Antelope Island is a peninsula that juts out into the east side of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The Utah State Park on Antelope Island is a short drive from Salt Lake City. Access to the park across a causeway is seen in the picture above.
There are many hiking trails in the state park, on this occasion we tried the trail to Frary Peak, as marked on the maps above. We had the optimistic intention of making it all the way to the top but bailed out about half-way.
The view looking down from the trail to Frary Peak
Walking up the trail you pass rock layers of diamictite (above left), dolomite (center), and slate (above right). Diamictite capped by the carbonate dolomite is an assemblage found in several sites world-wide and is cited as evidence of “Snowball Earth” in pre-Cambrian times.
There are similar outcrops of diamictite in the nearby Wasatch Mountains. Once I find these, I hope to do a follow-up post focusing on why these rocks cause geologists to hypothesize that the earth was completely covered in ice 700 million years ago.
North MN Outdoors 