GRAND, BRYCE, ZION, CANYONLAND AND THE ARCHES. CANYONS ROCK!!!! PART I THE GRAND

ALL PERSONAL PICTURES AND TEXT ARE COPYRIGHTED BY DON AND SARA SCHULTZ. (ACQUIRED GRAPHICS CREDITED)

William Durant, an 1967 American Pulitzer Prize philosopher and co author (with his wife) of the exhaustive 11 volume History of Civilization, once remarked, “Civilizations exist by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.” Few places in the Continental United States better illustrate the awesome power of geologic change than the National Parks along the southern edge of an area known as the Colorado Plateau along the Northern Arizona Southern Utah-New Mexico border.

The Colorado Plateau is an area of 130,000 square miles within western Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, southern and eastern Utah, and northern Arizona. About 90% of the area is drained by the Colorado River and its main tributaries: the Green, San Juan and Little Colorado. It is a landscape unlike any other. The nickname "Red Rock Country" suggests the brightly colored rock left bare to the view by dryness and erosion. Rugged canyons, towering cliffs, winding rivers and soaring arches combine with other natural features to impress the eye. Domes, hoodoos, fins, reefs, goblins, river narrows, natural bridges, and slot canyons are only some of the amazing features typical of the edge of the Colorado Plateau. These geologic wonders have led to the creation of the greatest concentration of National Parks in the United States. Starting at the bottom of the Grand Staircase (Escalante) in northern Arizona and moving northeast, the parks included are the Grand Canyon NP, Zion NP, Bryce Canyon NP, Capitol Reef NP, Canyonlands NP and Arches NP. Sara and I visited them all over a one month period of time.

This incredible journey truly is like moving down a staircase as the bottom of Canyonlands and the Arches is the top of Bryce, the bottom of Bryce is the top of Zion and the bottom of Zion is at the same level as the of the northern rim of the Grand Canyon. The word “escalante” is fitting because it comes from the root escalate and the as one moves from the top of the Grand Staircase to the bottom things really explode in size and dimensions. Tying all the parks together is the mighty Colorado River. It is 1,450 miles (2,333 km) long and runs from its source in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado to the Gulf of California in Mexico.

We started our adventure at the bottom of the stairs, the Grand Canyon and what a grand canyon it is! John Wesley Powell, (1869) the first explorer to map and photograph the area described the canyon this way: “The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic arts are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.” Theodore Roosevelt in a 1903 speech said of this amazing geologic rift, “"Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it."

According to the National Park Service, the average stay at the Grand Canyon for its over 5 million yearly visitors is less than 8 hours. Sara and I were privileged to enjoy over a week at the south rim. Plenty of time to hike to the bottom and back and that is about how long it would have taken us. Between the thin air, (elevation 7-8 thousand ft), weak knees and the ever present warnings of the Park Service, “There are no easy hikes in the canyon!” we decided not to make the trip on foot. The picture on a park plaque of an unfortunate hiker heaving his guts out and the expressions on the faces of families as they finally struggled to the top of the rim after an exhausting hike up after such a leisurely trip down (Park rangers recommend to allow two hours up for every hour down and they will NOT come and get you) confirmed that we had made a prudent decision. The fact that Sara slipped and fell six feet from the edge of the rim didn't exactly reinforce our sense of adventure and exploration. You can also ride a mule down the trail but not wanting to smell like a barnyard for a day or two in an RV, we limited our adventure to hiking the many trails along the rim of the canyon. It was still an incredible week.

We hiked the miles and miles of paths at sunrise, mid day and sunset and every visit was a new experience. The position of the sun, cloud cover, weather conditions and air quality make the view from the edge an ever changing kaleidoscope of colors and hues. Talk about a photographer’s paradise. The Grand Canyon is only 5 to 6 million years old, yet the countless layers of rocks record over 2 billion, yes, billion years of geologic time. The colors of the different layers of rock that make up the walls of the canyon are due to their individual composition. Minerals such as iron oxide are often dissolved out of the layers by seeping water. This causes the colors to run into the layers below to form visual rainbows on the rock face.

According the Park Service, the most asked questions by awe struck visitors are: How did the Grand Canyon in all its breath taking beauty get that way? What happened to cause this natural wonder to form? Simply put, why does it look like it does? In fact, as we moved across the Colorado Plateau up the Grand Staircase (Escalante) from the Grand Canyon National Park in north central Arizona to Bryce National Park, to Zion National Park, to Canyonlands National Park and finally Arches National Park in southeast Utah, the pattern was the same. While each park had its own unique history, flora and fauna and individual wonders including waterfalls, hanging gardens, hoodoos and monuments, the most asked question consistently remained, “Why does it look like it does?” In each park the answer to this all important question varies slightly, but the forces that formed these national treasures remain surprisingly the same. At the risk of boring every soul whose eyes descend on these words, a feat that I was consistently able to achieve day after day, month after month, year after year as a high school science teacher for over 34 years, a few sentences of explanation seem to be in order. For those uninterested as were most of my students, do what they did. Stop reading and skip to the pictures at the end or put your head down. And no you cannot go to the bathroom.

