La Sal Mountains, Moab, Utah

The 12,645 glacier-carved summit of Mount Mellenthin (left) & 12,482 Mount Tukuhnikivatz fill the skyline high above an extensive grove of aspen trees in the La Sal Mountains southeast of the town of Moab, Utah. Rising from a scorching redrock desert, the high alpine summits of the La Sal Mountains offer a cool retreat in the heart of the Colorado Plateau region of southeast Utah. These mountains formed as molten igneous rock rose up through the earths crust during the Laramide Orogeny approximately 25 million years ago. This molten rock simply pushed up the overlying layers yet never broke the surface. As the overlying strata eroded, the molten rock, now cooled to form granite, was exposed to the elements. These mountains received their present name (Salt Mountains) during the Dominguez-Escalante expedition as the missionaries embarked on the first European explorations of this region in the summer of 1776. Their goal was to establish a route between the missions in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Monterey, California.