Location Taken: South of Thermopolis, Wyoming
Time Taken: November 2012
So, when you think of a canyon, what do you picture?
Tall rock walls?
Eroded sections and gullies?
The occasional cave?
A river at the bottom?
Drier conditions?
Here ya go, a prototypical canyon!
Well, aside from the fact that most canyons are carved by a river digging down. This one was carved by the mountains going up. But that’s not too odd, the Grand Canyon formed the same way. How about the fact that this river actually cuts right through this small mountain ridge? Have you seen that one before?
It comes from the mountain ridge being part of a rather old chain of mountains that got buried under a large amount of dirt and sand. Rivers formed across the land, not caring at all about the peculiarities of the rock below. Then the land started uplifting, the dirt and sand washed away, but this river stayed put.
It stayed put when the land stopped being flat plains, just carving its way through the rock it now flowed through.
It stayed put when the dirt fell away from both sides of this pile of rock. It had cut a path through, it did not need to move.
It stayed put while the climates shifted and the ice ages came and went.
And to this day, it is there, carving even deeper.
