I had a geophysicist/geologist buddy clue me in to the natural history of the West, Utah and Colorado in particular, and the series of mountain building, erosion, shallow seas, dune deserts etc...I remember he said there have been 5 different cycles of this...Explains the brown, tan, pink layers in the sedimentary rock formations...
I now look at the drive across central Utah (San Rafael Swell, in particular) entirely differently...
Thanks for the post...
Yeah, when I was in the Winds, it was a NOLS course with a geology doctoral candidate as one of the instructors, and we got a field course in geology as part of the curricula. The Winds have been called the ultimate expression of the Laramide Orogeny. Hiking in from the East, you pass through progressively older tilted sedimentary layers until you get to the Precambrian basement rock that forms the highest peaks.