Grand Staircase

Above, is a diagram, a cross-section, running north from Grand Canyon in Arizona to Bryce Canyon in Utah.  The sandstone layers have warped since their depositions, but the younger rocks still rest on the older.  On your left is my view today as I stood on the rise you see in the diagram to the north of Grand Canyon.  I am looking north, head-on into the Chocolate Cliffs at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, the brilliant Vermillion Cliffs above them, and the White Cliffs forming the third step. 

Kanab is on the sandstone that forms the Chocolate Cliffs, the Kaibab Formation, north of where it falls off in a grand step.  The town nestles at the base of the brightly painted Vermillion Cliffs seen here. 

I took one step up the Staircase from Kanab and walked along the White Cliffs, which contain the Navajo Formation laid down some 190 million years ago as best I remember.  Here I saw the impression of a leaf that fell about that time, but I rely on reason here, not memory. 

Driving to Kanab

I drove to Kanab, Utah, today, following a row of days when flash flood warnings have posted for the slot canyons in south-western Utah.  Don’t go, the warnings say.  And as if I needed more reason, clouds clapped and spewed and hailed on my drive to another motel for another month for another wait-on-the weather kind of adventure. 

But I don’t mind waiting, and have plenty of up-mountain walks mapped and ready.  They will not treat me like a spider in a storm drain.  Still, I hope to enter several of the narrow, water-carved slots that were created by days like today, but to so between creation events.