Monthly Archives: February 2018

Kodel’s Canyon

Geologic Time Scale

Growing up in Fruita, Colorado on Colorado’s Western Slope I had rich opportunities for exploration.  The area is amazingly diverse, offering the 10,000 foot elevation Grand Mesa to the east, the stark Bookcliffs to the north, and the spectacular red rock canyons of the Colorado National Monument just south of town.  All this surrounds the Grand Valley where I grew up. These areas and others were within short driving distance, with the Monument in bicycle range just across the Colorado River.

My friends and I used to take our .22s across the river and assault hundreds of rocks.  Our wandering took us across the National Monument boundary into Kodel’s Canyon.  Nobody went there in those days so we didn’t worry about having illegal guns in the park.  The canyon was smaller than the others, but we had the place to ourselves.  The approach is a deeply eroded plain of Dakota Sandstone from the river to the canyon.  The Cretaceous Dakota grades off to the Mancos Shale of the Grand Valley floor.

Kodel’s Canyon

That Mancos Shale is usually called Stinking Desert by many.  It is somewhat infertile unless well drained, and results in mostly barren gray flats.  Lots of barren gray flats from central Utah to Delta, Colorado.  With water and good drainage to carry the salt away, it can be farmland.  We would leave home on the valley floor and climb into the red rock Kodel’s Canyon.  At the mouth of the Canyon is the Kodel’s Canyon fault, where the Uncompahgre Uplift shoved all those Older Jurassic red rocks above the Cretaceous Valley.

Looking at the Grand Valley from Colorado National Monument

The bottom of the canyon is smooth rounded granite and schist geologists call basement rocks.  They are seldom found exposed on the Colorado Plateau, covered by thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks.  The time gap between those old basement rocks and the sedimentary rocks sitting on them is over a billion years.  It’s called the Great Unconformity, where all the rocks deposited during that billion years were eroded away.  This gap is found in many places worldwide, but there are also many places where the rocks missing in our canyon were deposited and remain to be seen and enjoy.  Think the Flatirons, Red Rocks, and the Garden of the Gods, all Cambrian.  Those rocks sit on Precambrian Gneiss and Schist 1.7 billion years old.

Those old rounded black rocks are great for climbing and we did it.  Today it’s called bouldering.  We didn’t have climbing ropes, so we used our .22s as climbing aids.  Dangerous?  Yes. Fun? You bet.

Among the guys I grew up with, only one had any injury running around across the river.  Jerry had a seriously sprained ankle.  The two guys with him helped him down to the road and help.  He exploited the ankle to excess.  At Boy Scouts we always played Capture the Flag after the meeting.  Jerry would hobble down to get the flag defying anyone to stop him.  I walked over and pushed him down.  I don’t think he ever forgave me.

Driving Around in Cars

We live in a car culture.  The economy is based on the auto an oil and gas industries.  Most of us think of cars as a gateway to personal freedom.  We devote much of our resources, monetary and mental, to the automobile. Our culture is so strong in its emphasis on cars that we  have succumbed.

Carol’s car was getting old and the new safety equipment with all the sensors and warnings seems more important as we age.  She has a Mazda crossover SUV.  I got a Subaru Crosstrek, good for light backcountry driving.

My old ride was a fine 2009 Toyota pickup, great in the boonies but I am giving serious four wheeling up.  Too much risk at my age because I tend to go alone to tough places and turn off into tougher places.  My regular driving has changed as well.  Every few years I have a momentary lapse and some sheet metal gets bent.  This time I pulled out in front of an oncoming car.  $4000 damage to my truck, probably about the same to the other car.

Now there is technology in cars to help prevent some of those events.  I need as many external sensors as I can get, as my built in sensors have never been all that good and are getting a bit worse as I age.  That safety stuff is a bit expensive, but cheaper than an accident.

I am attempting to let go of as much artificial desire as possible and a new car doesn’t fit with the goal.  Well, whatever.  “We’re living in a plastic land.”  I could do most of my running around on my bicycle(s), and did for a while, but got away from riding.  I am not sure I will start again.  So I am going to support the Japanese auto industry and support our auto broker.

