This was my second trip with my photography group, this time to SW Utah, and my first time dedicated to working in this part of Utah. Southern Utah and Northern Arizona are amazing places with all kinds of wonderful geographic features that are just waiting to be visited and explored. Tony, our Sarge, had spent a huge amount of his early big box photography days investigating the Escalante / Southern Utah area and knew many of the places like the back of his hand. After visiting Coyote Canyon, Tony headed us over to Dance Hall Rock.

Dance Hall Rock got its name from a very large sandstone rock with an amphitheatre and superb acoustics that Mormon pioneers in the 1880s used for their dances while waiting for a road to be put through. This particular area of the Colorado Plateau (part of the Colorado River drainage) is known for its unusually large weathering pits. It is one of the very few places these size pits can be found, period. Geologists give them the term "weathering pits" versus "potholes" because of their size, potholes being small depressions versus deep and wide depressions like the one in the image. Interestingly, these deep depressions are primarily carved out by winds after the various weathering effects on the sandstone of water freezing and thawing.

There is nothing necessarily special about the creation of this image, it is a cloudy cold day in early November and we have timed it right so that the small aspen shines with its full fall yellow leaves stand out against to Navajo/Page Sandstone. One can tell winter is on its way by the snow in the upper hills. This pit was one of the largest ones we found in the area, and I like the composition as it gives reference to the harsh realities of the location