The China’s Rainbow Mountains within the Zhangye Danxia National Geological Park are one of the best kept secrets of the wonders of the Earth. The complex of reliefs that rise above the horizon seem to have been painted with color palettes from a world different from ours, gigantic brushstrokes adorn the landscape and resemble enormous rainbows reflected in the undulating terrain.
To the northeast China in Linze and Sunan counties in Zhangye prefecture, there is a complex of mountainous reliefs that has been named National Geological Park for the beauty it hides. With a extension of more than 300 square kilometershouses a series of very peculiar ones since they seem to undulate as if they were waves of colors.
The Rainbow Mountains live up to their name in an impressive way, they seem to be the one that, with the passage of time, managed to create a colorful work of art with ineffable symmetry. The landscape is full of a palette of colors dominated by ocher that degrade to blues, greens and yellows.
What causes the colors of the Rainbow Mountains?
The Rainbow Mountains belong to the Cretaceous, long before the Himalayas began their formation. These are sandstone and siltstone formations that deposited in the soil the necessary amount of different types of minerals that are responsible for the different colors that adorn the landscape that resemble brush stroke marks.
What was once a flat and horizontal landscape with different layers of sand and silt, was interrupted by the violent collision between two of the most imposing in the region, The Indian Plate collided directly with the Eurasian Plate about 55 million years agobeginning the formation of one of the most peculiar geological regions in the world.
Just like when two cars collide and the bumpers fold, the terrain above Zhangye that was rather flat at that time, folded into the various Rainbow Mountains that can be admired there today. In the process, sedimentary rocks were raised that otherwise would not have been exposed to the elements and, on the contrary, would still be below the surface, very hidden in the bowels of the earth.
Weathering and erosion encouraged by the collision between the two plates removed the upper layers of continental siliciclastic rocks and exposed the underlying formations that had different chemical and mineralogical compositions. As a result, wavy mountains emerged with interspersed color palettes that resemble an earthly rainbow.
This type of mountains are extremely rare although it is known that those that rise in Zhangye, are not the only ones in the world, about 100 kilometers from the Peruvian city of Cusco, there is the Mountain of Seven Colors also known as Vinicunca. It is believed that both share the ancestral geological process that finally gave them their colorful colorations. Without a doubt, they are geological wonders that show us that when it comes to phenomena from the bowels of the Earth, the complexity is simply unimaginable.
Images credit: Imagine China