This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
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Walt Brown (1989)—Hydroplate Theory (summarized on pages 104–135).34 Sediments, produced during the flood phase, settled through the flood waters, grain by grain. Liquefaction sorted those sediments into layers totaling, on average, a mile in thickness. About 10–20% of the flood water was trapped between those grains at the end of the flood. As that subsurface water escaped during the following years, much of today’s terrain was sculpted.
Near the end of the flood, continent-size hydroplates (lubricated below by water) accelerated downhill, away from the rising Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Atlantic floor and toward the sinking Pacific. Within hours, the hydroplates met resistances and crashed. This compression event crushed, thickened, and buckled the hydroplates, pushing up earth’s major mountain ranges. [For details, see pages 104–135 and 168–179.]
A series of major events then occurred which produced the Grand Canyon.
1. The flood’s surface waters drained, leaving behind postflood lakes in every continental basin.
2. The Rocky Mountains partially sank into the mantle. As they did, they hydraulically lifted the Colorado Plateau an average of 6,200 feet. Carried on top were two large lakes—Grand Lake and Hopi Lake.
3. Centuries later, Grand Lake breached its southwestern boundary, causing Hopi Lake to also breach. The escaping waters, including considerable subsurface drainage, spilled off the western edge of the Colorado Plateau, carving the Grand Canyon in a few weeks. Then the Colorado River was born—a consequence, not the cause, of the carving of the Grand Canyon.
To understand the Grand Canyon’s origin, we must first recognize and explain many strange terrain features surrounding the Grand Canyon.
Colorado Plateau. Immediately after the flood, each newly formed mountain range began the slow process of settling into the upper mantle. (Mountains have “roots” that descend into the mantle, a fact known for over a century. The hydroplate theory explains the forces, energy, and mechanism that sank these roots and when it happened.) The mass pushed aside by a sinking mountain range increased the mantle’s upward pressure next to that range, causing the weakest portion of the crust to break and rise. Thus, plateaus35 rose next to settling mountain ranges. Examples include the Columbia Plateau next to the Cascades, the Tibetan Plateau (the largest, highest plateau in the world) next to the Himalayan Mountains (the most massive and highest mountain range in the world), and, pertinent to the origin of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado Plateau next to the Rocky Mountains. These uplifts were accompanied by considerable faulting and extreme frictional heating. As a result, melting and volcanic activity occurred within each plateau. Large blocks, when lifted and tilted, became cliffs and mountains—called block-faulted mountains. North of the Grand Canyon are many examples: Utah’s Book Cliffs, Roan Cliffs, the Grand Staircase (Vermilion Cliffs, White Cliffs, Grey Cliffs, and Pink Cliffs), and others. As the flood waters drained, continental basins became postflood lakes; some were quite large.
The Funnel. Imagine a postflood lake with the area and volume of Lake Michigan, 5,700 feet above today’s sea level, high on the Colorado Plateau. We will call this lake Grand Lake.34 About 15–20 miles southwest of Grand Lake is the top of the long Echo-Vermilion Cliff. Despite losses from evaporation and drainage, the lake’s level is maintained (or raised) by rainfall and drainage from higher elevations. Water drains from under Grand Lake, emerging as springs from the face of this 2,000-foot cliff system. Increasingly, the ground sinks along a path between the lake and the cliff. Suddenly, Grand Lake breaches a point on its bank and catastrophically erodes the soft Mesozoic sediments, forming a gigantic spillway—a steep, 18-mile-long channel shaped like a widening funnel. The escaping water’s large volume and high velocity erodes the far end of the funnel within weeks to a width of 12 miles and a depth of 2,000 feet.
Figure 108: Grand and Hopi Lakes. The funnel region (marked by the red circle) was carved by water suddenly released from Grand Lake. [See Figures 104, 109, 110, and 112 for different perspectives of the funnel.] The region covered by this map lies in the southwest portion of the Colorado Plateau, which has an average elevation of 6,200 feet and an area the size of Germany or New Mexico.
Figure 109: The Funnel and Barbed Canyons. This computer-generated picture resembles a photograph taken from 35,000 feet above the “barbed” side canyons feeding into the Colorado River. (The diagnostic importance of barbed canyons will soon be explained.) Flowing surface and subsurface water carved the barbed canyons in a direction (yellow arrows) opposite to the flow of the Colorado River today (red arrows). Notice that Echo Cliffs and Vermilion Cliffs nearly align. The funnel-shaped opening in the top right corner cut through a single cliff system, giving us these two sets of cliffs today. A giant, high-pressure hose, squirting from the upper right corner in the direction of the red arrows, would carve the funnel nicely.
Marble Canyon. The originally horizontal sedimentary layers below the floor of the funnel steadily arch upward as weight is removed by this downward erosion. Eventually, the funnel’s floor—hard, brittle Kaibab Limestone—cracks in tension, splitting open the entire floor parallel to the funnel’s axis, forming Marble Canyon. [See Figure 112.]
