Hole in the Rock

cruiseroutfit

Cruizah!
Moderator
Vendor
Location
Sandy, Ut
I'm sorry but I just can't believe this canyon isn't getting more press than it is.. Shouldn't the speed that this erosion is happening be enough to get it on the 10 o'clock news? I think it should be at least highlighted on some geological study if not featured on a National Geographic Channel Documentary...
Just my thoughts...

While the shear amount of dirt that has moved is pretty wild, its not at all unheard of in Southern Utah, especially that area in which a natural lake once existed, before it's dam washed out ;)
 

thering

Member
Location
Springville
While the shear amount of dirt that has moved is pretty wild, its not at all unheard of in Southern Utah, especially that area in which a natural lake once existed, before it's dam washed out ;)

I wondered about that... So there having been a lake there did indeed increase the speed at which the erosion is happening? Is that because the ground was still saturated deep down or is it because the lake caused the soil to be less compact? I am just really curious about this...
 

cruiseroutfit

Cruizah!
Moderator
Vendor
Location
Sandy, Ut
I wondered about that... So there having been a lake there did indeed increase the speed at which the erosion is happening? Is that because the ground was still saturated deep down or is it because the lake caused the soil to be less compact? I am just really curious about this...

Pay civil engineer or a psychologist :D

Seriously, I'm not going to attempt to explain the reasoning, but its not an uncommon phenomenon in southern utah. The storm that really accelerated that washout (Oct 06) washed out trails all over the Central & South Utah... I don't think it was really anything out of the ordinary in the big scheme.
 
Last edited:

Brett

Meat-Hippy
Pay civil engineer or a psychologist :D

Seriously, I'm not going to attempt to explain the reasoning, but its not an uncommon phenomenon in southern utah. The storm that really accelerated that washout (Oct 06) washed out trails all over the Central & South America... I don't think it was really anything out of the ordinary in the big scheme.

Let's change that to Utah ;)
 

thering

Member
Location
Springville
Pay civil engineer or a psychologist :D

Seriously, I'm not going to attempt to explain the reasoning, but its not an uncommon phenomenon in southern utah. The storm that really accelerated that washout (Oct 06) washed out trails all over the Central & South Utah... I don't think it was really anything out of the ordinary in the big scheme.

Well sorry for being curious.. You spoke as though you knew what you were talking about... I actually thought you WERE a civil engineer there for a minute.:D I'm just teasing...
 

cruiseroutfit

Cruizah!
Moderator
Vendor
Location
Sandy, Ut
Well sorry for being curious.. You spoke as though you knew what you were talking about... I actually thought you WERE a civil engineer there for a minute.:D I'm just teasing...

... well what happened was the laminar layer of porous basalt layer rock was shifted due to a pre-cambrian layer of pontorific faulting along the trails edge. This in turn caused the sand to dump off when it became a homogeneous mixture of sediment based water...

:p
 

thering

Member
Location
Springville
... well what happened was the laminar layer of porous basalt layer rock was shifted due to a pre-cambrian layer of pontorific faulting along the trails edge. This in turn caused the sand to dump off when it became a homogeneous mixture of sediment based water...

:p

Wow!! Now see... why couldn't you just say that in the first place? :rolleyes:
 

Chiara

New Member
Been there done that

I have done this trail twice. Once in a stock tj and once in a stock xj. We took huge groups of 30+ in each time. Many vehicles were stock including a '95 f150. The groups were mostly novice driveres and we survived both trips. I did the trail both times with William Legrand Black that you are all talking about. He is a wonderful person and is currently living in the Blanding Utah area. My Cherokee did just fine. I had a little experience at the time and was running 235's. 31's and a locker and you should be just fine.

Jared
 

thering

Member
Location
Springville
Couple friends made a run down a few weeks ago. They paid a visit to the wash out via backtracking the old trail. They got some pictures of the washout as it is now... back about a hundred yards past the last bypass. That portion of the trail right at the base of where we turned a sharp left and up out of Lake Canyon is still hanging on for dear life but the rest of the canyon floor is gone now. I'll try and get one of them to post some pics.
 

