Class time

One of the greatest classrooms I have ever had the opportunity to use has been the Colorado River. We spend 3 days camping and canoeing and doing geology for a teacher enhancement course. That means I teach teachers some simple geology and we all share ideas how we can bring kids into the world of rocks and rivers.

Looking down into the Grand Valley on day 1.

Canoeing past Entrada walls

Hiking into side canyons. Here the stream cuts into pre-Cambrian "Black Rocks" dated at 1.7 b.y. and is overlain by the Chinle formation aged approximately 0.2 b.y. Everyone thought that walking on 1.5 b.y of missing time was an impressive Saturday afternoon stroll.

getting ready

The arches of Mee Canyon. The erosive potential of the Wingate sandstone is seen here. The Kayenta caprock is missing and the windblown Wingate creates evenly placed joints that erode into columns. Our lab that day was to establish the height of the columns and then using the average local incision rate of 0.14 ft/1K years to calculate how long this canyon has been around...a fun time with math!

The crew