From: bivalve <bivalve@mail.davidson.alumlink.com>
> Conventional geologists have recently suggested that the Grand Canyon may
have formed in only a couple of million years or so. I don't remember a
glacial lake being involved; perhaps there is confusion with the large
glacial lake in Montana and adjacent areas, or with the pluvial lakes that
formed during cooler, wetter glacial intervals. A coherent explanation of
how a global flood would form the canyon is necessary to press the analogy.
Digging out the canyon implies that the rock layers were already present,
but there must be local concentration of flow to create a canyon, which is
difficult to generate on an underwater plateau.
One of the models (non-Creationary) for the formation of Grand Canyon has
long been the concept of a lake or lakes upstream from the Kaibab uplift
which breach the "dam" and carve the canyon. The Pliocene lake and stream
deposits of the Bidahochi Formation in NE Arizona has been interpreted as
deposition from one such lake -- Hopi Lake or Lake Bidahochi. This lake,
along with most of the former lakes in the basin-and-range region, was kept
full because they existed during the last Ice Age.
A Creationary model:
Grand Canyon was carved during the later stages of the warm-Ice age that
immediately followed the Catastrophe. A large lake was formed as flood
waters sweeping SW from the Rockies and Colorado Plateau uplift (the Laramid
Orogeny) were trapped by the uplift of the Kaibab Up-warp. Ground water
from the entrapped lake seeped through the rocks of the Kaibab up-warp and a
spring formed on the west side of the plateau. Over time, the spring grew
in size and a cavern/canyon worked it's way headward toward the lake through
porous, probably not fully lithified, rocks. Eventually the cave reached
the lake, the dam was breached, and the lake drained catastrophically,
creating a narrow crevice across the Kaibab up-warp looking much like the
current canyon of the Little Colorado, but several times deeper and a little
wider. Over the millennia since then, the Canyon widened to its present
state due to differences in precipitation and lay of the land.
The Hopi have an legend which states that when the ancient ones lived on the
plateaus of Hopi-land they were surrounded by a vast lake. Then one day,
the lake disappeared down a black hole into the underworld. That hole
became Grand Canyon.
I am currently doing research for a paper which parallels the erosional and
depositional features along the lower Colorado River (downstream from Grand
Canyon) with the well known erosional features and flood bar deposits of the
Bretz Flood on the Columbia River. I just got back from a trip along the
Columbia River obtaining photographs and examining Bretz flood bar
deposits. The same kinds of deposits, hundreds of feet above the current
lakes and river of the lower Colorado River, amazingly parallel those of the
Columbia River. This will necessitate a complete revision of current
interpretations of the lower Colorado River. And a further reduction in the
probable age of Grand Canyon.
Allen
Member MENSA
(If you feel compelled to list your educational achievements, then you can
allow me similar latitude.)
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