Bryce Canyon Panorama

Silent City. Thor’s Hammer. The Temple of Osiris. The Sentinel. Wall Street. The Cathedral. Fairy Castle. The Alligator. Early visitors to Bryce Canyon let their imaginations run riot when it came to naming the canyon’s bizarre stone spires, with names drawn from such diverse sources as Norwegian mythology, New York’s temple of finance, the Egyptian pantheon, and Celtic folk tales. And no wonder: the exotic shapes and bold colors of Bryce’s forest of stone pinnacles beg the human mind to invent lyrical names. These hoodoos, as they are called, are different from the sandstone towers found in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, as well as across southern Utah. Bryce’s hoodoos began life as layers of limestone, mudstone, and siltstone at the bottom of an ancient lake that covered most of western Utah. Later those layers were uplifted and began to erode. The softest layers eroded fastest, eventually leading to towers shaped like totem poles that varied in diameter as they rose into the blue sky. Layers of harder limestone called dolomite sometimes top the towers. These caps protect the softer layers underneath. Despite their stony hard hats, these towers are fragile. Geologists estimate that Bryce’s hoodoos are eroding away at a rate of two to four feet every hundred years.

Bryce Canyon is famous for more than its geology; it is also famous for the way sunrise light, like the alchemist’s Philosopher’s Stone, transmutes an already spectacular landscape into something truly extraordinary. Bryce Canyon formed along the eastern edge of Paunsaugunt Plateau. At about 8,000 feet above sea level, the plateau is the highest of a series of gigantic steps called the Grand Staircase, which leads eventually down to the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The plateaus along the eastern horizon are generally lower in elevation than the rim of Bryce Canyon, which means that light from the rising sun takes an exceptionally long path through the atmosphere. During that long path, much of the bluish light scatters out of the beam, while the warm-toned light travels straight ahead and paints Bryce’s colorful hoodoos with intense shades of red, orange, and yellow. That golden light also illuminates the cliffs forming the rim of the canyon. These cliffs, in turn, act as reflectors that bounce warm light onto the sides of the towers facing away from the sun, the side that would normally be shadowed. This remarkable effect can be seen most clearly in the bottom-center portion of this panorama from Inspiration Point. Without that bounce light, the shadowed side of the towers would be lit by the deep blue light scattered down from the high-altitude sky. That blue light would color the rock a dull reddish-brown. Our visual system is primed to expect shadows to be cool in tone, while sunlit areas should be warm. Bryce’s astonishing geology and magnificent light flip those expectations on their head, and the result at sunrise seems like an alchemist’s dream.