Aquifers (porous, water-saturated, sedimentary layers) cut by this deep vertical crack begin rapidly spilling their waters, like a large ruptured water main, into the newly formed Marble Canyon. Subsurface channels draining into Marble Canyon begin to form. (Initially, this underground flow is perpendicular to the canyon walls. Later, as explained in Figure 111, these thick sedimentary layers will dip to the north, so the underground flow will be primarily to the north but will then “hook in” and enter Marble Canyon at right angles.) Directly above these underground drainage channels, the earth sinks, forming north-draining valleys entering Marble Canyon. Instead of “sinkholes,” we have hundreds of shallow sink valleys. [See Figures 112 and 115.] The underground channels, in effect, grow in diameter as subsurface water flows through them, so the larger underground “pipes” capture even more water. Eventually, only a few very large, subsurface drainage channels are spilling out at fairly even intervals along Marble Canyon. Also, water pouring out of the sides of the funnel spill into some sink valleys more than others, eroding and deepening those valleys. This allows them to capture more surface water and erode even deeper. [See Figure 112.]
Figure 110: Aerial Photograph of the Funnel and the “Backward” Barbed Canyons. The dashed white line shows approximately where the Echo-Vermilion Cliffs were connected before the funnel was cut. This was confirmed during a field study by finding a long, vertical fault (marked by the solid white line).36
Figure 111: Potholes. Here, at almost the highest point on Echo Cliffs (the point marked by the white dot in Figure 110), is a weathered pothole.37 Partially seen at the bottom left and right are two similar potholes. A pothole forms when whirling rocks, caught in an eddy or vortex of a fast-flowing stream, grind down, carving a cylindrical depression.38 Why was water flowing so rapidly this high (6,654 feet above sea level) and at the upper edge of a 2,000-foot cliff? (In the extreme top left corner, you can see the edge of the cliff—and far below.)
When Grand Lake breached and began spilling over the Echo-Vermilion Cliff system, marked by the dashed white line in Figure 110, south-flowing water carved these potholes. During the following weeks, the miles-wide funnel was carved to the west of these potholes. Had the funnel been a few feet wider at this location, the rock where my geologist friend is standing would have been swept away.
At least 2,000 cubic miles of soft Mesozoic sediments were swept off the hard Kaibab Limestone. Then, as the Grand Canyon began to be carved 30 miles to the south, land under the Grand Canyon rose, tipping the funnel region slightly to the north. This is why the funnel’s floor of hard Kaibab Limestone rises more than 1,000 feet as one proceeds southward along the top of Marble Canyon. Echo and Vermilion Cliffs—and these potholes—also rose by a like amount. All the layers exposed in these cliffs and in the walls of Marble Canyon dramatically show this tipping.
Figure 112: Where Marble Canyon Began. Water from Grand Lake spilled out near the top right corner of this picture and flowed violently toward the bottom left corner, eroding this funnel-shaped region. As huge amounts of material were removed, the horizontal sedimentary layers below—no longer pressed down by so much weight—rose, arched upward, stretched, and cracked. Subsurface water then began spilling into this deep, minutes-old crack, now called Marble Canyon. Notice the many small “sink valleys” and their tiny tributaries near the edge of Marble Canyon. Only a few were able to capture much of the water spilling out of Vermilion Cliffs (at the top of the picture) and Echo Cliffs (at the right side of the picture); those few eroded downward, allowing them to capture even more water. They became barbed canyons. Can you see why they are somewhat evenly spaced along Marble Canyon?
Thirty miles to the south, Marble Canyon joins the Grand Canyon. [See Figure 108.] Vermilion Cliffs and Echo Cliffs were previously joined, but today mark the funnel’s western and eastern boundaries. Visitors can easily see the upward arching in these layers.
Grand Canyon. The south-flowing torrent of water spilling from Grand Lake undercuts the northwestern corner of Hopi Lake (elevation 5,950 feet), releasing its waters as well. Their combined waters, now sweeping westward over northern Arizona, first remove at least 1,000 feet of the soft sediments above the hard Kaibab Limestone. As this weight is removed from almost 10,000 square miles south and west of the funnel, deeper sedimentary layers arch upward, stretching and in many places cracking open the hard, brittle Kaibab Limestone above.
Near the breach point in Hopi Lake’s high shoreline, a waterfall, about thirteen times higher (with possibly a hundred times greater flow rate) than Niagara Falls breaks loose. “Hopi Falls” removes so much Kaibab Limestone and overlying material that the weaker, compressed layers below begin rising to form the Kaibab Plateau. Figure 62 on page 120 demonstrates the mechanics of the process. Rushing water from both lakes is channeled through the lowest path, cutting downward at the rate at which the land rises. This focuses the westward, erosive flow of these escaping waters.
Plateau Uplift
The uplift of the Kaibab Plateau must be seen in the context of the rising of the much larger Colorado Plateau. Likewise, the rising Colorado Plateau must be seen in the context of the sinking Rocky Mountains, which were initially higher than they are today. Near the end of the flood, as accelerating hydroplates suddenly crashed, mountain ranges were rapidly pushed up, compressed, crushed, and buckled. (The hydroplate theory is summarized on pages 104–135.)
