slgwv's photos with the keyword: Shiprock

A classic volcanic neck seen in many textbooks. (There are lots better photos out there than mine! This was a drive-by when I passed thru the area 25 years ago.) A neck is the erosional remnant of a volcano, where all that's left of the edifice is the harder rock that filled the throat, i.e., the conduit that carried magma up the middle. Some radial dikes, representing magma that filled cracks within the volcano, are also weathered out. The inset shows one, with Shiprock in the background. Shiprock is one of a number of necks in the area, where magma conduits poked up thru the flat-lying sedimentary cover. It's on the Navajo Reservation, and for that reason is no longer open to climbing as it's a sacred area.