Winter in Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA

© Don Paulson/Danita Delimon

Winter in the Wild West. How ice sculpted Bryce Canyon

High above sea level, on the Colorado Plateau in Utah, USA, Bryce Canyon National Park is no stranger to blankets of snow like this one. Not so much a canyon as a massive natural amphitheatre, its rim sits at an elevation of more than 8,000ft (2,440m) and water, ice and gravity up here have worked their magic on this strange landscape, sculpting incredible red-rock pinnacles, known as hoodoos.

Winter here sees temperatures shift between sub-zero and above-freezing on a daily basis. The hoodoos formed as water seeped into massive stone plateaus, then froze and expanded to break away chunks of rock. Repeated for aeons, this process has left slender spires of sediment standing throughout Bryce Canyon, now the largest concentration of hoodoos in the world.