As the Rocky Mountains slowly settled into the upper mantle, the Colorado Plateau rose as if it were resting on thousands of independent hydraulic lifts. Below the sinking Rockies, rock was crushed. Where resisting forces were weakest (between the former floor and roof of the subterranean water chamber),39 deep, crushed rock was pushed to the side. Frictional heating immediately melted the surfaces of these sliding rock fragments. That liquid rock (magma) lubricated the further movement of crushed rock and magma away from the flanks of the sinking Rockies.40 Each channel of slowly-flowing rocks and magma constituted one “hydraulic lift.” Most of the energy expended by the sinking Rockies was ultimately converted into heat and the lifting of the Colorado Plateau.
Figure 113: Hydraulic Lift. Hydraulic lifts are commonly found in elevators, car jacks, automobile brakes, and mechanisms that launch planes from aircraft carriers. In this schematic of a hydraulic lift, a large downward force (on the right) lifts a lighter object (on the left) a long distance. Other hydraulic lifts use a weaker force moving a long distance to lift a heavy object a short distance. Liquids transmitting the force can be water, oil, or, in the case of rising plateaus, magma.
The sinking Rocky Mountains acted as a gigantic force that pushed 2,500,000 cubic miles of material under the Colorado Plateau, lifting it an average of 6,200 feet above sea level. The world’s other plateaus rose in a similar manner—all driven by gravity, beginning immediately after the hydroplates crashed. Although the roof of the subterranean chamber almost completely collapsed onto its floor by the end of the flood, high-pressure magma easily migrated between those surfaces.39
About 25,000,000 cubic miles of magma and crushed rocks were hydraulically pushed under Asia’s Tibetan Plateau, lifting it 3 miles! To understand why plateaus perplex geologists and geophysicists, see Professor George C. Kennedy’s candid statement of the problems on page 109. There is a simple explanation.
The Colorado Plateau did not rise as one solid block, because the pressure below was building up at various rates at thousands of locations. Whenever the pressure at one location became large enough to fracture the rock above, a sudden but limited amount of upward movement occurred along a fault. Each fracture event was an earthquake. Thousands of faults have been identified and mapped on the Colorado Plateau.
Why was the uplift limited? Sometimes the irregular sides of a rising block collided with those of an adjacent block. In most cases, magma (“hydraulic fluid”) was not generated fast enough to make up for magma losses and to keep the channels (“hydraulic lines”) pressurized. For example, some magma intruded into cracks or escaped to the earth’s surface as a volcano or lava flow. [Page 108 lists some long-standing questions concerning “Volcanoes and Lava”; they can now be explained by the hydroplate theory.] In and surrounding the Grand Canyon are at least seventy-six lava flows.41 Finally, the higher a block rose, the greater the pressure needed to lift it higher. Therefore, the magma below (containing dissolved water42) spread laterally, so adjacent blocks which had not risen as much were lifted instead. The spreading magma was like an expanding ink spot. Thus, the Colorado Plateau—and other plateaus—are generally circular in area.
A block rose when the upward force (produced by the increasing pressure below that block) exceeded the downward force (the weight of the block plus the resisting stresses and friction). Usually, the vertical forces on a block were balanced, so there was no upward movement. However, the instant the slowly increasing upward force on a block exceeded the total downward force, a small movement occurred. Equilibrium was then quickly reestablished, because the hydraulic pressure below suddenly dropped. (Pressure always tended to increase under these blocks, because the Rocky Mountains were higher than the Colorado Plateau.)43
Along one path at the earth’s surface, this vertical equilibrium was thrown far out of balance for days. As Hopi Lake was breaching and massively excavating the crust below, weight was quickly removed below “Hopi Falls” and several miles downstream, forcing blocks below that path to rise. The faster they rose, the more their tops were eroded and swept away by the violent waters spilling out of Grand and Hopi Lakes. Therefore, these vertical imbalances became even larger, deeper, and broader, resulting in the rapid uplift of the Kaibab Plateau.44
Farther downstream, blocks rose along a wider path as a huge volume of subsurface water from the flanks of the deepening, 216-mile-long Grand Canyon escaped into the eroding flow. As the broad uplift increased and flood-deposited layers along this path were deeply eroded, the basement rock directly below arched upward and cracked in tension. That crack formed the dark, steep-walled, inner gorge of the Grand Canyon. [See Figure 66 on page 123 and Figure 107 on page 184.] This is a long-overlooked geological phenomenon: upward-arching and tension cracks produced when high-velocity water removes massive amounts of overlying material. [For three other examples, see Figures 112 and 126 and Endnote 57 on page 131.]45
After the inner gorge cracked open, the soft sedimentary layers above that crack were easily attacked and undercut from below by the eroding water, widening the canyon. With so much more weight removed and the deep hydraulic pressure increasing below that 216-mile path, blocks fractured and rose, producing dozens of faults that are generally perpendicular to today’s Colorado River.20 These faults (often more than 50 miles long) provided deep, initially narrow channels for transporting subsurface water down into the main flow that carved the Grand Canyon. One of them, the 180-mile-long Bright Angel Fault, allowed construction of the popular Bright Angel Trail.
