Uinta Mountains
| Uinta Mountains | ||
|---|---|---|
 Kings Peak and Henry's Fork Basin show the typical landscape in the Uinta Mountains |
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| Highest peak | Kings Peak ( 4124 m ) | |
| location | Utah (USA) | |
| part of | Rocky mountains | |
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| Coordinates | 40 ° 47 ′ N , 110 ° 22 ′ W | |
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The Uinta Mountains [ juːˈɪntə ˈmaʊntənz ] are a mountain range of the Rocky Mountains in northeastern Utah ( United States ). They run about 160 km east of Salt Lake City in an unusual east-west direction for this mountain range and reach summit heights of about 3700 to 4100 m. The highest point is Kings Peak , which is also the highest point in the state of Utah with a height of 4124 m.
geology
The rock in the core of the Uinta Mountains comes from the Neoproterozoic and is about 800-700 million years old and consists mainly of quartzite , slate and clay slate . These rock layers form the mass of the Uinta Mountains and are 4-7.3 kilometers thick. Many of the peaks are surrounded by cliffs that rise to wide and flat surfaces. The flanks of the chain running in an east-west direction contain Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata that range from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous . They were tilted during the unfolding of the mountain range.
The unfolding of the chain dates from the time of the Laramian orogeny around 70–50 million years ago, when compressive stresses caused faults on both the north and south sides of the current mountain range and folded the rock layers . The orientation of the Uinta Mountains in an east-west direction is an exception compared to most of the other mountain ranges of the northern Rocky Mountains , possibly due to a change in folding behavior and a rotation of the Colorado Plateau .
The Uinta Mountains were largely covered by ice during the last Ice Age . Most of the wide valleys in the north and south contained long glaciers .
Between the peaks and ridge lines lie wide high valleys, over which about 500 small lakes are distributed. One of the most popular is Mirror Lake due to its good fishing grounds and beautiful scenery .
Hydrology
The Uintas mainly belong to the catchment area of the Colorado River , so that the precipitation is discharged into the Pacific Ocean . From the north and south side, the rivers that arise in the mountains flow into the Green River , which later flows into the Colorado, which flows in a narrow curve east around the chain.
Only the extreme west of the mountain range drains into the Great Salt Lake and thus into the large basin without any drainage . The Bear River as the largest tributary of the Great Salt Lake and the Weber River arise on the northwest side of the Uinta Mountains . The Provo River , Utah Lake 's largest tributary , has its source on the southwest side of the mountain range. Utah Lake itself drains over the Jordan River into the Great Salt Lake, which thus gets most of its water from the Uinta Mountains.
administration
The mountain range is almost entirely owned by the federal government of the United States. The northern half of the mountain range belongs to the Wasatch-Cache National Forest , the south to the Ashley National Forest . Both national forests are under the administration of the US Forest Service and are used intensively for forestry purposes. The Forest Service also looks after the High Uintas Wilderness Area (founded in 1984, 1850 km²), which is located in the core of the mountains and is designated as the Wilderness Area , the strictest class of nature reserves in the United States. The forests consist mainly of coastal pines and rock firs .
On the southern edge the Uinta Mountains will last into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation , an Indian reservation of the Ute -Indianer.
Individual evidence
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ John McPhee, Basin and Range , New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1981, pp. 198-199.
- ↑ Hamilton, WB, 1981, Plate-tectonic mechanism of Laramide deformation, in Boyd, DW, and Lillegraven, JA, eds., Rocky Mountain foreland basement tectonics: University of Wyoming Contributions to Geology, v. 19, pp. 87-92.
- ↑ [2]
