Frijoles Canyon
Location: Bandalier National Monument - near Los Alamos, NM
Year: 1985
Merckslides catalogue number: 06-16989
Comments: Mark Hinton introduced me to this wonderful place. The canyon is like a self-contained little world with Anasazi ruins and unique plants and animals. The cliffs are made of Bandalier Tuff - a rhyolitic pyroclastic deposit that blankets the region for miles around and the remnant of a truly catastrophic prehistoric volcanic eruption. The mountians in the background seem innocent, but they are the east flank of the Valles Caldera - a huge circular scar amrking the base of a large ancient volcano whose collapse yielded the thick deposits of ash that fromed the tuff.