Greg

Make RME Rockcrawling Again!
Admin
I'd love to see those pics of the washout. I ran the trail this Spring and we took the bypass, I wish I would have ran it before on the old route. :(
 

Alex

New Member
Location
Albuquerque, NM
How's this:

Current head of erosion
orig.jpg


orig.jpg


We used to drive up next to the nearly dead tree at top center. Note the people standing at the upper left corner for scale.
orig.jpg


People circled in red here
orig.jpg


It is quite obvious that there is no fixing that trail.
 

Alex

New Member
Location
Albuquerque, NM
The trail is still passable, you just need to use the new bypass the BLM blazed around Lake Canyon. It uses the Nokai Dome Road for part of the way. It is the solid red line on this map:
orig.gif
 

OREGON85

from OREGON
I wondered about that... So there having been a lake there did indeed increase the speed at which the erosion is happening? Is that because the ground was still saturated deep down or is it because the lake caused the soil to be less compact? I am just really curious about this...


I'll take this one. It actually has to do with texture. Soil is made up of sand silt and clay with rocks in and under it. You know what sand looks like but you need an electron microscope to even see clay. Silt is in between. Silt and clay are so small that when they are picked up by moving water they stay suspended for a very long time. Sand and rocks are also moved by water but fall out very quickly when the energy is reduced. When they encounter a still body of water they are dropped instantly. That is why there is a fan shaped land form at the mouth of nearly every canyon. If you dug down there would be tons of rocks. Now as you move outward into the lake bed the texture becomes more silty and clayey and there are fewer rocks. If the lake is there for thousands or millions of years the silt and clay just slowly fall out into the bottom of the lake. This creates a very unique situation because normally it takes hundreds of year to form an inch of soil in the desert where there is very little plant life and much less weathering. (Yes, rocks are weathered much slower in the desert. In wetter areas they are broken down to form sand, silt and clay by chemicals related to the excess rain.) Normally desert soil is very thin so an eroding stream will quickly cut down to bedrock and erode much slower. So, what you have is unconsolidated material with very little plant cover and water cuts right through it and holds it in suspension for a very long time, until it reaches a very large still, body of water.
 
Last edited:

thering

Member
Location
Springville
I'll take this one. It actually has to do with texture. Soil is made up of sand silt and clay with rocks in and under it. You know what sand looks like but you need an electron microscope to even see clay. Silt is in between. Silt and clay are so small that when they are picked up by moving water they stay suspended for a very long time. Sand and rocks are also moved by water but fall out very quickly when the energy is reduced. When they encounter a still body of water they are dropped instantly. That is why there is a fan shaped land form at the mouth of nearly every canyon. If you dug down there would be tons of rocks. Now as you move outward into the lake bed the texture becomes more silty and clayey and there are fewer rocks. If the lake is there for thousands or millions of years the silt and clay just slowly fall out into the bottom of the lake. This creates a very unique situation because normally it takes hundreds of year to form an inch of soil in the desert where there is very little plant life and much less weathering. (Yes, rocks are weathered much slower in the desert. In wetter areas they are broken down to form sand, silt and clay by chemicals related to the excess rain.) Normally desert soil is very thin so an eroding stream will quickly cut down to bedrock and erode much slower. So, what you have is unconsolidated material with very little plant cover and water cuts right through it and holds it in suspension for a very long time, until it reaches a very large still, body of water.

Wow..a dream answer to my questions...:D
Thanks oregon85!! This stuff is cool. What's you're background? Soils? Civil Engineering? Southern Utah has the most amazing land forms! My wife says it's ugly but I say it's awesome!!
 

OREGON85

from OREGON
Agronomy. Crops have a lot to do with soils (of course), so I've taken a lot of soils classes including Soil Genesis, Morphology and Classification and Soil and Water Conservation both of which covered that topic heavily.
 
Top