My New Obsession

On a paved but lonely county road along the Divide, driving just because it was a nice early evening after work and I wanted to let Wiley stick his head out the window a bit, I saw the most fascinating rock formation.

Here it is shot from the southwest:

Here it is from the south:

Here it is from the southeast:

I don't know how much you can tell from the photos, but it is a perfectly straight rock wall that goes all the way up the mountain, perfectly perpendicular to the ground. There was no continuation on the other side of the road, but around a bend I was able to see tips of it continuing north, not as fully eroded.

It was so intriguing, its engineering perfection, the sudden end of it on the south but going on for who knows how long to the north.

I went online and could find zero information on it, which made it all the more intriguing. I did waste half an hour of my life on Google Earth zooming in and out to see how far the ridge continues (Google Earth, by the way, may be the deadliest timesucker ever invented... that's why I'm not including the link. Save yourself. It's too late for me. Ooh! Let's zoom in and out on Ute Mountain and then zip over to Grand Mesa, the world's largest flat-top mountain!)

Anyway, I drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park to see if a ranger up there who's answered all my pesky questions in the past could help. He knew exactly what I was talking about, but not what it was. We paged through a couple geology books in the store but the closest thing we could find was a photo of a similar, though less dramatic formation, labeled as "tertiary igneous dikes" near a mountain in the San Juans.

I emailed the Colorado Geologic Survey but haven't heard back yet. What is it?? I must know!

Okay, back to pastry...