AW#52, dream course: the gods must be angry

Vishnu woke up to find himself surrounded by high mountains.

Some say that at the very beginning of time, the Hindu god Vishnu lived by a sea, as did a pair of seagulls.  Every year, the sea washed away the seagulls’ eggs, breaking their hearts.  They went to Vishnu, the great Preserver and Protector, and begged for help.  He felt sorry for them -- he could see their sadness was killing them.  So he drank up the sea, swallowing it all in a single gulp.  He was so full that he had to lie down to rest, soon falling asleep.  When the demon Hiranyaksha, whose mission was to destroy the Earth, saw Vishnu lost in dreams, he attacked and brutalized the land -- breaking it into pieces and pushing up jagged piles of rock that reached to the sky.

Or so some people say.  Others claim the Himalaya was created by jostling and collision of giant plates making up the surface of the Earth.  India was once an island near Australia.  About 200 million years ago, it began moving north, traveling as much as 9 cm per year ... racing right along!  It eventually collided with Asia, destroying the Tethys Sea in the process (the one Vishnu swallowed in a single gulp).  Though its speed has slowed to only 18 mm per year, India keeps moving northward.  As it presses against and is shoved under Asia, the Himalaya continues to rise.

Right:  India races north and collides with Asia, creating the Himalaya in the process.  This seemingly-fanciful story happens to be true!  Diagram courtesy USGS.

The topic for Accretionary Wedge #52, hosted by Shawn of the Vi-Carius Geology Blog, is dream courses -- geology courses we would like to see offered at our universities.  My recommendation for the University of Wyoming is “Geology, History and Legend”, perhaps with a catchy subtitle like “the gods must be angry”.  This would be an opportunity to introduce non-geologists to the subject, using the roles the Earth has played in our stories, and the stories we have come up with to explain what the Earth has done.  It would be for non-majors, interested majors, and in fact anyone in the community.  That community could be worldwide if the course were offered online (I think it would work well online).

The most appealing topics would be short-lived, dramatic, newsworthy events such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and the like.  Some have or may have figured prominently in the course of human history.

Santorini Island, Greece.

The eruption of the Santorin volcano during the Bronze Age (ca 1500 BC) destroyed much of Santorini leaving a dramatic caldera, visible in the photo. The event may have been a factor in the collapse of Minoan Civilization, and also has been linked to the Atlantis myth.

The Dark Ages may have been caused in part by catastrophic volcanism.  Ice cores and tree rings suggest as much.  But no volcanoes have been found to explain the Mystery Cloud of 536, which darkened the skies of Europe.

“And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place.  For the Sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the Moon, during this whole year ... And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.” (Procopius of Caesarea, ca 536/7; from Oppenheimer 2011).

Right:  The Italian scholar Petrarch came up with the term “Dark Ages” for cultural deterioration during post-Roman times. Source.

Bacobaco, a giant turtle, was behind an eruption of the volcano Pinatubo long long ago.  If folks had paid attention to legend, the destructiveness of the 1991 eruption wouldn’t have been such a surprise (see recent post).

Lyuba, a mummified baby mammoth from Siberia.

Climate change, ice ages and continental-scale glaciation are harder to perceive at the human time-scale, but they can grip the public's interest even so.  Maybe it’s because of our current concern for climate change, or maybe it's just the charisma of Pleistocene megafauna.

Given the slow pace of most geologic processes, is there a way to make them interesting, engaging?  I think so -- by using landforms and features that are awesome, dramatic, surreal and easy to see and understand, like the Himalaya - plate tectonics example at the beginning of the post.

Qomolangma (Tibetan) or Sagarmāthā (Nepalese), aka Mount Everest, one of Hiranyaksha's giant piles of broken Earth.   Photo by Lucag.

Wyoming has many easy-to-see landforms and features created by uplift, erosion, extension, frost action, weathering, superpositioning of drainages, and on and on.  The semi-arid climate ensures that they are not obscured by those detested plants!  In the Wind River Canyon (above), a river cuts through a mountain range and changes its name in the process.  Pleistocene periglacial relics can be seen in roadcuts and ditches.  We have many Laramide anticlines and synclines, including the types -- the Laramie Mountains and Laramie Basin (below, click to view).  Their structure often is quite clear from the ground. 

And then there’s Devils Tower -- how much more dramatic can you get?  Those gods must be pretty darn creative at times!

A small rock grew to save a band of people from a giant bear, which left claw marks on the sides.

Ideas for my "dream course" came from recent readings:

Oppenheimer, C.  2011.  Eruptions that shook the world.  Cambridge University Press.

Vitaliano, D.B.  1973.  Legends of the Earth, their geologic origins.  Bloomington:  Indiana University Press.

Geology -- Antidote to Civilization

Where is this?  Second turning to the right, and straight on till morning.

