Looking to the hills to the West
- How big are the clasts (stones) in the layers?
- Is there a visible break in the layers? and if so what and how thick do they seeme to be?
- Do there appear to be more clasts (rocks) in the base of the towers as the middle or top? or evenly spread?
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About you are the remains of a volcano. The remains of a volcano that erupted and blanketed the area in ash, and larger fragments.
To put things into perspective, we will look at Mount St. Helen's, the most recent volcanic eruption.
Image from the USGS
The ash fell all about the North Western United States. The uncompacted ash-fall was pretty light. The ash-fall nearly blackened the sky, even turning on the automatic street lights in many towns. Ash-fall near the volcano dropped nearly five inches of ash. This ash was uncompressed. Compressing it leaves you with a thin layer of ash. Now look at the hills around you and imagine the amount of ash that would have to fall to created these hills. The total thickness of this volcanic ash is about 2,000 feet thick.
This is not completely ash-fall. It is made up of a lot of pyroclastic flows. These flows are really two parts. A large basal flow. It is made up of larger stone, boulders, and other larger materials. There is a large ash plume and ash-fall that move in behind it.
Most of these flows come from explosions from volcanoes in the Goshen and Tintic areas (Eureka). Those flows came one after the other, dropping stones and ash, followed by ash. Later another pyroclastic flow will deposit more rocky material and more ash.
This material is very soft, and erodes quickly. Normally these ledges will be very steep and break up as the rains and wind erode them.