Some wise educator once said that a really good teacher is one that can explain a complex concept in such a way that all of his students, from the most intelligent to the most impenetrable will understand. I shall try.

We shall try to understand these amazing landforms that are in all of the parks of the Grand Staircase by answering two basic questions.

1. Where did all the rocks come from?

2. What happened to the rocks to make them look the way like they do?

To begin with, keep in mind that all of this took place over a very, very long time. Scientists believe that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the oldest rock in the bottom of any of these parks is about 2 billion years old. That means that where ever these rocks came from, they were formed a little over half way through the earth’s existence. Also the age of, for instance, the Grand Canyon, is about 3 to 4 million years old, so what ever happened to the rocks to make them look the way they do, it is a very, very, very recent occurrence in geologic time. Sort of like yesterday so to speak.

First question: Where do the rocks come from?

If you were to slice the earth in half like a grapefruit and look in the inside, you'd come to realize that the part we are walking around on is awfully thin, kind of like the rind of the grapefruit, only thinner. In fact, the crust, the part we see, is only 1% of the total diameter. The next layer or remainder of the mantle makes up 84% of the total and the very hot, liquid core makes up the last 15%. We know the core of the earth is very hot because the closer we get to it, the warmer it gets. Descend down a deep mine shaft like the Western Deep Levels Gold Mine operated by the Anglogold company in South Africa, and at 2.33 miles down, the temperature is over 160 degrees. And keep in mind the earth is over 7000 miles in diameter. We have hardly scratched the surface or crust.

All the rocks we see on the surface where we are walking around came originally from below. Well, meteors that have hit the earth from the depths of space would be a rare exception. The rocks all originally were molten and they flowed from below as a liquid, cooled, and became very hard. Those types of rocks are called igneous and are some of the oldest on earth. Basalt and obsidian are examples. Once this type of rock reached the surface of the earth, things started to happen. Igneous rocks are rearranged by the action of wind and especially water (oceans, lakes, rivers and streams and rain) and the weight of surrounding rocks themselves (pressure and heat). As the igneous rocks are broken into smaller and smaller pieces, they are often rearranged into layers,thick and thin, and squeezed together to form sedimentary rocks like sandstone and limestone. If the rock particles are squeezed hard enough and with enough heat, the rocks can be turned into the last type of rock, metamorphic (change in form) like marble and granite. Metamorphic rocks often have ribbons or crystals in them. Well, that answers the first question as to where the rocks come from.

Now to answer the second question.

What happens to the rocks to make them look the way they do in these magnificent national parks?
To answer that question, let’s imagine that we are looking at a given cross section of a national park like the Grand Canyon before it became a canyon. We will use a huge cake as an example and we are looking at the top. Below are hundreds of layers running horizontally. These layers are different colors, different thicknesses and made up of types of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock that were laved down millions and millions of years ago. The layers got that way by the action of oceans, rivers, streams, volcanoes and glaciers in the past. Now just to mix up the layers a bit more, grab the cake and break it into several large pieces by pulling one half up and pushing one half down and then patting it all back together. That is the action of ancient earthquakes and the fact that huge sections of the earth’s crust called plates (pieces of the cake) love to ride up over one another where the edges touch each another. Remember these plates are “floating” on the liquid layers below and they often move. As one edge rides up, the other layer is pushed down and rocks that were once in layers flat to the horizon become more vertical, sometimes thousands of feet high. As the edge of one of the layers rides up, mountains are formed. That is why so many mountains like the Rockies and the Appalachians run in long lines across the land. And we know this because we often find fossils of ocean creatures on the top of mountains. So the top layer of our cake can and often is very bumpy. Geologists have given these bumps fancy names like peaks, buttes, mesas, spirals and so on.

But of all the forces that form what we see at famous national parks like Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Canyonlands and Arches, the most powerful is water. Moving water is very heavy and can do incredible things to the surface of the earth and to our cake. Let’s tilt our multi layered cake on an angle so that it is not COMPLETELY level on top. And let’s imagine there is a huge ocean just above the cake. Take a sharp knife and cut a tiny groove across the cake so that the water begins to flow down the crack. As the water flows, it cuts into the cake exposing the multifaceted layers below. As the groove gets deeper the water runs faster and cuts more and more of the sides of the developing crack. The flowing water acts as a very efficient conveyor belt carrying all the displaced pieces of rock down stream. Because the layers below are of different colors, hardness and general composition, the walls of our developing canyon have a vast variety of appearances. It is estimated that the Grand Canyon has over 40 distinct layers of rock. The top layer is estimated to be over a million years old based on fossils found at that level. And that is the “youngest” layer. Sometimes the water even moves around certain portions of the walls because the rock is so hard in the middle but soft on sides. The rushing water leaves columns of rock like huge pedestals hundreds of feet high, sometimes hundreds and hundreds of them like a forest of rock “trees”. Probably no other park is more famous for these formation than Bryce National Park where there are tens of thousand of these geologic gems called “hoodoos” that dominate the landscape.

