A Geological Raft Trip in the Grand Canyon

When in France they say ... taste the wine. When in Rome ... do not miss the food. And when in the Grand Canyon ... you simply must yield to the magic of deep time. Where the Colorado River has carved a mile deep gorge, 20 lucky souls were captivated by the pull of the great river in a sweet, moonlit canyon. On a geology charter trip organized by Jan Taylor and outfitted by Arizona Raft Adventures, I was along as a honorary "reader of the rocks". Our group was wonderful! The guides were fantastic! And we all left the canyon imbued with the spirit of beauty and peace that permeates this blissful place.







Entering the Grand Canyon below Lees Ferry. Although the river cuts into the rock at only about eight feet per mile, the strata rise up at the same time at over 100 feet per mile. We are soon immersed in a great, rocky gorge.







One of our boats splashing in House Rock Rapid - big for sure but not scary and nothing that should deter a trip on the river in Grand Canyon.



Beautiful Redwall Cavern, a large eddy-carved depression in the Redwall Limestone.



A typical camp scene along the river. Here, our guide Rob Elliott is blowing a conch shell to announce that dinner is ready. Come and get it!!

This is the "classroom" and "office" where I get to live and work. The "book of geology" is open and people learn so quickly from it.

A calm morning on the river as our boats headed downstream towards Nankoweap Canyon. The weather was perfect on this trip.

The full moon setting as the sun rises on Vishnu Temple, September 16, 2008. Photo taken from Cardenas Camp.














An MNA archaeological dig near Unkar.

Sue and Jan get clean in Clear Creek.

A long exposure of the "horizontal waterfall" up in Clear Creek.







Tapeats Creek is one of my favorite side canyons! Here, a Cardinal Monkey flower sings in ecstasy as it drinks from these pure waters.











In the background you can see a classic angular unconformity. About 525 million year ago, beach sands (Tapeats Sandstone) were washed over an eroded edge of the Hakatai Shale (tilted red beds. In this way, an ancient island was buried in sand.







We hiked up Tapeats Creek to see Thunder River, where a spring issues forth from the base of the Redwall Limestone.




















A beautiful rock garden in Matkatamiba Canyon.

This is what we had to do to get up to the rock garden. Toni and Mary showing good form as they "bridge" across the creek.





An unusual camp at a place called Upper Ledges. We got nice and cozy here as we slept on the rock ledges.

Hands across Havasu - we made many new friends along the way. The trip proved to be an excellent way to learn about earth history and we came away with a greater appreciation of the splendor and beauty of the Grand Canyon. Join me next year as I repeat this trip with Canyoneers, September 13 to 22, 2009.

A Summertime Hike Into A Wilderness Canyon

During the week of July 21, I backpacked for four days into a wilderness canyon in southeast Utah. I was traveling with four of my best friends and we saw some pretty amazing things. Below are a few photos from the trip. Of course, photo's cannot capture the real beauty of a place but they can give a sense for the flavor of how life must have been for our Anasazi ancestors over 800 years ago. Enjoy the ride!

Wow - check out this huge alcove carved out of the sides of the canyon walls. Sites like this were ideal for habitation and rock art.

Here John is observing one of the best rock art panels I have ever seen in the whole southwest. The Anasazi used rock pigments mixed with organic substances to "fix" the images on the canyon walls. What they stand for we can only guess but to visit such a site is a remarkable experience.

These pictographs are perfectly preserved after 800 years. Whatever material was used to denote the head has weathered away leaving these ghostly, headless figures.

We moved to another of the seemingly endless alcoves. The scenery was surreal - a world unto itself and set within the outer world.

Here we found a fantastic ruined house. It had a split-level design and much of the roof was still intact. We were in awe.

The inhabitants had left their "signature" on the wall behind the house. It says, "I was here but you are now. Enjoy the ride".

