Destination Astro 4-Day Photography Workshop

About White Pocket

White Pocket has gained notoriety only recently as a photographer’s playground and world-class hiking destination. It is the perfect alternative to the Wave in North Coyote Buttes and White Pocket lies less than 6 miles away from that famous feature. The colorful stripes and otherworldly rock shapes provide infinite opportunity for photography, and the hiking is much easier than at the Wave. The White Pocket formation itself is 0.7 of a mile across, which doesn’t sound very big, but the gorgeous striations are quite condensed. And it is much bigger than the actual Wave, which is about 2 acres in size.

At White Pocket, the view changes constantly and curious hikers will want to peer around every corner and climb up onto each high point. Those who really appreciate natural beauty have spent a full day exploring White Pocket and felt like they barely scratched the surface. Our guides still uncover fascinating details after scores of trips there.

The Grand Staircase provides a vast and gorgeous backdrop for White Pocket’s intense swirls and white polygonal brain rock. Look out past White Pocket to the brilliant red sandstone of the Coyote Buttes, the Cockscomb, the landmark known as Molly’s Nipple, the Kaibab Plateau and the colorful layers of the Grand Staircase.

Getting to White Pocket

The Jurassic age sandstone formation is situated on the remote and rugged Paria Plateau in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona, less than three miles from the Utah border. Its remoteness ensures you won’t encounter crowds here. In fact, on most days there are only a handful of cars at the trailhead. It’s easy to find a secluded spot at White Pocket where you will hear and see no one.

Roads on the Paria Plateau are unmaintained and are comprised of deep sand with rocky sections scattered throughout. A four-wheel drive vehicle with good ground clearance and off road tires is a must. Some experience driving in deep sand can really come in handy, especially in summer when the sand is dry, soft and deep. We lower our tire pressure to power through the sections of deep sand. It takes at least 2.5 hours from Kanab or from Page to get to White Pocket. On our tours, we try to make a loop drive out of the trip when we can, depending on road conditions, weather and our pick up locations. On our preferred route, we take 89A out of Kanab heading through Jacob Lake and then we enter House Rock Valley from the south, where we stop at a California Condor release site to look for the endangered raptors. From there, we turn onto BLM 1017, often called Corral Valley Road, which heads up onto the Paria Plateau. This is where maintained roads end. When we reach Pine Tree Pocket, we veer north and traverse about 10 more miles of sandy roads to White Pocket.

On our way home, depending on weather, we may exit the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument through the north end of House Rock Valley where we catch the gorgeous Vermilion Cliffs and the brilliant East Kaibab Monocline (Cockscomb) in the soft, afternoon light.

It’s a long drive to White Pocket, there is no way around it, but the variety of scenery on the way is incredible and the feeling of remoteness in itself is a real thrill. These roads are remote, sandy and not clearly marked. We rarely bring guests to White Pocket who later say they would have been comfortable navigating the roads on their own.

White Pocket Geology

Rewind 190 million years and imagine a hot, dry desert with gigantic sand dunes stacking up in the brisk wind. White Pocket is comprised of Navajo sandstone that got its start as towering dunes back in the early Jurassic Period. Back then, the area was much closer to the equator than it is today. As the dunes were buried under more and more sand, they became saturated with groundwater. Slowly, groundwater minerals cemented the sand grains together, turning the dunes to stone. But that’s only part of the story. Something happened here, a major ground disturbance – perhaps an earthquake that triggered an underground landslide – that caused layers of sediment to separate, fold and become sheared while the sand was saturated with water and before it had turned to stone. Geologists call this soft sediment deformation. The result of the massive sand slide is wildly contorted and twisted rock. The specifics of how some of the formations came to be stump the most experienced geologists.

There are many shades of red, pink and yellow that are caused by the oxidation of iron-bearing minerals. Pink hues in the rock often indicate the presence of hematite, while limonite appears yellow or brown. The white coating over White Pocket is calcium carbonate.

There are several theories about how the polygonal cracks in the “brain rock” came to be, including thermal contraction, moisture cycles and drying processes of the sandy sediments and tensile forces. Similar cracks have been observed elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau and even on the moon. Guests sometimes say it feels like you’re walking on the back of a giant white dragon or strolling across the surface of the moon. Another “otherworldly” feature found at White Pocket is Moqui marbles. The marble-like concretion has a sandstone center encased in an iron oxide shell.  Scientists say iron was dissolved into ground water 50 million years ago and collected to form sphere shaped iron concretions. In 2004, two Mars rovers landed on the Red Planet and sent back images of BB sized formations similar to Moqui marbles. NASA scientists call them Martian blueberries. NASA studied Moqui marbles on the Colorado Plateau to learn how they form, wondering if this could provide evidence of water on Mars. Results are inconclusive. The Martian blueberries may have been caused by meteorites. But walking around the bizarre landscape at White Pocket, it’s easy to imagine a connection between it and Mars. Rock gathering in the national monument is not allowed.

Human History

Humans have probably been visiting White Pocket since the ice age when nomadic hunters wandered the expansive landscape in search of large game. The Paria Plateau is also home Native American ruins dating back to the Pueblo Periods from about 750 A.D to 1250 A.D. Pottery fragments and arrowhead flakes can be found in the sand surrounding White Pocket. Ancient corn cobs and petroglyphs depicting desert bighorn sheep and deer are found in a cave within walking distance of the White Pocket formation. More recently, ranchers settled and grazing began somewhere around 1840. On the dry plateau, ranchers often drew water from underground springs using pumps powered by windmills. One such windmill, now out of commission, is seen along Corral Valley Road at Corral Valley Pockets. The word ‘pocket’ is a ranching term for a place that holds water. That’s how White Pocket got its name. Way before we sightseers showed up with our cameras, cattlemen were watering their stock in pockets of water on the formation. They even built two concrete dams in 1929 to increase the water capacity of the water pockets. Today, we enjoy these reflective pools for their incredible photographic potential and for their fascinating wildlife. Fairy shrimp, tadpoles and triops are often spotted in the pools.

While ranchers no longer live on the plateau and the land is in public hands, cowboys can still occasionally be spotted rounding up cattle on horseback. One family has ranched the plateau for four generations. Most of the roads on the Paria Plateau were created by ranchers who needed to mend fences and water their cattle. Other signs of ranching are evident: corrals, old abandoned trucks, broken windmills, and cowboy graffiti are signs of a different time. Richard Faye Hamblin (1908-1976) is one cowboy who signed his name on the plateau, on a sandstone wall near White Pocket.