Amazingly Balanced Rocks Around the World - 9

Balanced rocks are a geological formation created due to wind/water erosion or glacial melting. These precariously balanced rocks are wonder of the nature and to a viewer it looks that these would topple by a gentle human push or a wind force. However most of these rocks have remained steadfast for past several thousand years though some were vandalised and pushed over. To some scientists these rocks are a sign of seismic stableness of the location.

This post is part of the series about these awesome and breathtaking rocks around the world. List giving links to individual rocks can be seen here and a combined big page showing all the rocks can be viewed here.

Balanced Rock, Arches National Park, USA

Arches National Park, located near Moab, Utah has a large number of variety of geological formations. As the name suggests it has over 2000 natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch. Amongst these arches is a massive rock, one of the biggest "Balanced Rock" in the World - almost the size of 3 buses. The total height of Balanced Rock is about 39 metres (128 feet) with top balanced rock having a height of about 17 metres (55 feet) from its base. It weighs 3,600 ton (over 4 million kg).

As per Wikipedia this famous "Balanced Rock" is likely to fall any time.
Image from Flickr is by TTVo

Image from Google Maps is by Joe Gulley

Till mid seventies there was another but smaller balanced rock on the right of the Balanced Rock. It was called "Chip Off the Old Block". It fell off during the winter of 1975/1976. Following image taken in 1972 shows both the Balanced Rocks. (Source: Facebook - Arches National Park)


Here is another but no so famous balanced rock in the same park. (Name not known)
Image from Google Maps is by H. B

View location in Google Earth Google Maps

More info: Balanced Rock - National Park Service

Edit Note July 3, 2020
Dead links/defunct photos removed and new photos added.
Posted

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 15, 2009 12:19 am

    There is another great balanced rock at the Colorado National Monument.

    http://www.panoramio.com/photo/15297482

    ReplyDelete
  2. CuriousJMMay 15, 2009 12:25 am

    Thanks for the suggestion - I agree the Balanced Rock at Colorado is fantastic. I will make a post about it in future.

    ReplyDelete

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