Here's a view from above the house looking out to our camp across the way. It was wonderfully eerie to think that others had experienced this view over 800 years ago. What did they think? Did they have any idea that the earth is 25,000 miles in circumference?

The evidence was everywhere that these people left their home relatively quickly. Ancient corn cobs and pottery was everywhere. It means so much more when it is just left here in its rightful place.

I looked closely at the end of one of the roof beams. There in front of me was the evidence that someone had chopped down this tree with a stone axe - the scars were clearly visible. The center part of the wood had not been chopped, rather it looked like the people had pushed over the tree at the last moment to make the final break. On the other side of this log was the cork-filled hole where a dendrochronologist had made a determination for the exact year that the tree had been felled. Amazing.

I've Been Blogged!

I recently traveled on a GrandLuxe Rail journey giving lectures from Albuquerque to Grand Canyon. One of my fellow passengers, Ruth Mitchell, wrote about me on her blog, which you can find at: http://www.buyoutsidethebox.com/blog/ You can follow along with Ruth on the rest of her journey to Yellowstone. Here is what she shared about the Grand Canyon experience:

SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 2008

Day 3 Grand Rail Luxe Journey - Grand Canyon

It's been a wonderful day. We drove right up the edge of the Grand Canyon in the train, and took a tour with Wayne Ranney, a geologist who had been traveling with us and lecturing since we left Albuquerque. He is very knowledgeable, so it was a real treat to tour some of the highlights of the South Rim with him. We purchased his book, Carving Grand Canyon, and I look forward to reading it as he was such a delightful tour guide.

Green Green Coastal Alaska!

It's been a few years since I visited southeast Alaska and I had almost forgotten just how green it is! This was a trip on the Lindblad/National Geographic Sea Lion, one of the ships I used to work on. I was lecturing as a Study Leader for Smithsonian Journeys. There were 23 wonderful and gracious Smithsonian travelers but the entire ship manifest listed 54 passengers. It was great to come back to this part of the world.


Our first stop was at the Eagle Recovery Center in Sitka, where injured eagles are rehabilitated for release into the wild

A look at one of the twelve totem poles at Sitka National Historic Park

Sunset at 10:30 PM near the Pacific Ocean entrance to the Sitka area

The beauty of George Island, another section of southeast Alaska very close to the open waters of the Pacific Ocean


Mossy tree branches. Everything is so green!





















We saw many brown bears on this trip. Their populations seem to be doing quite well here.

A colorful garage with fishing gear in Petersburg





Reflections in the harbor at Petersburg. Sons of Norway Hall




Trails in southeast Alaska are built of planks and are quite pleasant to walk on





The Marguerite Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park!





After entering the Endicott Arm, we began seeing blue icebergs!





In the not too distant past, this U-shaped valley contained a glacier







This is the Dawes Glacier in Endicott Arm




We saw a calving of the glacier and here you can see the big splash from the ice fall. The height of the ice is almost 180 feet!







Here's a picture of one of our zodiacs cruising in the icebergs





And a look at the Sea Lion in Endicott Arm

In Juneau, the capital of Alaska, we arrived at the end of our trip during the famous "Celebration", when the Native people parade downtown. This man was way into it!

And a close-up of his face

The Continuing Controversy Over the Age of the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon has been in the national spotlight recently regarding its enigmatic age. In February, three workers published a paper in Science stating that some portions of the canyon may be as old as 17 million years. (You would have thought that they had proposed that the Grand Canyon didn't actually exist from the way some geologists responded to the news). And just this month, another set of workers independently reported in the GSA Bulletin that portions of the canyon might be as old as 50 million years. The oft-repeated age of the Grand Canyon is set at 6 million years. Why do such varying ages keep cropping up?

First of all, where does the 6 million year old date come from? That is the age of the youngest part of the Hualapai Limestone Member of the Muddy Creek Formation. Exposed at the base of the Grand Wash Cliffs, this unit does not contain material derived from the modern Colorado River. This means that the river as we know it today, was not contributing (much) material to the Hualapai Limestone and that the river must be less than 6 million years. We define the modern river as one that flows out of the Grand Wash Cliffs towards the Gulf of California.

