Burr Trail

A road following a steep canyon thru the Waterpocket Fold, a monocline that forms the prominent landforms in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. A monocline is a structure in which one side has been downdropped with respect to the other, with the overlying strata folded downward accordingly. Usually monoclines reflect high-angle faults in the subsurface. The prominent light-colored sandstone making the big cliffs and rounded domes is the Navajo Sandstone of Triassic-Jurassic age, a widespread stratigraphic unit in this part of the Colorado Plateau. Looking east.
The Burr Trail comes up this canyon in a set of steep switchbacks. It is named for John Atlantic Burr, who built the original trail in the 1880s for cattle(!) drives. The modern trail is graded and in good weather is (more or less) passable to ordinary passenger cars, but it gets washed out enough--particularly in monsoon season, as now!--that high clearance and 4wd are advisable. I crossed a flooded section of road getting to this point. The inset shows another view of the switchbacks.