This month’s Accretionary Wedge (#46) is hosted by Cat at Knowledge Flocs.  The topic is the interplay between geology and civilization.  Given that I live in Wyoming, the obvious thing to write about is resource extraction since oil, gas, coal, bentonite etc. are the reasons, direct or indirect, that most of us here are able to make a living.  Revenue from resource extraction really is the basis of our economy.  But it doesn't interest me.  Instead, I’m writing about the role of geology in vacations.

... jump on the wind's back, and then away we go!

Vacation is a major benefit of modern civilization, as we no longer have to work most of our waking hours.  I would argue that it is a necessity as well.  Many of us require relatively little time to secure adequate food and shelter; rarely do we have to defend ourselves to survive.  Even so, we come up with enough other “needs” to keep us plenty stressed -- satisfying possessions, a comfortable home, the latest styles, achievement for ourselves and our offspring, and self-approval in general.  A real vacation, one that removes us for a time from the demanding lives we make for ourselves, is a wonderful thing.

How does geology fit in?  Geobloggers probably already know, but generally when I explain to friends that I’m planning, leaving for, or returning from a geology vacation, they look puzzled and politely mumble something to the effect of “how interesting.”  Little do they know!

First, for those who love the outdoors, geology greatly enhances that passion.  As AW hostess Cat says:  “Understanding the geology of an area only adds to its beauty and can make any adventure more interesting.”  For example --

The scenery along Onion Creek north of Moab, Utah, is spectacular all by itself, but how much more exciting it is with the realization that one is driving through the cap of a collapsed salt dome!  Salt that accumulated in shallow ocean basins 300 million years ago was buried under enough sediment to turn it into plastic goo that flowed and pooled underground, uplifting the dome. Then ground water reached the salt, dissolved it, and the dome collapsed.  Now the Onion Creek Road passes through bizarre contorted beds of gypsum, shale and limestone, relics of Paleozoic seas.

Geo-tripping also is a path to healthy detachment, putting life in perspective in space and time.  My little issues pale compared with the scale of looming volcanic destruction on the east side of the Sierra Nevada (California; evidence below).  Forget those silly cares, besides, it's such a gorgeous day!

He had no sense of time, and was so full of adventures ...

Consider the amazing expanding Great Basin.  The extension of western North America, imperceptible to us but which we do understand to be, is driven by movements of immense chunks of crust that bump, push, slide, jerk, grind and stretch as they go. They are much too big and slow for us to comprehend ... and yet we do, through evidence and the power of our minds.  This kind of contemplation leads me to a very different state of mind, justifying the time I spend with books, maps and websites, looking at rocks, mountains and basins, and pondering.

“... about fifteen miles below the embers in the fire are rocks made soft under the influence of heat and pressure.  These pliant rocks are alive with motion.  To be sure, the motion is slow, perhaps a few millimeters per year, but it is motion nonetheless.”

Nice sign, but mileages will have to be changed in 10 million years or so.

The coast of California is even more mind-boggling, and wonderfully so -- diving crustal plates, sliding crustal plates, ocean crust shoved over continental crust, deep mantle material oozing up to the surface ... wow! The Earth is so dynamic.  How cool to be able to appreciate this, even though I'm too short-lived to see much change myself.

Left:  pondering the contorted geologic mess of the Central California Coast, a worthy pastime.

But detachment doesn't come quickly.  It always takes a week or two for my other world to dim and fade from view.  Then once it does, it becomes very difficult to return to it.

I don't want to be a man ... I want always to be a little boy and have fun.

Peter happily plays his pipes while continental rifting pulls the Neverland

ever-farther away from the Real World. 

I found this surreal landscape in the middle of nowhere at the end of a rough two-track.  Others had been there before me; there was a well-constructed fire ring and a stash of juniper wood.  After putting up my shelter and cooking my food, I rounded up a bit more juniper, built a small fire, and nursed it through the evening to keep away the chill -- as people have done for many thousands of years.  So which is the real world?

“I feel protected and secure here, far removed from the din and demands of a life that bounds uncontrollably, like some wild mustang, across the alien landscape of the modern world.”

Photo by Ronn Koeppel.

Vacations always end of course, but never entirely --

“that extraordinary feeling of being ferociously in love with the world can provide the kind of fulfillment we all seek ... the things we felt in the wilderness are still there deep inside each of us, and can be retrieved on demand, if we only remember to do so."

Sources (of quotes)

Barrie, James M.  1911.  Peter and Wendy (Peter Pan).

DeCourten, Frank L.  2003.  The Broken Land -- adventures in Great Basin geology.  Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

The Many Mysteries of Rock

A rock climber marvels at the undulating thin cracks on Devils Tower ... how convenient!