About 20% of the volume of the rapidly rising Kaibab Plateau is subsurface water. The higher the plateau rises, the greater the water’s energy and eroding potential. Landslides, slumps, and mudflows spill down the rising slopes of the Kaibab Plateau from multiple directions for weeks. Powerful springs are released around the base and sides of the plateau; many springs will flow without major seasonal variations for centuries, making Nankoweap basin, for a time, an excellent habitat for humans. Some of this drainage carves deep channels around Nankoweap Mesa, which is topped with the earlier slumps, landslides, and rockfalls. Other powerful springs carve Nankoweap Canyon, cutting through thick mud and slump deposits, leaving boulders stacked up to 200 feet high along Nankoweap Creek. Rocks, mud, and water spilling eastward off the plateau can go no farther than Marble Canyon, which acts as a gutter, channeling and intensifying the southward flow. Therefore, the land east of Marble Canyon is shielded from spillage off the higher, rising Kaibab Plateau.
Meanwhile, cascading waters from Grand and Hopi Lakes have begun eroding a 216-mile path to—and down through—the western edge of the Colorado Plateau. The deeper the waters cut below the high postflood water table, the more high-pressure water is released from the flanks of the lengthening channel. Each sedimentary particle becomes a cutting tool carried by the rapidly-flowing (and falling) water. As more sediments are eroded, more “liquid sandpaper” becomes available to erode more sediments. Additional energy is provided by the release of this mile-high, subsurface water. In a few weeks, 800 cubic miles of sediments from the Kaibab Limestone and below are removed, forming the Grand Canyon.
Although Marble Canyon adjoins the Grand Canyon, their different shapes and widths earned them different names. The canyons’ differences are explained when one realizes that the change occurs where the northwest corner of the higher Hopi Lake was undercut by the rushing waters from Grand Lake—where the Little Colorado River now joins the Colorado River. In other words, the waters of Grand Lake helped carve Marble Canyon; the merged waters of both Grand and Hopi Lakes helped carve the Grand Canyon. Today, the basin that held Grand Lake is drained by the Colorado River and several of its tributaries; the basin that held Hopi Lake is drained by the Little Colorado River. Both basins were once filled with silica-rich water that quickly escaped. Supporting evidence—mesas, buttes, spires, mounds, petrified forests, extreme meandering rivers, side canyons, and hundreds of huge “pits” excavated by powerful, erupting springs—will now be explained. [Also, see Figure 114 and the discussion of mounds on pages 175–176.]
Figure 114: A Very Deep Pit. Along Grand Lake’s eastern boundary, just east of Rock Point, Arizona, are perhaps a hundred huge pits. (A 20-story building could be dropped into this pit.63) These pits have no visible source of water that could have carved them, nor could the terrain direct much surface water to this spot. If surface water could not have eroded these pits, then subsurface water did. My camera is looking over a small portion of Grand Lake’s basin in the distance. Behind me, the land rises steeply to the east, reaching 9,412 feet, 24 miles away. [See Figure 104.] When Grand Lake discharged, this huge reservoir of high, subsurface water along the lake’s boundary erupted as powerful springs into Grand Lake’s draining basin, excavating these pits.
Side Canyons of Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon. Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon were rapidly cut thousands of feet below the high postflood water table. Subsurface water, some traveling great distances,14 exited from flanks of these canyons and may have exceeded the water in both Grand and Hopi Lakes combined. That escaping water cut dozens of large, previously unexplained side canyons that now enter Marble and Grand Canyons at the level of the Colorado River. Most of these side canyons have no appreciable water source today. A few are “backward.”
Barbed Canyons. With all this weight quickly removed from the Grand Canyon region, the rock layers below rose, so layers north of the Grand Canyon sloped down to the north. Thus, subsurface water near Marble Canyon (and the sink valleys above) drained northward. Water spilling out of the funnel walls—Vermilion Cliffs on the west and Echo Cliffs on the east—flowed into and deepened the northward-draining sink valleys, giving them the shape of the barbs in barbed wire. Although tributaries almost always enter rivers at acute angles, the barbed canyons are oriented at obtuse angles to the Colorado River; they are “backward.” Some barbed canyons are huge—a mile wide and 1,700 feet deep where they enter Marble Canyon.
Figure 115: Inside a Barbed Canyon. Notice the unusual curved layers bending up the sides of North Canyon, a barbed canyon that enters Marble Canyon one mile behind my camera.
How did these layers form? Rapid erosion of the funnel stretched and cracked open the ground where Marble Canyon is today. Water began draining into Marble Canyon through a 450-foot layer of limestone that lies not far below our feet. Some of that limestone dissolved, just as draining water forms caves in thick limestone deposits today. All the layers above sank and tipped, forming a sink valley. Torrents of surface water then entered this sink valley, eroded it deeper, and carved, from the surface down, most of this barbed canyon in weeks. The other barbed canyons formed in a similar way.
Side Canyons into Grand and Hopi Basins. After Grand and Hopi Lakes quickly emptied, the water table surrounding those basins, in effect, rose hundreds of feet. Several Great-Lakes’ worth of high-pressure subsurface water began seeking underground escape routes into those basins. Weak spots and tiny channels were exploited by the groundwater. Underground channels, many miles long, opened up and became destinations for even more escaping groundwater. The more water that flowed through these channels and their tributaries, the larger they became. In this way, hundreds of canyons formed that today enter the basins of the former Grand and Hopi Lakes.
