Shiprock

Shiprock, or Shiprock Peak (Dine: Tsé Bit' A'í, " winged rock") is a rock formation rising nearly 1,800 feet (540 meters) above the high-desert plain on the Navajo reservation, near the northern New Mexico town of Shiprock. The name derives from its resemblance to an enormous 19th-century Clipper ship.

Shiprock is composed of fractured volcanic breccia, and is the remnant of a solidified lava core which probably was originally formed 2,500–3000 feet (750–1,000 meters) below the earth's surface, but was revealed by millions of years of erosion. Wall-like sheets of lava, known as dikes, radiate away from the central formation.

The Navajo have a number of legends associated with Shiprock, and consider it sacred. So although the sheer walls would seem to invite serious mountain climbers (it was first scaled in 1939, by a Sierra Club party including David R. Brower), climbing it is currently illegal.

Tony Hillerman's mystery novel The Fallen Man centers on the discovery of a long-dead climber found atop Shiprock.