Climbers know the rock they climb on intimately.  They know the basic types -- sandstone, limestone, granite.  They are experts on the nature of the rock surface, whether it is smooth or has features -- tiny crimper edges, big buckets, knobs, pockets, slopers, jugs.  They are acutely aware of the angle of the rock face and its height.  They know the nature of the fractures -- narrow vs. wide, undulating vs. parallel -- critical for hand and foot holds and gear placement.  They worry about the competence of the rock; might those hand holds or even an anchor bolt pull out?  Climbers clearly are a ready audience for stories about the geology of their playgrounds.

“Why are there so many offwidths at Vedauwoo?” Jason
Haas wonders, as he makes his way up Main Street (5.10a).

Many climbing guidebooks include something about the geology of the area, but these explanations typically are brief, sometimes just the rock type and its age.  Fortunately there is an alternative.  Flakes, Jugs, and Splitters: A Rock Climber's Guide to Geology, by geologist/climber Sarah Garlick, covers 50 climbing areas in North America as well as some in Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, South America and Europe.  This is an ambitious project!  Climbing areas vary widely in rock type and geologic history, and most include at least one geologic mystery.  A lengthy paper could be written on each I’m sure.

The book begins with “Geology 101” -- introductory material including geologic time, rock classification and formation (even the tricky classification of granites), plate tectonics, uplift, and weathering/erosion.  The main part of the book is organized by climbing area within geographic regions.  It would be impossible to provide comprehensive explanations for each, and so Garlick focuses instead on specific geologic features, for example the steepness of New River Gorge in West Virginia, the high elevations of the Rockies in Colorado, the parallel-sided splitter cracks of Indian Creek in Utah, and the cavernous hollowed-out huecos of Hueco Tanks in Texas.  Each section starts with a question:  “Why are there big walls in Zion?”, “What are all those chicken heads at Cochise Stronghold?”, “Why isn’t there rock climbing in Florida?”

How old are the Grand Tetons? ... depends on what you mean.  They are composed of some of the oldest rock in North America (the granite is 2.5 billion years old, the gneiss 2.7!) but are among the youngest mountains, uplifted less than 2 million years ago.

Though organized by area and focused on specific features, the book includes more than just local geology.  Garlick does a good job of describing the bigger picture.  For me, the explanations of plate movements, collisions, rifts, jostling and passive margins and how they relate to climbing areas are the most interesting parts of the book.  For example, we can’t explain the Gunks in New York without invoking 1) mountain-building 450 million years ago when a chain of islands collided with the eastern margin of North America, resulting in erosion and deposition of sediments that would become the hard conglomerate we climb on; and 2) tectonic compression 300 to 250 million years ago during the formation of Pangaea that tilted the strata and produced those bomber holds, making some of the big Gunks roofs surprisingly easy to climb.  Thank you plate tectonics.

Bigggg roof but only 5.8.  Photo by Mike Freeman, from Dick DuMais'
Shawangunk Rock Climbing, 1985.  Posted at SuperTopo.

A well-illustrated brief overview of the history of the Appalachian Mountains is presented in a three-page “sidebar”, providing the context for many of the climbing areas in the eastern US.  A similar approach is used for the Rockies (“A Short History of Colorado”).  Other shorter sidebars explain diverse topics such as the multitude of granite plutons in California, the Ancestral Rockies and the mysterious Gunks quartz.  There are ample illustrations of geologic phenomena and processes throughout:  plate tectonics, uplifts and basins, stratigraphic columns, salt anticlines, metamorphic core complexes, ancient landscapes and many more.  And of course there are spectacular photographs of crags and climbers.  This is a book worth perusing from cover to cover, in addition to studying one’s favorite crags -- perhaps a good diversion for rainy days.

Excerpt from "A Short History of Colorado"; click to view.

Given the number and diversity of rock climbing areas, this kind of book can provide only a quick look at a selection of crags.  For example, discussion of Devils Tower includes just one of the theories behind this puzzling rock, but that’s understandable -- it has proven to have a history mysterious enough to support multiple possible explanations.  Less than a page is devoted to Yosemite Valley, in spite of its important place in the history of climbing (but see also the granite of the Sierra Nevada).  The Adirondacks are omitted entirely.  Even so, I think Garlick has made good choices about what to include; the result is a collection of interesting wide-ranging stories about the diverse materials and histories of the mountains and rocks we climb.

If you are a geologically-challenged climber, this book will make a bit of a geologist out of you and I bet you will enjoy it, even though sections may prove to be somewhat technical (a glossary would have helped).  If you are a geologist that climbs, the book provides introductory material as well as references for further research.  I am an amateur geologist and casual climber -- for me, it was a great read and will be a good reference in the future.

Flakes, Jugs, and Splitters: A Rock Climber's Guide to Geology by Sarah Garlick.  2009.  FalconGuides.  Paperback, 224 pages, ISBN 0762748370.  $13.59 from Amazon

F, J, & S won Best Book in the Mountain Exposition category at the 2009 Banff Mountain Film Festival.

Other reviews can be found at:

About.com on climbing

The climber website summitpost.org

Rock and Ice magazine