Silhouette person standing on Bonneville Salt Flats against cloudy sky, Utah, USA

Water walker?

We’re witnessing a miraculous sight, but not the walk-on-water kind. It may look like this silhouetted subject is striding on the surface of a mountain lake, but that’s actually just a few centimetres of water. When rains fall here on the Bonneville Salt Flats, they form a mirror that stretches up to 40 square miles over the tightly packed saline surface. Some 17,000 years ago, this magical illusion wouldn’t have been possible: back then, the basin lay under hundreds of metres of water as Lake Bonneville covered what’s now northwest Utah, USA.