Early one morning, I took a walk through the dry lakebed of the White Rock Bay area of the Great Salt Lake. My goal was to reach White Rock, which sits 1.5 miles off the shore of the lake.
It was autumn, and there were thunderstorms in the area, which filled the skies with beautiful thunderheads and virga. The rising sun brought it all to life.
I was amazed at the variety of things I found on my journey to White Rock—much more than the sand I was anticipating.
Waves of dried, decaying brine shrimp that were hundreds of feet long. Mud cracks. Soggy, spongy surfaces that were soft but not muddy. Bison tracks, bison manure, skeletons of small animals and birds, coyote tracks, mysterious mounds of lakebed material, and—the feature shown in the image—sinkholes.
Lots of sinkholes. As near as I could tell, they were pretty much isolated to a small area of the lakebed but appeared in clusters. Some were dry, some had salt crystals beginning to form, and others had stale, stenchy water collecting in the bottom. All were super interesting.
I thought the juxtaposition of walking in a dry lakebed, in the desert, during scattered rainstorm events was intriguing. The rainstorms provide more scenery than actual water, which has been the pattern throughout the 25-year drought that has plagued the Western deserts of the US. No end to the dry spell is currently in sight.