Instead of letting desire go I am feeding a craving.  Will I ever be able to let go before age and infirmity force me to?  Stay tuned.

Plate Tectonics

Western Colorado’s Grand Valley

As a Western Colorado Native, having lots of geology looking down on me sparked my interest in the field.  I have to know, so knowing how the Bookcliffs, Grand Mesa, and the Colorado National Monument got there stirred my curiosity.  Plate Tectonics is responsible for that stuff poking up all over the place.

Back in the Permian when I took geology at Mesa College, the orthodox explanation for mountain building was something called isostasy.  Push down in one place, and something will pop up nearby.  New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta is sinking under the weight of all that mud coming down the river.  New England is rising a little because that heavy glacial ice sheet melted.  Geologist tried to make isostasy work in places like California with little success.

The early twentieth century saw some new thinking.  Alfred Wegener proposed that continents move around on our sphere.  He was laughed at when he gave papers on the idea.  Yes, Africa and South America look like they once fit together, but how can an entire continent move?  That is a lot of mass to be sliding around.

In the nineteen sixties new thinking started to change attitudes.  Why are there identical fossils on the African and South American coasts?  The real game changer came when oceanic exploration found the mid-oceanic ridges with young basalt near the ridges and steadily getting older farther away.  The only explanation was a spreading seafloor.  Things are on the move.

After college I subscribed to Scientific American magazine.  It seemed like a new article appeared every month explaining how physical features are the result of magma (molten or hot and plastic rock) on the move.  There are seven big (North America, Asia) plates and a number of smaller ones being affected by the rock coming from that spreading seafloor.

Subduction

As the oceanic sea floor impacts the boundary of a continent, something has to give.  The more dense seafloor basalt tends to dive under the continent.  They can form trenches almost seven miles deep next to a subduction zone where the plate dives under the lighter rock of a continent.  The subducting rock is wet, and changes chemically forming lighter rock that often belches up as volcanos.  Earthquakes occur as the plates bump against one another, dip, or slide.

The island arcs off Asia are the current example.  Java, the Philippines, Japan, New Guinea are all volcanic islands getting ready to smash into Asia.  India already has, creating the Himalayas at the suture.  Lots of shaking there, too.

Around 1.75 billion years an island arc docked (yes, geologists use that word) on the Wyoming Craton.  The craton has some rocks as old as six billion (abbreviated as 6 ga) years old.  Many of the rocks are around 3 ga.  The oldest Colorado rocks are around 1.75 ga.  Just outside Morrison, Colorado is the Great Unconformity.  The red rocks are about 60 ma (million years).  The dark gneiss and schist just barely up Bear Creek canyon are those 1.75 ga guys.  Lots went on between those dates, but there it is all eroded away.

Snowy Range, formed by Colorado smashing into Wyoming

The Snowy Range in Wyoming is a result of the join-up.  The coastal ranges in California that like to shake and burn and belch fire and rock formed from the collision of the Pacific and North American plates.  As you are probably aware, L.A. is headed for Anchorage.  Don’t worry it’s going to take a while.

The Rocky Mountains are kind of a strange story.  Usually mountain building occurs at plate boundaries, like the Andes and the Cascades.  What is known as the Laramide Orogeny that created the Rockies happened about 800 miles inland.  The idea is that for some reason about 80 ma the pacific plate scooted under the lighter continental rocks before diving. The Rockies came up a bunch, the Colorado Plateau, my homeland, not so much.

The Rockies are now sitting still but the plateau is moving clockwise, pulled by the pacific plate sliding north against and under the north american plate at the continental boundary, as things should happen.  The Basin and Range province, Nevada mostly, is being pulled apart.  For some reason the Colorado Plateau wants to stay in one piece while western Utah, Arizona, and Nevada are coming apart.

All this motion is happening at about the rate your fingernails are growing.  It doesn’t seem like much, but after a few million years we are talking big moves.  Stay tuned.

My favorite book on these topics is Annals of the Former World, by John McPhee.  It is a big book composed of sections covering the territories along I-80.  Great reading.