this past weekend with friends from Colorado was big fun, examining the geology, mining history and high elevation landscape southeast of Castle Valley.
Broad panorama showing, from left to right, the high La Sal Mountains, Fisher Mesa, the Onion Creek collapsed salt-cored anticline, and the Fisher Towers area. (Click image to enlarge.)
Still accessible uranium mine adit in the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation on west side of Polar Mesa. This area was still producing uranium ore in the 1950s.
Descending through the stratigraphy of the Upper Jurassic-age Morrison Formation, one of the uranium-bearing strata on the Colorado Plateau. Elevation around 7,600 ft.
Still-standing headframe above an old uranium mine shaft. Based on picking around the mine dumps, the primary ore mineral appears to be carnotite.