The rapid movement along this fault is a big part of the Alta experience.  From the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon to the top of Mount Baldy you pass through eight separate climatic zones.
They are:

• Desert Shrub zone of sagebrush, rabbit brush and grasses. 
• Oak Woodland consisting of scrub oak and Desert Mahogany.
• Piñon Pine and Juniper forest.
• Pine Forest
• Subalpine Fir Forest.
• Englemann Spruce and Subalpine Fir Forest.
• Krummholz Alpine Zone of stunted evergreens and tundra.
• Alpine tundra.

Most of Alta falls within the Englemann Spruce and Subalpine Fir Forest with thick stands of evergreens, beautiful meadows, babbling brooks and scattered groves of Limber Pines clinging to rocky cliffs.   The top of the Sugarloaf chair marks the Krummolz zone and the transition to the zone of Alpine tundra capping Sugarloaf Peak and Mount Baldy.

The enormous movement along the Wasatch Fault over the past tens of thousands of years is displayed in this photo of “triangular facets” on ridges immediately south of Little Cottonwood Canyon.  Notice how the ridge lines terminate at the edge of the Salt Lake Valley in flat triangular planes.  This is the actual fault plane of the Wasatch Fault which has truncated the original erosional topography.

The rapid movement along this fault is a big part of the Alta experience.  From the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon to the top of Mount Baldy you pass through eight separate climatic zones.
They are:

• Desert Shrub zone of sagebrush, rabbit brush and grasses. 
• Oak Woodland consisting of scrub oak and Desert Mahogany.
• Piñon Pine and Juniper forest.
• Pine Forest
• Subalpine Fir Forest.
• Englemann Spruce and Subalpine Fir Forest.
• Krummholz Alpine Zone of stunted evergreens and tundra.
• Alpine tundra.

Most of Alta falls within the Englemann Spruce and Subalpine Fir Forest with thick stands of evergreens, beautiful meadows, babbling brooks and scattered groves of Limber Pines clinging to rocky cliffs.   The top of the Sugarloaf chair marks the Krummolz zone and the transition to the zone of Alpine tundra capping Sugarloaf Peak and Mount Baldy.

The Wasatch Fault is a high angle normal fault, dipping steeply to the west. The fault is active today, with at least 19 major earthquakes documented along the fault over the last six thousand years (UGS, 1996). Although there have been no recent large movements along the fault, evidence of potentially catastrophic earthquakes are well preserved in glacial sediments at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. These fault scarps are so distinctive that they are frequently pictured in geological and geophysical textbooks. They are easily observed from G. K. Gilbert Geologic Park located at the corner of Wasatch Boulevard and Little Cottonwood Road.

Movement along the Wasatch Fault is believed to have begun approximately 20 million years ago. Movement rates are extremely rapid in geologic terms, estimated by the Utah Geological Survey to be as much as 130 feet over approximately 16,000 years (UGS, 1996). That equates to an inch of uplift every 10.25 years, which far exceeds the erosion rate. The good news is that the Wasatch Mountains are getting higher; the bad news is that there is the potential for a devastating earthquake in the Salt Lake Valley. According to the Utah Geological Survey, collectively a large earthquake has occurred along the central portion of the Wasatch Fault once every 350 years. The last large documented earthquake occurred on the Provo segment of the fault approximately 400 years ago.

The most pronounced structural feature is the Wasatch Fault scarp that runs along the range front and is responsible for the uplift of the Wasatch Mountains.

All rocks, including the Alta Stock, are cut by a vast network of near vertical northeast-trending fractures (note red lines on the Geologic Map of Alta). These fractures more or less run parallel to Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Examples of different fault movements are shown.

Compression also caused low-angle thrust faults emplacing older rocks on top of younger ones. The largest of these thrust faults, the Alta Thrust, runs up the east side of Collins Gulch and has shoved the Tintic Quartzite atop much younger limestones.

The Paleozoic sediments at Alta were folded, faulted and fractured during at least four periods of mountain building. These are referred to as the Antler, Sevier, Laramide and Wasatch orogenies (mountain building events). The three earlier mountain building events resulted in compression and folding of the rocks, folding that is well preserved in the Little Cottonwood Tillite on Mount Superior.