Ice Cream Sundae Rocks: Pine Park, Dixie National Forest

We had gotten wind of some unique volcanic formations out near the Nevada border and were planning on checking them out but at the last minute Tom couldn’t come so Terry and I (and Abby, of course) set out on an exploratory mission. As it happens, this was probably for the best since Terry and I tend to take a lot of pictures and there were certainly a LOT of really cool rock formations to capture: I’m pretty sure we were in that one area for almost 6 hours.

Neither of us had seen anything quite like this place before; the closest comparison I could make was to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks in New Mexico. But unlike the tent rocks, the pumice/volcanic tuff that had been ejected and eroded was extremely crumbly – which made for difficult climbing – and surprisingly white. The whole place had the appearance of blobs of ice cream with dollops of whipped cream on top. In addition, we found plenty of iridescent blue rock, striated sandstone, and even some chunks of glassy obsidian making it definitely not your average volcanic deposit.