Age of Grand Canyon and Cave Speleothems

Hello RAZD,
There is no way I'm going to be participating much in this sort of thread because of its technical level beyond a comment or two. I just want to say that I think the creationists are missing something about the depth of the Flood or the height from which the water would have poured into the Canyon at the end of the Flood and what they're missing could answer the observation that the canyon is cut into a mounded area that is higher than the surrounding area.I believe an analysis of the north-south elevations of that region from the GS to the GC suggests that the layers that climb from the level of the Kaibab, which forms the rim of the GC, to the top of the GS to the north, were also originally present over the GC, extending for hundreds of square miles over that whole region at that depth. All that depth of strata was no doubt accumulating or standing in water for some long period of the Flood and probably still doing so when the canyon was cut, or it could have been starting to recede by that point. In either case I think the additional depth of strata above the area explains how rushing flood water would have cut the canyon because at the time the water WAS higher than the current canyon which was the result.As I've argued on the Creationist Road Trip thread I believe the cutting of the canyon began with the cracking of those upper layers, caused by the stress of the uplift which the diagrams suggest to me was caused by the volcanic eruption directly beneath the canyon. The eruption appears to have been mostly contained underground, resisted by the weight of the stack above, displacing the lowest strata which form the Grand Unconformity, also forming the Vishnu schist and the granite under the canyon itself.The idea is that the stress of the uplift from that underground eruption cracked the uppermost layers of the strata directly above, which, again, at that time were a mile higher/deeper than the present rim, corresponding to the same strata that remains in the GS. As the cracks opened chunks of the upper strata caved into them and water poured into them, carving out the canyon to a great width and then depth. This pouring and caving-in had to have happened over some fairly long period as the canyon was being carved out.These upper strata are much higher than the current rim so we're talking a huge amount of debris-filled rushing water from ABOVE the area because of all the strata breaking up, before it finally carved out the current canyon. I could draw a picture of it but I wouldn't know how to get it to you.The canyon as it now exists is cut into an area higher than the surrounding areas to north and south because of the same uplift caused by the volcano beneath the canyon, but it's a mile lower than the original level of the strata laid down in that area. So if it was originally topped by that other mile of strata and all that water in which the whole thing was standing rushed into the cracks formed by the stress of the eruption, the difference between its CURRENT elevation and the surrounding lower areas doesn't tell you anything about what really happened.