One of the most common questions about these canyons is how did they get so wide? The Grand Caynon is an average of 10 miles across and as much as 18 miles rim to rim at its widest point. Surely that tiny little river, the Colorado didn’t wash out all that rock. By the way, the total amount of rock removed to form the Grand Canyon is in the hundreds, yes hundreds of cubic miles, yes miles. Even today the Colorado is estimated to remove over 400,000 tons of rock daily. Where does all that rock go? Well, it is carried into the Gulf of California as it has been since the beginning. But I digress. How did the canyon get so wide? One has to remember that water does not just flow in one direction from the top of the canyon to the bottom.

Water also flows down the SIDES of the canyon. The same action that cuts into our cake’s groove making it deeper is also at work from the sides of the groove in countless locations. This makes it wider. A lot wider. Probably the largest side groove in the Grand Canyon is Bright Angel that forms the trail of the same name. It is miles across and all that rock went down the same conveyor belt, the Colorado River. After the action of these countless side rivers, over millions of years, the Grand Canyon, as have all the canyons of the Southwest, has reached its massive depth and width. And that doesn't count the action of wind, (which is actually over rated) rain and chemical breakdown of the rocks due to weak acid in that rain. And before we leave the action of water on rock, one last force, probably the second most powerful after the cutting edge of moving water is freezing water. Most of the Canyons of the Grand Staircase have over 20 freeze-thaw cycles per year. Rain and snow fall down the vertical cracks and flow into the horizontal fissures of countless rock surfaces in all of these canyons. As the water freezes and expands, it, like a powerful ram, pushes the rock faces apart ever so slightly. I was told by one ranger that if you come to the Grand Canyon in the winter and early spring, you can almost hear the rock walls creaking and moaning under the stress. The ice melts only to refreeze and push a little farther. Eventually massive sections of rock are separated and come tumbling down the walls of the canyons. Sometimes entire hillsides crash to the depths below. All the time this process makes the canyon deeper and deeper and wider and wider. Even the roots of thousands of plants, most notably the trees that dot the canyon walls, miraculously eaking out an existence, add to the beauty of the landscape and the process of canyon formation by separating the rocks.

If unlike most of my students, you are are still awake, please bear with me for one last explanation. Sara and I spent two weeks at Canyonlands and the Arches National Parks near Moab, Utah. The parks are on highest step of the Grand Staircase above the Grand Canyon. This is the heart of Red Rock country and the ATV capital of the world. The main attraction of the area is those incredible rock arches. How did they form? Did the water and wind find a weak point in a vertical slab of rock and punch a hole through it? Well, not really. Arches are formed when layers of sandstone are first pushed from a horizontal arrangement to a vertical position by the forces of those huge plates colliding into one another. One plate dives under the other, pushing the top one to a vertical position. These vertical columns are often in sets in the middle of an open desert area with nothing of any great significance around them. They stand alone like giant sentinels. The action of rain and snow freezing and melting in the now vertical cracks or joints in soft sedimentary sandstone causes the columns to become thinner and thinner. Finally when several of the joints that are parallel to one another are exposed to the prying force of the freeze-thaw cycle, a small section of rock face falls away to form a hole in the huge plate. The hole then increases in size by the action of wind and water.

If the rock in the center is softer than the top or bottom, the hole is worn away faster until huge, graceful arches of rock are formed. The most famous of the hundreds of arches in the Mohab area is Landscape Arch, the longest in the world at 290 ft. In geologic time, the life span of most arches is short. Eventually these magnificent examples of natural wonder come crashing down. But not to worry, more are being formed everyday.

John Westley Powell, the one armed Civil War veteran, and the first to explore the wonders of the Grand Staircase, said of the Grand Canyon, the most visited of the all the parks, “The glories and beauties of form, color and sound unite in the Grand Canyon... It has infinite variety and no part is ever duplicated. Its colors, although many and complex at any instant, change with the ascending and declining sun... You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view...but to see it you have to toil from month to month through this labyrinth...but if strength and courage are sufficient for the task, by a year's toil a concept of sublimity can be obtained never again to be equaled on hither side of Paradise."

What follows is my humble attempt to capture the wonders of the Grand Canyon in pictures. Sara and I were on many occasions brought to tears over the beauty of it all. Go see the Canyon!!! You will never regret it!!!