Many geologists have used this criteria to establish an age for the Grand Canyon as well, for without the river there would be no Grand Canyon. However, is it possible to have had some portion of the Grand Canyon in existence before the modern river came into being? This seems entirely possible to me since it would be quite unreasonable to assume that the canyon appeared in an instant upon the landscape. It may be a bit of a stretch then to use the same criteria for the beginning of the modern river, to that for the beginning of the canyon. Compounding the problem is that no one actually states how the beginning of the Grand Canyon should be defined. Is the beginning of the canyon the same as the beginning of the river? (If so, does that take into consideration that the modern river is an evolved descendent from some earlier river?). Or is the beginning of the canyon defined by some other criteria? Like the initial exposure of the Kaibab Limestone (rim rock) by river erosion. There are even more possibilities that could define the beginning of the Grand Canyon - an earlier canyon in the same place but into strata now completely eroded away, etc.

The modern Colorado River is believed by some to have been cobbled together from separate and distinct prior river systems. The evidence from the Hualapai Limestone Member reflects the moment in time when these separate systems were finally integrated. This integration could have been from stream capture by headward erosion, overspill from ancient lakes, or some combination of the two. In any event, these prior systems must have cut into the landscape to some extent and I believe that the recent works pick up on this idea. In this way, we could admit that parts of the Grand Canyon (both laterally and vertically) were in existence prior to 6 million years ago, while still accepting that the modern Colorado River only came into being after 6 million years ago. In this way, an older version of the canyon and a younger version of the river are both possible.

As so often is the case in any human endeavor, miscommunication, misunderstanding, and the misreading of ideas ultimately leads to the very human trait of creating conflict where in fact none may actually exist. Geologists are remiss to not have fully defined the many different aspects of this debate. And they have not given names to the prior landscape elements that may have existed. (For example, an older version of the canyon, before the modern river was in existence, could be called a proto-Grand Canyon). When specific definitions are given and explained, a clearer understanding of the possibilities emerge. My view is that portions of the canyon were in place before 6 million years ago and the new research supports this view although I still accept that the modern river is only 6 million years old.

I am reminded of an example given in "Carving Grand Canyon" (page 99, second to last paragraph):

"Deciphering the history of the Grand Canyon is similar to the story of how the three blind men describe the elephant that they can touch but cannot see. Each speaks the truth for that part of the animal that they happen to touch, but their descriptions sound as if they are describing three different animals".

This "controversy" too then, is an example of geologists describing parts of the canyon but perhaps not the whole.

Comments welcome. More later.

Wayne Ranney, Geologist

Off to London - Trip over.

Today we are flying back to London for the night. The trip is over! I'll be in Flagstaff (with luck) on Friday night. Keep looking here for other blogs from Arizona. Thanks for reading.

Uganda

Colorful Uganda! What a welcome we received. This woman was part of a colorful dance troop that greeted us at the airport. Each African country has its own flavor and the people of Uganda seem very easy going and happy. Contrast that with what most of us know of the country, a certain person named Idi Amin. Strange how such tiny bits of information tend to keep us from really knowing the depth and breadth of things.

Check out this hippopotamus in its very own private pool! We traveled to the far western end of Uganda to Queen Elizabeth National Park to see the wildlife here. Unfortunately, we learned that these hippo's are subjected to poaching by some of the locals and there are guards of rangers that patrol these pools at night.

A close-up view. They are amazing!

At another location we saw this encounter when one male tried to get in the water with the harem of the dominant male. The dominate male would have no part of it and came out the water to chase down the interloper. A fast paced chase ensued. The hippo is considered one of the most dangerous animals in Africa and people die all the time from their encounters with them. They are extremely fast for large animals.