Veronica and Trevor Geek Out
The Grand Canyon’s Carbon Canyon is a place of rock scree, expansive views, fat sunbathing chuckwallas, crystalline rocks and impressive faults that tell the story of continent collisions.
Halfway through our hike there, river guide and recent UC Davis graduate Blake Friedman says, “It’s pretty funny how we can’t walk more than 20 feet without seeing something interesting.”
It’s true. Every few steps, this group of UC Davis graduate students stops to point out something.
A billion years in sandstone
Geology grad student Michael Kenney admires a hollowed out piece of Dox sandstone and says, “You can stick your head in about a billion years right there.”
Plant sciences professor Truman Young bends down by a prickly pear cactus and picks up a scale insect that lives on it, the cochineal. He rubs the insect together, and a crimson dye stains his hands. The insect produces this dye, which Native Americans once used to color fabrics.
Geology graduate student Trevor Waldien breaks out into an impromptu lecture about faults and earthquakes when we hit a striking example of “folding,” where movements deep in the earth’s crust pushed the rock layer up, so that it points vertically rather than turned on its side.