Scott Holcomb's photos with the keyword: Sand Pipes

Deep in the canyon-country of southern Utah is a beautiful state park called Kodachrome Basin where there are 67 sandstone pillars from a few feet to 52 feet across, which stand vertically as high as 172 feet above the basin floor. Composition of the pillars consists of rounded pebbles, cobbles, carbonized wood, and wildly tilted meter-sized blocks of sedimentary rock, all floating in a matrix of well-cemented sandstone. The sandstone matrix matches in composition with a layer known to be buried 300 feet below the basin floor suggesting that these pillars were somehow suddenly injected upward. Eventually the sediment de-watered and turned to stone, but for whatever reason, the injected sand bodies or injectites hardened to a greater degree than their surrounding host-rock. Erosion later preferentially removed the softer host-rock, exposing as stony pillars or “pipes” what had once been conduits for the explosively injected sand slurries. Just how this process occurred is a mystery. This photo was taken by an Asahi Pentax 6 X 7 medium format film camera and Super-Takumar/6X7 1:2.4/105mm lens with a Zenza Bronica 67mm SY48•2C(Y2) filter using Bergger Pancro400 film, the negative scanned by an Epson Perfection V600 and digitally rendered with Photoshop.