Weathering's Effect on the Garden

Weathering plays a prevalent roll in how the massive spines at Garden of the Gods obtain the unique often rugged look. In the local climate, similar to ours here in denver, the changes in the seasons are quite drastic. Hot summers and freezing winters play a large role in the shape of many rocks. Take for example the following formation...

The effect of frost weathering

Here there seem to be three seperate rocks, however what is now three used to be only one. Over a long period of time water has seeped into the small cracks, or fisures, of the rocks. Once there, overnight, the water would freeze and in doing so, expand. The fissures grew larger and larger continually splitting the rock. Rocks all over the local area have similar looking splits.

Looking closely you can see many of the small fisures here on this rock

Another way the snow and melt water play an effect is in the obvious basal weathering of certain large rocks. Here water and salt have warn away notches at the bases of these rocks.

The guy in this photo is standing to a form created by basal weathering

Trees and local small plants litter the rocks at the garden. Often these trees' roots will grow into the cracks of neaby rocks altering them. They can move rocks, shift rocks, and with enough time even break them in half. Often times the trees will be responsible for keeping certain rock structures supported because of the grab on the ground. Either way they play quite a role in the park's development.

Trees splitting a small rock formation. Camels kissing in background

Above you can distincly make out a hole at the top of the rock spine just behind the trees. This is an effect cause primarily, like much of the park, by frost and salt weathering. Here, the decaying processes created a cavern like structure and look like two kissing camels. The rock known as the kissing camels is one of the park's defining features.

This rock shows one of the more drastic effects of chemical weathering

In the above picture you can make out areas of the rock that seem to be bleached white. Rather, that is residue of salt coming slowly out of the rock. Overtime this salt will eat away at the rock, and as seen here, put it into some of the strangest places.



The Forms and Processes of Garden of the Gods

The rocks at the Garden, each one unique in its own way, get you to question how they were formed in the first place. At first the tall straight and skinny rocks hint at a dyke that had the soil around it slowly eroded away. However, all these rocks that jet into the air are all intrusive sedimentary rocks. While it is still weathering and erosion that uncovered them, they are not formed by volcanic activity.

The intrusive sedimentary rocks of the Garden

Aging of the rocks hints at the age of around 300 million years, around the time of the dinosaurs. Pikes peak, the mountain closest and most related with the park is almost completely ganite and dates back nearly 1.6 billion years. This means that these formations were formed in a period well after the ancestral rockies. Many fossils of dinosars and other specimines have been found all around the park also hinting at the age. Because of this I hypothesize that glaciers from the precambrian sea that stretched directly through this area helped in the creation and erosion of what we see today.

Pike's Peak rising ominously behing the rocks of the park

Pikes Peak, being made at a different time, was made in a completely different fashion. Unlike the rocks in the garden, Pike's is made up of granite, an intrusive igneous rock. This whole area has been greatly effected by faulting. Taking a look at this picture it becomes more evident...

Many straight lines in pattern indicates faulting

The most aparent feature on this map is the graben that has formed due to the extension fault just east of the main line of the rocks that give this garden its name. The top (most north part) of this wall of rocks is marked by the small red dot. Just to the east of this line there is a noticable small valley just before the land rises back up. The graben is not the only evidence of faulting. Even smaller faults on the rocks themselves often give them their unique shape.

Gateway rock with the plaque that shows the day the garden was given to Colo. Springs

Here on Gateway Rock there is a fault or area where the rock has broken. The crack stretches down just to the right of the plaque. It is smaller faults like this that give the rock their unique shapes.