Edmaier’s Secret

Despite having been here three times already, I really wanted to find this tower. It is on the SW side of the main dome in the area, and was fun to photograph. Apparently this lace rock occurs because of some quartz mixed in with the sandstone that leads to some shearing in the sandstone from time to time and then the obvious culprit of differential erosion. A relevant paper is “Characterization of deformation bands associated with normal and reverse stress states in the Navajo Sandstone, Utah” by John G. Solum et al. <https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/94e8/31905326d18110dacbe2ca097e643b2e9063.pdf>

 
The back side of the flaky tower.

 
After finishing up at the dome we climbed to the east and moved to the south across this ocean of striated Navajo sandstone. We then moved up to the east rim and traversed north to get back. On that rim were more fantastic examples of lace rock.