One of the most picturesque is Canyon de Chelly (de SHAY), which is actually a group of canyons up to 25 miles in length that radiate to the east of Chinle, Arizona. Canyon de Chelly enters Grand Lake’s basin from the east, near its southernmost location in Arizona. [See Figure 104.] Streams and rivers produce canyons with V-shaped cross sections, but most of Canyon de Chelly has a U-shaped cross section. U-shaped cross sections are produced by glaciers or by groundwater flowing out from and undercutting canyon walls. Because no other glacial characteristics are found within 500 miles, subsurface flow—not glaciers—probably carved Canyon de Chelly.
Also, Canyon de Chelly has abundant rock debris at the base of its upstream walls but little debris at the downstream end. This is because only the downstream end was swept by the force of all the water flowing out from the walls all along the canyon. Relatively little high-velocity water would have passed through the upstream portions of the canyon. Subsurface flow is also inferred at a few points on the south rim of Canyon de Chelly where side canyons begin at ridge lines.46 (Little surface water flows from a ridge line.)
Figure 116: Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly. Five side canyons (not shown) converge on this 800-foot spire: from the north, northeast, east, southeast, and south. It is hard to imagine terrain that would allow five surface streams to carve canyons that converge at the same point from such different directions. However, subsurface flow, which is directed by subsurface porosity more than surface topography, could produce this effect. Obviously, Spider Rock was cemented before the water that carved these canyons swept through this location.
Mesas, Buttes, and Spires. No land features symbolize the American Southwest more than mesas, buttes, and spires. [See Figure 117.] A mesa, which means table in Spanish, is a flat-topped feature which rises above the surrounding terrain. Its height is less than its width.47 A butte is similar, but its height is greater than its width. A very slender butte is a spire.
The towering walls of these formations are strikingly vertical. How and when did they form? Two dramatically different choices are proposed—millions of years or several weeks.48 Why are buttes and spires concentrated in Grand Lake’s basin? Adjacent buttes contain corresponding horizontal layers at the same level, showing that they were once connected. What removed the huge volume of sediments between them? Where did the sediments go? The perimeters of buttes are not streamlined, but scalloped and irregular, so streams did not carve them. (Besides, rivers and streams do not meander enough or flow in circles—a necessary first step if rivers carved buttes.) Nor did wind carve these features, because large sand dunes are missing. What happened?
Beneath the basin of Grand Lake today is a 1,400-foot-thick layer of sandstone. When Grand Lake was present, that sand was uncemented and saturated with water. Sand grains are hard and somewhat rounded, so water-saturated sand layers contain about 40% water by volume. As the lake emptied, the relatively large channels between these grains allowed the high-pressure water under Grand Lake to rapidly discharged upward,49 through the lowest portions of the lake bottom—the easiest routes of escape. With those upward torrents of high-pressure water came swirling sand and dirt that was quickly swept out of Grand Lake and down through the Grand Canyon, which was forming 100–250 miles to the southwest. The highest portions of the lake bottom, including islands, offered the greatest resistance to the upward-surging flow; consequently, those high regions remained intact. Cliffs (along some of the lake boundaries) and mesas and buttes (internal to the lake) began to take shape.
Imagine sitting on the bottom of a shallow swimming pool. Your head barely sticks out of the water and, therefore, is an island. You exert little pressure on the bottom of the pool, because your body is buoyed up by the surrounding water pressure. (Such buoyancy is commonly called Archimedes’ principle.) In other words, you almost float. Suddenly, someone pulls the plug, and the pool rapidly drains; now your entire weight presses against the floor of the pool. Had you been a newly forming butte resting on the floor of the rapidly draining Grand Lake, you would quickly press down on 1,400 feet of water-saturated sediments. It would be as if, over a period of a few weeks, a 250,000,000-ton rock, with only a ≠-square-mile base, settled down on a water-saturated, 1,400-foot-thick sponge. Water would surge upward and erode the sides of the rock, making the butte slender, its perimeter scalloped, and its walls vertical. The banks of Grand Lake, now quite high, would also increase the pressure on the 1,400 feet of water directly below. If that water could escape upward, a bank segment would become a cliff. (Under special conditions, a relatively few mesas and buttes formed beyond Grand Lake as the flood waters drained from the earth.)
Figure 117: Mesas, Buttes, and Spires. Monument Valley, on the Arizona-Utah border, is the most famous location in the world for mesas, buttes, and spires. These features, also abundant over thousands of square miles surrounding Monument Valley, are inside the basin that held Grand Lake, a lake that existed for probably a few centuries after the flood. The long cliff spanning the horizon marks a small part of Grand Lake’s boundary. As Grand Lake spilled and began carving the Grand Canyon 100–250 miles to the southwest of Monument Valley, groundwater surged upward through the lower portions of the lake floor and carried off the material that once connected these stark and magnificent land forms. All were carved in a few weeks. Piles of debris at the base of each mesa, butte, and spire are the result of weathering since Grand Lake drained a few thousand years ago.
Petrified Forest. Probably the world’s largest concentration of petrified wood is in the area that is now the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. (Trainloads of petrified wood were removed before the region became a protected park in 1906.) Few people realize that this park lies inside the former Hopi Lake. Why does wood petrify, and why were these unusual conditions met in Hopi Lake?
