Hoodoo You Think Made These?

The Wahweap hoodoos have become very well known and many make the 4.5 mile hike up the wash from the nearest trailhead to photograph these spectacular towers.

While probably a hundred or more hoodoos can be found in the three main coves, the hoodoos pictured here are located in the main cove that sports the tallest of all the hoodoos.

When you look at these unique formations, they present the appearance of being very deliberately made. It’s as though someone precisely shaped each pedestal/column and then selected a caprock and carefully placed it atop the pedestal. So how did they actually come to be? Though they may come in a variety of shapes and sizes, a hoodoo is usually a spire of some form of sandstone or softer rock, often capped by a harder rock. The harder rock erodes at a slower rate than the softer rock below. Centuries of mostly water erosion and freeze-thaw cycles erode away the surrounding softer rock layer leaving a spire that's protected by the harder caprock above, delaying the erosion of the column below.

Photo taken September, 2009. Wahweap hoodoos are located near Page, AZ, in a section of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.