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Climbers Paradise

This pullout on the east side (Cody side) of the long tunnel on the Yellowstone Highway in Shoshone Canyon west of Cody Wyoming is for rock climbers. They come to climb the inner canyon walls which are made up of metamorphic and Igneous rocks that date to around 2.6 billion years ago. Geologist call this time period during the Precambrian the Archean Eon. These rocks represent a time when Wyoming was a separate microcontinent called the Wyoming Craton which existed 500 million years before the North American Continent formed. The layered gneissic complex in Shoshone Canyon consists of hornblende mica schist cut by granodiorite and granite pegmatites. These crystalline rocks are favored by climbers.

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Uploaded on May 17, 2020
Taken on April 3, 2020