Wood petrifies when (1) mineral-rich water saturates wood and (2) some of those dissolved minerals precipitate into the tiniest voids in the wood’s cells.50 Usually the water is rich in silica (SiO2), which forms quartz when it comes out of solution. (The solubility of quartz in water increases enormously as the water’s temperature rises. Conversely, silica is forced out of saturated solution51 and and becomes quartz as the water cools.52)
Today, a log floating in a lake will not petrify, but will eventually disintegrate. For petrification to occur, considerable silica must be dissolved in water that saturates the log, and that silica must come out of solution before the log disintegrates. (Some petrified wood shows intricate cellular detail, indicating rapid petrification; that is, the wood had little time to decay.53) Silica comes out of a saturated solution that cools, but today’s lakes are already relatively cool and contain little dissolved silica. How, then, did petrification occur?
Consider the extremely hot, high-pressure water in the subterranean chamber before the flood. [See page 114 for information on supercritical water.] The chamber’s roof and pillars were granite. About 27% of granite’s volume is quartz. Quartz in contact with hot, high-pressure water quickly dissolves.54 Although the temperature of the supercritical waters dropped sharply as they expanded and spilled onto the earth, those flood waters, supersaturated55 with silica, were still warm. Therefore, floating logs in postflood lakes could easily petrify as temperatures dropped. That occurred in the former Hopi Lake, as seen in today’s Petrified Forest National Park.
Figure 118: Broken Logs in Arizona’s Petrified Forest. For a log to snap this cleanly, it must be brittle, as a petrified log would be. To petrify, a log must be saturated with a silica-rich solution, probably in a large lake. Then the silica must come out of solution, which requires the water to cool. A petrifying log would settle gently onto the lake floor and not break. Because the log broke into many similar-length (but reoriented) pieces, the entire log probably received a powerful impact.
A heavy, petrified log lying on a lake floor seems unlikely to break into many pieces that are later reoriented. However, if the boundary of a large lake breached, as in the collapse of a dam, the water would rush out in a torrent, carrying even sunken petrified logs for some distance. A rapidly-moving petrified log “crashing” back onto the lake bottom would break up, much as an aircraft crashing in a field.
Researchers using silica-rich solutions have duplicated petrification in laboratories. If we did not realize (1) all the silica that was dissolved in the hot subterranean water and (2) the role played by large preflood trees56 floating in warm postflood lakes, petrification would be a mystery supposedly hidden behind “millions of years.”
Finally, notice in Figure 104 on page 180 that Petrified Forest National Park lies in the southeastern end of Hopi Lake’s basin.57 Petrified logs lying on the bottom at that end of the lake would be least disturbed by the waters spilling out the opposite end. This accounts for the high concentration of petrified wood in this most famous petrified forest.
Grand Lake’s basin also contains Utah’s Escalante Petrified Forest and petrified wood along the Green River. At times petrified wood is found outside a former lake basin. For example, between the points where Grand Lake breached and Hopi Lake breached is Shinumo Altar, a 500-foot-high butte capped by hard rock.58 Petrified wood is scattered over its flat top. (Nearby residents report that petrified logs 7–10 feet long were once on the butte, but a helicopter removed them in about 1999.59) As Grand Lake’s waters spilled toward Hopi Lake, petrified wood lying on the bottom of Grand Lake was swept onto flat ground that became the top of Shinumo Altar. [See Figure 119and Figure 104 on page 180.] Days or weeks later, the butte formed as the cascading water stripped off 500 feet of the surrounding, softer Mesozoic rocks that were not protected by a hard cap.
Figure 119: Petrified Wood on a Butte (Shinumo Altar). Obviously, tons of petrified wood did not wash up onto the top of a 500-foot-high butte. Nor is there reason to believe that a major lake with silica-rich water and floating logs was once here. Instead, shortly before the butte formed, water from the breaching of Grand Lake (11 miles to the north) transported petrified logs to this spot. Grand Lake breached 11 miles to the north. About 17 miles to the south, the escaping water undercut the northwestern corner of Hopi Lake. Surging waters from both lakes rapidly carved the Grand Canyon.
Meandering Rivers. Several rivers within the basins of the former Grand and Hopi Lakes meander dramatically. Goosenecks State Park, along the San Juan River, contains the western hemisphere’s most extreme segment of a meandering river or stream. Why do rivers meander, and what conditions could produce such extreme and deep meandering in a river that today is so small and sluggish?
Figure 120: Goosenecks. One of the world’s most famous meandering rivers or streams is the San Juan River, which flows entirely within the basin of the former Grand Lake. Here, near the town of Mexican Hat, Utah, is a section of the river, called Goosenecks, where the river has cut down through 1,000 feet of sediments and meanders 5 miles over a distance of only one straight mile. Similar meandering extends 11 miles upstream and 11 miles downstream from this location. Is there a reason for such extreme meandering in Grand Lake’s basin?
A river flows faster on the outside of even slight bends than on the inside, just as the outside of a merry-go-round travels faster than the inside. The centrifugal force (pushing outward) raises the water level on the outside of a bend. Therefore, the river’s surface water flows toward the outside of a bend, and the bottom water completes the circulation by flowing toward the inside. In other words, the river flows in a corkscrew (spiral) pattern.