Well he's not saying it flows uphill, he thinks it flowed into the canyon from the east from water from the standing lakes he points out, flowed along the bottom of the canyon. I think that's perfectly reasonable, but I also think there's a problem with the overall idea that the current uplift was there at the time or that the canyon was there at the time. The attempt to explain how the water went over the rise as going over the top of a dam is not impossible but also it's maybe not necessary to think of it that way.I think when it occurred a great disturbance, the volcanic eruption beneath the area, created the uplift which also created cracks that the lakes would have flowed into, if it was the drainage of the lakes and not only the standing water. It could be either. That is you need an explanation for how the strata opened up in the first place in what had to be a stack of continuously flat layers. If the cracking had not occurred the water could just have simply flowed over flat land if some disturbance breached only the rim that held it back. But the disturbances had to be on a very large scale, all that volcanic activity in the area along with all the tectonic activity that raised the Rockies. It had to have cracked the neatly stacked strata all over that area as there seems to have been a lot of both tectonic and volcanic activity. The strata had to have been cracked to allow the formation of the various canyons and stairs and hoodoos and so on. It's certainly easy enough to imagine how all that could have been formed in the Grand Canyon if you have any interest in doing so. The original cracking over the ridge area, the uplift area, which appears as a rounded mound on N-S elevations, would have determined the original shape of the canyon with its side canyons. Nothing like that occurred in the scablands or Katrina. Yes I need to think about that but I'm not sure it matters for my particular thoughts here which end of the canyon "formed" first. The water would have entered from all sides at once as I see it, most obviously if the strata were still standing in Flood water, but even if the lakes above were the source of the water that widened it. I thought that "experiment" was perfectly idiotic as an attempt to explain what would have occurred on the scale of the canyon. But actually my theory here would answer it anyway. If the force of the uplft created cracking down that whole area that became the canyon then the water had openings to run into. It wasn't just flat land that the water ran over and supposedly cut a gully in. The opening of cracks in the upper strata would have given it paths to follow and would also have broken up the strata in such a way that huge chunks of it would have fallen inward along with the rushing water and done the abrasive work of widening and deepening the cracks, scooping out huge chunks of the lower strata as well as the whole mass tumbled inward and downward until the Kaibab was utterly denuded. Definitely it was an uplifting but I think the explanation for that is the volcanic eruption beneath the canyon, which also nicely explains the basement rocks there. Actually it's less a terminological problem than the usual paradigm clash. Yes, indeed, it occurred beneath the canyon area at or after the end of the Flood. What the river now follows is the end result of the grand scale carving I'm talking about. It wasn't a river that rushed into the cracks I'm talking about, it was at least a huge lake or the remaining standing water of the Flood, rushing in from all sides of the cracks and carrying chunks of the strata with it. I can't picture this so I have no idea really what you are claiming here. I'm aware of a fault line at the north end of the Grand Staircase which divides the strata to the south, which were apparently uplifted at the time, from a tilted unconformity made up of the same strata to the north, and parallels a magma dike that exits at the top as lava in the Clarion formation. I think that whole picture has interesting implications for explaining how the strata were laid down first, the volcanic action followed there as well as in the GC area, probably in conjunction with tectonic forces, even caused by tectonic force. The more I study the claims such as these the more my "theory" gets confirmed, but again I can't picture what you are claiming here and have to leave it for later. Oh I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to set up an experiment. Wet sand wouldn't have the necessary consistency but perhaps various clays and clay mixtures could possibly be used for the purpose. It would have to be laid down perfectly flat and horizontal first and then force would have to be applied from beneath in a west-east line to form the ridge in question. It would take some doing, but wet sand on a balloon, nope. Well, the Horseshoe Bend wouldn't have occurred until the whole canyon was carved out and the rushing water full of debris had done all its work and exited, and the water itself settled down to river size -- even a huge rushing river at first before getting reduced to the river it now is, which continues to drain the same area that the lakes once occupied. (On a side point I thought his illustration of how a huge lake would be formed if the current river was dammed was very interesting.)The reduction of the cataracts to a river should certainly have occurred in the later stages -- after the great debris-laden cataracts had done the basic carving out of the canyon to more or less its current shape. At that point, when you have an actual river instead of a huge flood, there's nothing strange about how a river makes meanders. The great cataract that scooped out the canyon wouldn't make meanders, but the river that was left over after the whole catastrophe had settled down certainly could have.You write progidiously long posts, RAZD. I'll try to get back to the rest later.Edited by Faith, : To change GS to Grand Staircase and GC to Grand CanyonEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : correct quote codesEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

Piled up in the area to the west and south, which means southern California mostly though parts of Arizona as well perhaps, but mostly the southwest of the canyon on the path to the river's exit in the Gulf of California, where a lot of it also no doubt went, perhaps even forming the Baja peninsula, but probably elsewhere in the area as well. I haven't done a very thorough study of all that. Couldn't find out much about the geology of that area on the few occasions I did make an attempt to answer that question.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Apparently I got caught up in the parts about the young earth in the first message and overlooked that the whole thing was intended to relate to the speleothems so I shouldn't continue to pursue this topic. It's tempting but I won't. I really didn't want to get deeply into it anyway. So carry on.

The scablands ARE good evidence for the Flood and I for one have mentioned them on my blog. The pictures seem to have disappeared unfortunately but they were originally some really good shots of the scablands.But the scablands are too easily explained away as caused by a less than worldwide flood and they don't have any of the interesting features of the Grand Canyon.I can't find any really good place to post this but it's a British guy doing a really nice job of presenting the evidence that the marvelous Grand Canyon has to offer in such abundance for a worldwide Flood.