Elaine Castle is a summit located in the

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile (). The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...

, in

Coconino County Coconino County is a County (United States), county in the North Central Arizona, North-Central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. Its population was 145,101 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The county seat is Flagstaff, Arizon ...

of northern

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, US. It is situated three miles north-northwest of

King Arthur Castle King Arthur Castle is a summit located in the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County of northern Arizona, US. It is situated one-half mile northwest of Guinevere Castle, one mile west of Excalibur, and two miles east-southeast of Holy Grail Temple, ...

near the head of Shinumo Creek, and immediately southwest of Lancelot Point.

Topographic relief Terrain (), alternatively relief or topographical relief, is the dimension and shape of a given surface of land. In physical geography, terrain is the lay of the land. This is usually expressed in terms of the elevation, slope, and orientati ...

is significant as it rises above Merlin Abyss in one mile. According to the

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

system, Elaine Castle is located in a

cold semi-arid climate Cold is the presence of low temperature, especially in the atmosphere. In common usage, cold is often a subjective perception. A lower bound to temperature is absolute zero, defined as 0.00K on the Kelvin scale, an absolute thermodynamic ...

zone.

History

Clarence Dutton Clarence Edward Dutton (May 15, 1841 – January 4, 1912) was an American geologist and US Army officer. Dutton was born in Wallingford, Connecticut on May 15, 1841. He graduated from Yale College in 1860 and took postgraduate courses there until ...

started the tradition of naming geographical features in the Grand Canyon after mythological deities and heroic figures. Elaine Castle was named by

cartographer Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

Richard Tranter Evans (1881–1966), after

Elaine of Astolat Elaine of Astolat (), also known as Elayne of Ascolat and other variants of the name, is a figure in Arthurian legend. She is a lady from the castle of Astolat who dies of her unrequited love for Sir Lancelot. Well-known versions of her story a ...

, from the Legend of King Arthur, in keeping with an Arthurian naming theme for other geographical features in the vicinity, e.g. ''King Arthur Castle'', ''

Guinevere Castle Guinevere Castle is a summit located in the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County of northern Arizona, US. It is situated one-half mile southeast of King Arthur Castle, one mile west of Excalibur, and 2.5 miles northeast of Evans Butte, within the ...

'', ''Excalibur'', ''Gawain Abyss'', ''

Holy Grail Temple Holy Grail Temple is a summit located in the Grand Canyon, in Coconino County, Arizona, Coconino County of northern Arizona, Southwestern United States, US. It is situated seven miles north-northeast of Havasupai Point, and two miles west-north ...

'', ''Bedivere Point'', ''Lancelot Point'', and ''Galahad Point''. This feature's name was officially adopted in 1908 by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Donald Davis climbed Elaine Castle on June 27, 1969, placing the first cairn on Elaine, but was not the first person there as he found evidence that Native Americans had been there.Aaron Tomasi, Pernell Tomasi, ''Grand Canyon Summits Select An Obscure Compilation of Sixty-nine Remote Ascent Routes in the Grand Canyon National Park Backcountry'', 2001, , page 30.

Harvey Butchart John Harvey Butchart (May 10, 1907 – May 29, 2002) was an American hiker and mathematician who was well known for his exploits in and around the Grand Canyon in Arizona, United States. Beginning in 1945, Butchart explored the Grand Canyon's bac ...

climbed it on August 9, 1969, finding the cairn that Davis had built.

Geology

This

butte In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French l ...

is composed of a

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years, from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the s ...

Toroweap Formation The Toroweap Formation outcrops as a distinct layer of generally darker, interbedded slope- and cliff-forming strata lying between the brighter colored cliffs of the Kaibab Limestone above, and Coconino Sandstone below. It outcrops in Grand Can ...

caprock Caprock or cap rock is a hard, resistant, and impermeable layer of rock that overlies and protects a reservoir of softer organic material, similar to the crust on a pie where the crust (caprock) prevents leakage of the soft filling (softer materia ...

on cream-colored Permian

Coconino Sandstone The Coconino Sandstone is a geologic formation (geology), formation composed of light-colored quartz arenite of Aeolian processes, eolian origin. It erodes to form conspicuous, sheer cliffs in the upper walls of Grand Canyon, as part of the Mog ...

. This sandstone, which is the third-youngest stratum in the Grand Canyon, was deposited 265 million years ago as sand dunes. Below the Coconino Sandstone is reddish slope-forming, Permian

Hermit Formation The Permian Hermit Formation, also known as the Hermit Shale, is a nonresistant unit that is composed of slope-forming reddish brown siltstone, mudstone, and very fine-grained sandstone. Within the Grand Canyon region, the upper part of the Her ...

, which in turn overlays the

Pennsylvanian Pennsylvanian may refer to: * A person or thing from Pennsylvania * Pennsylvanian (geology) The Pennsylvanian ( , also known as Upper Carboniferous or Late Carboniferous) is, on the International Commission on Stratigraphy, ICS geologic timesc ...

-Permian

Supai Group The Supai Group is a slope-forming sequence of mixed red beds and limestones that outcrop in the Colorado Plateau. The group was laid down during the Pennsylvanian to Lower Permian. Cliff-forming interbeds of sandstone are noticeable througho ...

. Further down are strata of the cliff-forming

Mississippian Mississippian may refer to: * Mississippian (geology), a subperiod of the Carboniferous period in the geologic timescale, roughly 360 to 325 million years ago * Mississippian cultures, a network of precontact cultures across the midwest and Easte ...

Redwall Limestone The Redwall Limestone is an erosion-resistant, Mississippian age, cliff-former, cliff-forming geological formation that forms prominent, red-stained cliffs in the Grand Canyon. these cliffs range in height from to . It is one of the most fossili ...

, and slope-forming

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

Tonto Group The Tonto Group is a name for an assemblage of related sedimentary strata, collectively known by geologists as a '' Group'', that comprises the basal sequence Paleozoic strata exposed in the sides of the Grand Canyon. As currently defined, the T ...

. Elaine Castle owes its isolation to lines of fracture.Noble, L. F., ''The Shinumo Quadrangle, Grand Canyon District, Arizona'', Bulletin 549, United States Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), page 79. Precipitation runoff from Elaine Castle drains south to the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

via Shinumo Creek.

References

External links

Elaine Castle photo
Kaibab.org
Elaine Castle with Holy Grail Temple
photo at Kaibab.org
Photo of Elaine Castle from Lancelot Point
by

Elaine Castle photo
by Harvey Butchart * Weather forecast
National Weather Service
{{Geology of the Grand Canyon area, , state=collapsed Grand Canyon Landforms of Coconino County, Arizona Mountains of Arizona Two-thousanders of the United States Colorado Plateau Grand Canyon National Park Grand Canyon, North Rim Sandstone formations of the United States

History

Geology

See also

References

External links