Sediments eroded by the faster flow, along the outer bank, are transported to and deposited near the inner bank, where the flow is slower and less able to carry sediments. Even on rivers that are initially fairly straight, slight curves expand and meandering increases, if the flow is fast, high, and steady.
Meanders occur on broad, flat floodplains. Deep meanders, as seen in Figure 120, require that loose sediments deposited on the broad floodplain also be deep. The flow out of Grand Lake encountered a major bottleneck, slightly downstream from what is now the Goosenecks region. [See Figure 104 on page 180.] This bottleneck slowed the upstream flow, so sediments were dropped, but through the bottleneck the flow was rapid, so sediments were scoured and the channel deepened.
After the lake emptied, subsurface water steadily drained into the large San Juan basin all along its 1,000+-mile perimeter, making the San Juan a powerful river for centuries, especially along the steep channel eroded down through the bottleneck and slightly beyond. This steepness, slight headward erosion back through the still loose sediments, and the high volume of water provided the considerable energy needed to excavate the meandering river’s outer banks to the extreme extent seen today.
Why did the Goosenecks develop such uniform and symmetrical meanders? Today, rivers are fed primarily by surface flow, so their volume flow rate, depth, and sediment load are seasonal. This produces varying meander patterns. However, the early San Juan was fed largely by subsurface water steadily draining into the large San Juan basin, so centuries of fast, steady flow conditions produced uniform, symmetrical meandering patterns.
Question 1: Was the Grand Canyon formed by draining water at the end of the flood?
A little thought will show that the Grand Canyon was not carved simply by draining surface water at the end of the flood. If flood waters draining all over the earth at the end of the flood carved the Grand Canyon, there should be hundreds of similarly huge canyons worldwide. (Attempts to show that the canyon formed at the end of the flood have produced no evidence, but the answer to Question 2 below provides evidence that the Grand Canyon was carved a few centuries after the flood.)
Water draining from a swimming pool or continent does not achieve high, erosive velocities interior to the pool or continent; such velocities occur only at the downstream edge of the pool or continent. Because water is about a hundred times more viscous (resistant to flow) than air, water cutting through air and spilling onto dry land would attain higher velocities than water trying to cut through water. The result: erosive sheet flow. This would account for “the Great Denudation” over 10,000 square miles—in the funnel and south and west of the funnel. Also, 2,000-foot waterfalls spilling from both Grand and Hopi Lakes would have had great eroding power, because the flood waters had already drained.
Everyone agrees that water carved the Grand Canyon, but there would be no Grand Canyon if it were not sitting on a mile-high plateau. (Great height gives water the extreme energy needed to carve and remove so much material.) So,
1. how and when60 was the Colorado Plateau lifted an average of 6,200 feet above today’s sea level, and
2. how did so much water rise that high?
(The list of “Evidence Requiring an Explanation” on page 184 gives many reasons why the water source could not have been the Colorado River.)
If all land above sea level today were pushed down below sea level, the ocean floor would have to rise in compensation. Eventually, water would again flood the earth; sea level would rise only 800 feet.61 Therefore, the Colorado Plateau today is far above the level that water would rise on a flooded earth, so the plateau rose more than a mile through air, not through water. For a time, the flood waters covered all preflood mountains,62 but rapidly drifting hydroplates, crashing and thickening at the end of the flood, pushed up out of the flood waters today’s major mountains and continents. (If you think the flood waters were above the Colorado Plateau and carved the Grand Canyon as the water drained from the land, then you are imagining too much water and you will not be able to explain where all the water went after the flood.)
Right after the flood, lakes were much more abundant than today, because all continental basins (formed during the compression event) naturally retained their water as other flood waters drained from the continents. Over time, some lakes lost water by evaporation, seepage, or breaching. However, postflood lakes on the upwind side of mountain ranges received much of the heavy, postflood precipitation intercepted by those mountain ranges. Those lakes likely remained full, even at high elevations. Mountain ranges also provided the hydraulic forces necessary to lift adjacent plateaus. [See “Plateau Uplift” on page 190.] If a rising plateau lifted large lakes that eventually breached, their waters would carve deep canyons on the high plateau.
Question 2: When did Grand Lake breach its natural dam?
After the flood, several time-consuming processes had to occur before Grand Lake breached.
a. The Rocky Mountains had to sink into the mantle enough to lift the Colorado Plateau 6,200 feet above sea level. (As Professor Kennedy explained on page 109, this involved the injection of 2,500,000 cubic miles of material under the rising plateau.) Waters on the high plateau then had enough energy to erode at least 2,000 cubic miles of soft Mesozoic rock over almost 10,000 square miles, and to erode another 800 cubic miles to form the Grand Canyon.
b. Enough time had to pass to cement certain objects exposed to the torrent of water from Grand and Hopi Lakes. Had tall spires, boulders stacked above Nankoweap Creek, the top of Shinumo Altar, and thousands of giant caves in cliffs not been firmly cemented, they would have collapsed or eroded when these lakes discharged. Grand Lake’s basin contains hundreds of massive liquefaction mounds, explained on page 176. They must also have been firmly cemented when the basin’s water spilled out.
