Thor's Hammer, Bryce Canyon

Thor's Hammer is one of the best known named hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, standing among the thousands of eroded spires carved from the Claron Formation's soft Pink Cliffs limestone and siltstone. Like the park's other hoodoos, it owes its shape to frost weathering and stream erosion working on rock cut by vertical joints, a process that has excavated the park's amphitheaters and left resistant caprock perched atop narrower, more easily eroded pillars beneath. Bryce Canyon's hoodoos reach as tall as 200 feet within the park's largest amphitheater, and their banded orange, yellow and purple coloring comes from iron oxide, iron oxide hydroxide and manganese oxide minerals in the rock. Documentation of Thor's Hammer specifically is thinner than for the park's hoodoo field as a whole, so this description is kept to what is attested about it and its formation rather than inventing figures for its individual height or exact position within the amphitheater.