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I have been exploring the sandstone of southern Utah for many years and I have a question about the area around Sidestep Canyon (near Wahweap, near Page, AZ). There are many amazing hoodoos there and they are Entrada under Dakota. Morrison and Summerville are totally missing. Here are some hoodoos in the white Entrada under the red Dakota enter image description here

My question concerns this pic. enter image description here

There is a small piece of Dakota at left foreground. But on the cliff there is an alternating red and white band. This is reminiscent of the wedding cake parts of the Summerville, which in general is totally missing here. Could this be Summerville? More likely it is either a mix of Entrada or Dakota, or maybe just some reddish Entrada interwoven with the white. It forms a much steeper cliff than the surrounding terrain, so I assume the red layer is less prone to erosion. Any comments welcome.

Stan Wagon

stan wagon
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  • You're right, the white sandstone is more easily eroded than the red. The layered slab of red sandstone in the foreground reminds me of a photo I saw of the surface of Venus, except the Venusian stone was greyish, but of course there can't be any sandstone on Venus because there is no water and probably no sand. – Michael Walsby Dec 07 '19 at 19:07
  • More pics of this particular area are at http://stanwagon.com/wagon/utah/pagebluewonderredtop/pagebluewonderredtop.html -- the section on Sidestep Canyon. Those pics show more of the Dakota sandstone. – stan wagon Dec 07 '19 at 19:19
  • These halfmoon like structures ? Idk, could they be just crossbedding, filed with something more organic (hence darker), then eroded out ? A wild guess, i know ... –  Dec 08 '19 at 19:10
  • Not sure what you mean by half-moon. My question is about the alternating red and white bands below the top of the cliff. I don't see any half-moons there. But I agree that cross-bedding of variations of the main Entrada sandstone is likely. – stan wagon Dec 09 '19 at 19:19

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