Wild Wasatch: Faults, glaciers, and deep time

Wild Wasatch: Faults, glaciers, and deep time

PARK CITY, Utah — Long before the Wasatch became synonymous with ski runs, trailheads, and the daily skyline of northern Utah, the range was being built by forces far older and slower than human memory. The modern Wasatch began to rise roughly 12 to 17 million years ago, as the Earth’s crust stretched across what geologists call the Basin and Range province. That stretching created faults that lifted the mountains while the valleys to their west…