Essay on The Hiking Trail of American Fork Canyon

This is a divergent boundary that has continental plates are made out of granite. The plates move apart and make a giant dip in the crust of the Earth. As the plates move apart they form a Rift Valley in the crust and keeps getting bigger, but this takes time.

Approximately 20,000 people died while traveling on the Oregon Trail. Which took place in the mid 1840s, when Americans started seeking economic success by moving westward. The justification for the expansion was due to weakness in the Mexican government and economy. Since Americans regarded Mexicans as inferior, despite the statement, made by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, that “All men are created equal”, many of the citizens thought that the Mexican citizens did not deserve to keep their lands. America was not justified in its western expansion due to the lack of morality behind putting one person’s comfort above the safety of another.

Mesa Verde National Park on the Colorado Plateau contains many geological aspects of interest, including its sedimentary rock layers, its canyons, its alcoves utilized by ancient people and how these alcoves were formed. Mesa Verde National Park is located in the southwest corner of Colorado, close to the Four Corners area, on top of a high mesa overlooking the Mancos River (Harris et al. 2004). The park, covering 81 square miles, consists of several main sedimentary formations that are characteristic to the park (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). Canyons are carved into the sedimentary rock, with the cave dwellings found high on their steep walls. These dwellings are an especially unique aspect to the Mesa Verde National Park, and are built out of large alcoves. The alcoves were produced by weathering and erosion of the sedimentary rock type. To better understand how these alcoves formed, we must understand the geology of Mesa Verde National Park and how it has developed over history.

There are many aspects of the Appalachian Trail. The Appalachian trail is 2,200 beautiful miles long. The trail goes through 14 states and 5 national parks. ¨It runs from Georgia to Maine, making it the longest marked trail in the country, and one of the longest in the world.¨ 4,019 people hiked the trail in 2010. Out of all the years that the trail has been here only 12,000 hikers actually made it through the entire trail. The hardest part of the trail is located in Georgia. More than 4,000 volunteers help every year to keep the trail maintained. The trail began 70 years ago and was a vision of the Benton Mackaye who is known as “the father of the appalachian trail.

When John Muir decided to travel to the Sierra, he found this experience as richer as visiting the Sistine Chapel. Well, I thought he felt the same. After reading My First Summer in the Sierra I consider to appreciate, in the same way, the environment and nature. For those reasons I want to help The Sierra Club as a Communications Coordinator position in Redwood Chapter.

The oldest recorded rock in the Grand Canyon is Elves Chasm Gneiss. It is speculated to have formed in 1840 m.y. and is older than any other rock found in the Grand Canyon. The specific origin of the Elves Chasm formation is unclear, but researchers believe that it may have formed from fragments of continental crust (Dehler, et al, 1999). It is said that most of the rocks in the canyon formed between 1750 and 1680 Ma. It is most likely that the area of the Grand Canyon was volcanic and the rest of the canyons deep crevasses were created by erosion from water. This also shows that the canyon area was at a peak with metamorphism and igneous interference.

The oldest rocks exposed are arkosic sandstone and shale, and small amounts of thin-bedded chert and altered volcanic rocks, of the Upper Jurassic Franciscan formation. Large masses of serpentine and smaller plugs and dikes of gabbro and diorite intrude these sediments; glaucophane schists and their unusual mineralogical assemblages are developed locally. The series as exposed on the San Jose quadrangle consists chiefly of sandstone, shale, and jasper; with occasional bed of heavy conglomerate. Scattered here and there throughout its area are small patches of greenstone, probably of tuffaceous origin. In several localities it is associated with serpentine, eclogite, and diorite, each of which is supposedly intrusive into it. However, large areas of practically unaltered sandstone and shale exist in what is known

The evolution of the Grand Canyon National Park has been one of the marvels of the world to which many researchers had dedicated substantial amount of controversial studies in attempt to accurately estimate the origin of the canyons and caves/gorges ages and Colorado Plateau current attained mean elevation of nearly horizontal sedimentary rocks based on numerous scientific interpretation of new research data without consideration of a slew of prior geologic data sets that confused geologists many generations ago. It is widely believed in the industry that weather element and volcanism during the ice ages (Cenozoic period) raised the amount of water in the Colorado River drainage system which increased the speed of the Colorado river and its active tributaries and its ability to cut through rocks many years ago, steepened the river (tributaries) gradient attributed to the uplift of the Colorado Plateau sitting near at sea level and the great depth of the Grand Canyon (Flowers, 2010). Additionally, increased differential erosion rate billions of years ago, exposed major geologic rock structures by cutting almost all the terraced walls of the current Grand Canyons created in part by volcanic activity that deposited lava and ashes across the area which completely obstructed the Colorado river system.

Have you ever been to the best camp EVER, which is obviously CGS? Well, if you haven’t you have to go, especially if you like nature! My favorite part was hiking up Johnson’s Peak.

Formed due to the constant erosion of limestone cliffs some 10–20 million years ago, the caves in the cliffs are the result of gradual erosion of the softer limestone due to the blasting winds and the stormy Southern Ocean. Eventually, the caves took the shape of arches. When they collapsed rock mounds up to 45 metres high were left isolated from the shore. The view of the 12 Apostles at sunrise and sunset is beautiful as they change colour from dark and foreboding in shadow to dazzling sandy yellow under a full sun.

The bottom part of the cave gets filled with the water of the ocean. A subtle filament of crystal water rises up, towards the center of the cave, where a treasure chest made of stone fluctuates in mid-air. The string of water gets heavier and turns into a chalice, big enough to contain the stone chest. A cold wind starts to blow and the chalice of water freezes, the treasure chest starts to descend until it touches the frozen grail.

I believe that the Grand Canyon is composed of layers of sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock. I believe the Grand Canyon changed over `a period of time due to weathering,erosion, and the rock cycle.

My family and I went hiking on the San Tan Trail over my long-lasting fall break. We went hiking, because we stayed home and really didn't go anywhere during fall break, so we decided to go to the San Tan Trail to get exercise. My family hasn't hiked from around February, so we were really looking forward to this wonderful hiking trip.

Convergent plate boundaries is when two plates collide and the more dense plate slides under the less dense. Divergent plate boundaries are when two plates move apart and magma comes up from the earth. Transform boundaries are when two plates slide past each other. At the convergent plate boundaries create either trenches, reverse faults, mountains, volcanos, or island arches are created. The divergent plate boundaries create rift valleys, or mid-ocean ridges. The transform boundaries form normal faults, strike-slip faults, and reverse faults. A form of weathering is at a meander, where the the two sides of the meander are being weathered away and coming closer to each other. This will eventually create an oxbow lake. Erosion is showed, at a glacier since the glacier is eroding away sediments and moving them to different places. Deposition is showed at the bottom of a mountain where rocks have fallen off the mountain and were placed there at the bottom of

Through this positive feedback process, the water slowly carves out larger and larger conduits over time through dissolution and by scouring, which occurs when undissolved particles are swept through the underground passageways. Karst caves are the results of years of this gradual dissolution. The unique and beautiful limestone formations in these caves develop when the water releases CO2 into the cave's atmosphere, resulting in the precipitation of CaCO3. The mere presence of limestone may not lead to karst geology (Henderson, 2004:119).