c. Sufficient time had to pass for the 350-foot-thick layer of Kaibab Limestone to harden in the presence of so much subsurface water, including water in the thick Mesozoic sediments above. (Hardening made the limestone brittle, so it cracked as shown in Figure 112 on page 188. Cementing also allowed the limestone to resist the torrent of water that swept over northern Arizona during “the Great Denudation.”) Hardening had to occur before the potholes shown in Figure 111 could form.
d. Enough time had to pass for Hopi Lake to cool and its silica-rich waters to soak into and petrify floating logs. Arizona’s world-famous Petrified Forest National Park is in the basin that held Hopi Lake. Some smaller petrified forests are in Grand Lake’s basin.
e. The production, eruption, and solidification of lava had to occur at a few dozen isolated parts of northern Arizona before Grand and Hopi Lakes breached. Otherwise, the softer rock below those lava flows would have eroded. For example, Red Butte, 16 miles south of Grand Canyon Village, rises 1,000 feet above the surrounding terrain. It was already capped by hardened lava when the torrent of water spilled out of Grand Lake.
f. Time was required for animal migration to the Grand Canyon region. Some squirrels may have completed their migration before the canyon formed.64
g. Three legends of Native American tribes living near the Grand Canyon contain surprising elements consistent with the scientific evidence concerning the canyon’s formation.65 This suggests that humans were living in the region when the Grand Canyon formed. If so, some length of time was needed for them to migrate to the Grand Canyon region.
For these reasons, the Grand Canyon probably formed centuries after the flood.
Question 3: Why do we not see clear shorelines around the boundaries of the former Grand and Hopi Lakes?
Shorelines can be seen at scattered locations around several extinct lakes, such as Lake Bonneville and Lake Missoula, but the situations at these lower lakes were quite different. After the flood, the rising Colorado Plateau slowly lifted Grand and Hopi Lakes more than one mile. No doubt, this altered the shapes of their basins—and shifted their shorelines. Shifting shorelines have less time to leave permanent etchings in the rocks at each level. Tipping the rising plateau about one centrally-located axis by only one-tenth of one degree (0.1°) would have shifted shorelines horizontally at Grand Lake and Hopi Lake by an average of several miles.66 Multiple tippings about different axes or about an axis far from the lakes’ centers would multiply this effect. Lake Bonneville and Lake Missoula were not on rising—and, therefore, tipping—plateaus. Faulting and volcanism among the thousands of uplifted and tipped blocks of the Colorado Plateau further changed shorelines.
The volume of water in Grand and Hopi Lakes probably increased from the heavy postflood rainfall, drainage from higher elevations, and the breaching of higher lakes, despite the greater evaporation on the high plateau. Therefore, lake levels—and shorelines—were not as stationary as in today’s lakes.
Lake Bonneville and Lake Missoula probably breached centuries after Grand and Hopi Lakes, giving Bonneville and Missoula more time to etch their shorelines. After Grand and Hopi Lakes breached, the frequent thunderstorms in that region would have had more time to erode and erase any shoreline markings.
As Grand and Hopi Lakes emptied, subsurface water surrounding their basins automatically became higher relative to the dropping lake levels. Therefore, powerful springs erupted into the draining basins. That water often removed shoreline segments and undercut the basins’ steeper slopes, forming cliffs in and around these lakes, and sweeping the debris (talus) away. Consequently, many shorelines of Grand and Hopi Lakes are marked—not by small shelves as with Lake Bonneville and Lake Missoula—but by cliffs. Supporting this explanation is Dr. Edmond W. Holroyd’s detailed study67 showing that a remarkable number of cliffs lie on the proposed boundary of Grand Lake. Hopi Lake’s proposed boundary is not as dramatically marked. Figure 121’s caption may explain why.
Travelers driving through or flying over the basins of Grand and Hopi Lakes see land that differs from adjacent terrain. The basins have a smoother texture, lighter color, and sparser vegetation. A frequent comment is, “It looks like a lake bottom.” Indeed, Holroyd, using satellite photographs, observed that “the ‘lake’ outlines surround naturally bright regions of the Colorado Plateau.”68 Nearby regions at the same elevations, but outside these basins, do not have these “bright” characteristics.
PREDICTION 12: The soil chemistry in the basins that held Grand and Hopi Lakes will be found to be distinctly different from that of their surroundings.
Figure 121: Floor of Hopi Lake. Here, at a place called Coal Mine Mesa, inside the basin of the former Hopi Lake, several hundred square miles were torn up, pulverized, and removed by subsurface water escaping upward through the floor of Hopi Lake as it catastrophically drained. No surface water exists today to do this excavation. The geologist at the extreme right gives the scale at one of these many ripped-up areas that stretch in some directions as far as the eye can see. The region’s predominantly shale sediments, which contain petrified wood and a thin layer of coal, are much less porous than the 1,400-foot-thick layer of water saturated sand that lay immediately beneath Grand Lake. Therefore, as Hopi Lake discharged, high-pressure water, hundreds of feet below the floor, flowed upward through a relatively small portion of the floor. Eroded material was then transported through the rapidly forming Grand Canyon, 50–200 miles to the west. (Because relatively little water spilled out of Hopi Lake’s shoreline, few cliffs formed.)