How Hoodoos Are Formed

Guest: Thomas Morris, PhD, Professor in Department of Geological Sciences, BYU This week marks National Park Week, and in celebration, the National Park Services is allowing free admissions this Saturday and Sunday to all attendees. Here in Utah, we have quite a few national parks within driving distance. One of them being Bryce Canyon National Park. If you’ve never been, this is the park famous for tall, spindly rock formations called hoodoos. Bryce Canyon has more hoodoos than any other place in the world. Some of the pictures look to me like a giant toddler was playing in the mud millennia ago, taking handfuls of mud that was not too wet or too dry and drip, glop, dripping it into totem pole-looking structures that have frozen in time. But they’re actually not frozen. We spoke with BYU Geology professor Thomas Morris late last year soon after a famous landmark hoodoo crumbled. He offered us his expertise on these formations.