I took a Geology Of National Parks class at Ohio State a year ago. I found it extremely fascinating, as I'd never really paid attention to how the features of Colorado that I loved so much were formed.
I'm gonna geek out a bit. Last night, I was showing Laura a bunch of places in Colorado that I wanted to visit on our June trip, and today I was looking at my Google Earth iPhone app. I noticed some erosion patterns on Mount Evans that I hadn't noticed before, and I'm getting a glimpse into how it was formed. So if you don't like geology, tune out now. This is gonna get nerdy.
Here's an overview of Mount Evans.
In it, you can see the big red A, which is the summit of Mount Evans.
Here's a pic of me sitting on that summit, which is 14,264 feet above Sea Level.
West of the summit, you see Abyss Lake, and north of the summit, you see Summit Lake. I've never seen Abyss Lake in person, but a photo of me standing by the shores of Summit Lake is my blog photo icon on the upper right. Here it is below too, for good measure.
I can see some erosion patterns happening here as this area gets buried under multiple feet of snow for 9 months out of each year. As that snow freezes, forming a sort of temporary glacier, it digs out the mountain when the spring thaw causes it to retreat. This is very evident when looking at Abyss Lake.
Here's an over head of Abyss Lake.
And if you want a clearer picture of what's going on, here's a topographic representation of this. (I love Google Maps!)
As you can see from the topographic map, abyss lake sits at the bottom of an elevated area. The snow melt each spring feeds abyss lake. There's a creek running from Abyss Lake leading down into lower elevations, which is labeled as Lake Fork.
Each spring, as the snow melts, it takes away tiny layers of the mountains with it. The canyon Abyss Lake has carved out is essentially getting bigger every year.......although much too slowly for us to percieve without instrumentation. But I predict that in a few thousand years, there will be a deeper gap between Mt. Bierstadt and The Sawtooth due to this erosion.
As the spring snows have thawed over many many years, they've carved out a channel leading to lower altitudes from Abyss Lake. You can see this channel in the overhead shot of Mount Evans.
So now let's look at Summit Lake. This lake is to the north of the Summit of Mount Evans, and is almost 2000 feet lower in altitude than the summit of Mount Evans. Here's the overhead shot showing Summit Lake.
But in order to get a better idea of what's going on, let's look at the Topo of Summit Lake.
You'll notice a ridge to the north of Summit Lake keeping Summit Lake from spilling over into a deeper chasm, at the bottom of which lies the Chicago Lakes. Here's a pic taken at that ridge, facing the Chicago Lakes.
Now let's refer back to the topo, as I feel this gives the best representation of the glacial erosion that has formed these features. If you'll notice, to the immediate west of Summit Lake is a ridge that is starting to be eroded away. This ridge is featured as a visible dip in this photo taken from Summit Lake.
My thinking is that as the snows melt off of Mount Evans, they've slowly carved out the area where Summit Lake sits now, the same way the did to Abyss Lake. The cool thing is that when you look to the east from Summit Lake on the topographic map, you can see where the water flows from Summit Lake down through the rockies! It carved away and eroded the land away anywhere the water flowed.
So when I look at these from a Satellite view, I can clearly see the erosion activities of centuries that have created the awesome stunning sights I love.
Now that you've read this, yeah I know I'm a dork. But if you don't find this kinda cool.......why did you read it?! lol!
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