Aretes, Hoodoos, and Trees. Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah. October 4, 2012. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Sunset light on sparse trees, hoodoos, and descending aretes at Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah
Cedar Breaks National Monument is almost (but not quite!) a sort of “one trick pony” of a park, though it is quite a spectacular pony! The main draw is the steep and very colorful Bryce-like canyon that drops precipitously from a high ridge along which the park road runs. Below this ridge, beautiful pink layers are exposed, and they have been heavily weathered and eroded into ridges, canyons, steep cliffs, and hoodoo, dotted here and there with a few sparse trees. The canyon faces roughly west, to the late afternoon and evening light on these red rock formations can be quite stunning. (Meanwhile, above the drop-off, the land is entirely different, consisting of gently rolling highland forest mixed with meadows.)
On our first day in the area we got settled in to lodging at nearby Brian Head ski area – where rooms were available at really low rates since this was probably about as “off-season” as you can be! We had some time in the evening so we headed up the road out of Brian Head and were quickly inside the monument. There are quite a few viewpoints along this road, so we picked one. This photograph was in light softened by low clouds on the horizon that still allowed a bit of fading light to illuminate the canyon features from the right.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.