Logging tasks.
- What does the material of the dike look like? Color, grains, fractures etc?
- What direction do the fractures take in the dike when you look from the end (roadside)? Are they vertical in the dike, random, perpendicular, both?
- There is some material south of the dike on the East side you can compare to. How does this stone compare to the other material in the area?
- The material next to the dike. What does it appear to be made of, and how are the sedimentary layers in relation to the dike?
- Add a photo of you from the location or of an identifiable item (paper with trackable name). Posting a photo pulled from the internet, or photoshopped will result in instant deletion.
At this location you have the chance to see a intrusive dike. It is not very long as most dikes go, or very thick. However it is one of the few basalt dikes that are in the area. A few others are down in by Levan, but are not as well defined, and easy to recognize as this one.
A dike forms by pushing molten material upwards into a crack, or it forms a crack as it is pushed upward. Eventually it cools, and forms an underground wall. These can be short and thin to long and wide.
Quite often the material around it will be softer than the basalt/granite that cools. In this case it is a tuff, a soft rock formation made up of volcanic ash and debris from volcanic eruptions.
Eventually that material erodes, and exposes the dike. Basalt is a very hard weather resistant rock, so it will remain standing like the one you see here.
The photo below of a dike in colorado. You can see a long skinny wall. Dikes are longer than the thin parts. Eroding you sometimes will see a sail like remnant after the surrounding material wears away.
The photo below is of Devils slide in Utah. http://coord.info/GC19HG5 It is considered by some to be a dike. However it is made of limestone. The layer of limestone that has folded over time to be vertical. Then the wear has taken place to make it look like a dike. You can usually tell by the material around the dike and what the dike is made of. Dikes are primarily igneous rock where this is a sedimentary. Plus when you look around them a fake dike will have the sediments around them running parallel with the dike. While a true dike will separate many of those sediments.
