Day 13: Monday, May 24th, 2004

Capitol Reef National Park: The Burr Trail to Waterpocket Fold

By Nathan Scott

The campsite at Kodachrome Basin was just so nice that we felt it was necessary to sleep in this morning. The group slept in until approximately 8:30, at which point it became too hot in the tents to sleep. We then, rather leisurely I must say, packed up and left by around 10 o’clock for the Waterpocket Fold. The Waterpocket Fold sits within Capitol Reef National Park and, as the name implies, is a fold of sorts. In fact, it is an enormous monocline that spans several hundred miles, exposing almost 10,000 feet of rock and sediment. The rock layers in the “reef” fall within an age range of approximately 270-65 million years of age.

On the way out of Kodachrome, we stopped at an interesting feature we had not seen the night before due to darkness. In a cliff face along the side of the road, it appeared as though there was a pillar at the middle of a syncline in the preferentially eroding sandstone layers. After discussion with Ron and after “talking” to the feature, the group came to consensus on the cause of this unusual formation. Sometime in the past, due to the saturation of overlying layers of sediment, high pressures from the weight of these layers, and shaking of the area from tectonism, a thick layer of sandstone beneath the surface became active and squirted out the surface as a sand volcano. While the “volcano” was not hot like a conventional volcano, it intruded through overlying layers much like its igneous counterpart. These intrusions characteristically have pieces of country rock within them, and when they solidify, this conglomerate is preserved. The syncline-looking part of this formation was caused in a similar way to igneous calderas. As the sand below is extruded out the top, the overlying layers have increasingly less support from below, and sag into the depression left behind. All of these phenomena can be observed in action in modern-day sand volcanoes, which heavily figures into this interpretation.

By 11:30, it was already fairly hot, perhaps 85°, when we got out of the vans at a small outcrop on Route 12 in hopes of finding petrified wood, no such luck though. We reached the Burr Trail Road (theoretically 10 miles of pavement, 30 miles of dirt, and 10 more of pavement) that leads to the Waterpocket Fold at noon and drove along it until lunch at around 1. We had a simple, but quite tasty lunch of GORP, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, and fruit, before continuing on our way.

Shortly after lunch, we made our first stop for “play time” in the geology of the Capitol Reef area. While walking up a small canyon, we observed many interesting things, in addition to the rising heat from the sun beating down upon us. We found an exposed layer of shale that had extraordinary examples of ripples preserved in it. Continuing on up the canyon, we examined the layers of shale and sandstone, and eventually came to a place where the water of the now dry stream had been eroding the sandstone, forming a miniature slot canyon.

After the canyon, we continued for a bit until another stop at around 3:15. At this stop, a few small petrified wood samples and lots of gypsum crystals were identified along with large amounts of some odd stuff that appeared similar to petrified wood but Ron theorized were silicated gypsum crystals. After another stop, it looked like rain and we did not want to get stuck on the dirt roads, so we headed to the scenic overlook and then out of the park. In the end, it did not really rain on us, but better safe than sorry in a 15-passenger van.
As planned and reserved by Tess, we ate dinner Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah. The dinner was just amazing in all ways, which is befitting an “O” magazine rated restaurant. We all pulled out the stops on ordering, as we had had several fairly cheap meals in the previous days, and most ordered desserts as well. After finishing, while we were talking and letting our food settle, Ron mentioned, rather quietly I should say, that he was paying the bill for the meal, as a way of saying thank you for going on the May term. This of course came as a huge surprise to all of us and was greatly appreciated. On the way out, many procured T-shirts and mugs in addition to business cards, as none of us mind advertising for this tremendous restaurant.

We then parted with Boulder, Utah and started the drive back to our site at Kodachrome Basin where we had one more night. After several attempts, and the unfortunate success of one rabbit to commit suicide, we arrived at camp, started a fire, and Gabe and Nate Henderson played the night away on their guitars. Much fun was had by all, and we went to bed around midnight.