axis of the valley! But in fact the valley has nothing to do with the watercourse--it's a collapsed anticline, one of the famous (in geologic circles) salt anticlines of SW Colorado and adjacent Utah. Salt in the core of the anticline dissolved out to cause it to collapse.

8 years ago