Caineville Sphinx & Cloud Hat

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Wayne County, Utah
late afternoon Sunday June 4, 1995, slide 95B_21-14
Olympus OM-4T, 35mm Zuiko, Benbo Trekker
Drum scanned 35mm Kodachrome 64 to 100mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature upper left corner

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Earlier this June afternoon I hiked about cross-country for a considerable distance in bizarre badland hills near this formation while not finding any subject particularly noteworthy. Later that afternoon driving along the Lower Cathedral Valley dirt road still looking for interesting subjects, I noticed this small formation and hiked out to investigate. An interesting painterly mix of pastel earth tones with a head like shape including eye, nose, and mouth reminding me of the Egyptian Sphinx. At the time, a lone cloud was slowly drifting east across the clear high desert baby blue sky. So I waited till it was near the formation then moved my tripod a bit.

The image's foreground shows lacustrine mudstone/siltstone bentonitic deposits. Geologists have designated this the Brushy Basin Shale Member of the Morrison Formation. Lacustrine refers to lake deposits, as this foreground was part of a vast warm shallow inland sea during the late Jurassic Period. Bentonite refers to silting deposits from fine volcanic ash sources. The soft easily eroded clay surface expands when rain falls on it, and then contracts when it dries under the hot arid high desert sun creating the odd crinkly surface. When wet this same clay surface becomes a quite slippery and dangerous vehicle surface on dirt roads in the area.

In the background is flat-topped North Caineville Mesa. Forming the mesa sides is easily eroded Mancos Shale Blue Gate Shale Member. These are upper Cretaceous marine deposits of pale yellow sandstone interbedded with gray carbonaceous shale. The top of the mesa consists of a thin hard mesa-capping layer of Cretaceous Period Mancos Shale Emery Sandstone, the youngest strata in this image. The tiny dark spots atop the mesa skyline are likely stunted mountain mahogany trees, the only green living objects in this scene. This area is at about 5,000 foot elevation in the Fremont River area near the tiny obscure community of Caineville at the edge of the San Rafael Desert. A very remote location west of Capitol Reef National Park.

The Jurassic Period was about 144 to 208 million years ago followed by the Cretaceous Period between 66 and 144 million years ago both being within the Mesozoic Era. Better known as the age of dinosaurs. "Lower" refers to older "early" period rock usually below younger "upper" aka "late" period rock strata. Member refers to geologically distinct strata within locally similar aged formations.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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