The Emigrant Trail had been traveling near the Sweetwater River for about 70 miles, but to avoid a steep walled canyon, the trail departs from the floodplain and ascends upward, 700 vertical feet, along a 2-mile course of what some emigrants considered perhaps the most difficult stretch of the entire trail. From a long time ago on the geologic timeline, the bedrock has been upheaved at a slant and exposed the stratified layers of rock. A forty-niner, Peter Decker, described how the rock breaks apart to create “curious rocky riffles or rows of rocks, running lengthwise over ridges of hills, sticking out bristling toward the West.” Another forty-niner, Edward Harrow, described the resulting condition of travel - “It was continual rise and fall, from one rock to another for our wagons, which I thought would every minute fall to the ground smashed to pieces, such was the roughness of the roads.”