Bears -- A Geological Force

"Displacement of eroded sandstone by Ursus americanus."

I live at the bottom of a steep ridge wtih exposed sandstone rock strata at the top.  Pieces fall off Over centuries and millennia huge boulders have rolled partway down and stacked up upon each other. 

Once while visiting a favorite place, I found new rock shards everywhere and worked out where maybe a dumpster-size piece had come down since my last visit. Would like to have seen that happen, from a safe distance.

So you have your freeze-thaw cycles that split rock, and then there is gravity.

And bears.

Good ol' Ursus americanus, the American black bear, found almost everywhere, plays a part in shaping the landscape too.

At this time of year, the bears are feeding actively, and one food source is fatty grubs. They walk along the slopes, flipping over every likely rock within their strength range to learn if anything edible is underneath.

Since their mamas never taught them to put things back where you found them, the rocks just roll -- downhill.

Sure it's not much, but just think: thousands of bears over tens of thousands of years. It has got to add up.

In fact, I think there is a paper here. All I need are two co-authors, one a geologist and one a wildlife biologist. I'll handle style and editing. It will be interdisciplinary, intersectional  . . .  something like that.

Trail Rebuilding in the Wet Mountains

Ahead, the sawyer searches for the lost trail while others clear saplings and logs.

I spent Saturday with a volunteer trail crew rebuilding a trail in the Wet Mountains, a process that we began last summer.

Post-wildifre erosion, followed by a lush growth of grass and aspen, and erased the trail in places. Jeff Outhier, the San Isabel National Forest's "master of trails," marked a new route where the old one been washed out by the normally tiny creek.

When I hiked there before the fire in 2016, I mentally subdivided it into three sections: The Ravine, The Wall, and The Summit Aspen Groves.

Last summer's work was mostly in The Ravine and partway up The Wall. 

The Wet Mountains lack craggy, snowy summits, being mostly below timberline, but they excell in steepness. Somebody with a GPS measured a 2300-foot gain in altitude in about a mile and a half (?).

Summit ridges tend to be gentler and fine for just strolling, once you are up there. 

Here, the summit ridge had offered big aspen groves, probably created by a long-ago forest fire that took out the white fir, douglas fir, and ponderosa pine. 

Loppers for small aspens and conifers. The aspens, being clones, will come back eventually, Job security!

The groves, in turn, burned again six years ago, and now show dead standing dead trunks (until the wind blows them all down) and an understory of saplings that make foot travel difficult. Sometimes I think I can find the old trail most easily by shuffling my feet around in the leaf litter.

And then, mid-afternoon, we call it a day, and it's down down down, an hour's walk (with a break). Maybe by this time next year we will have the whole trail rebuilt. 

About those shirts: I could not decide if I felt like an early-seaon deer hunter or a county jail inmate on work-release.

A Quick Video Trip through Colorado Geology

Colorado used to be south of the equator — about 300 million years ago. Things were a little different then: "a low-lying area, periodically inundated by the ocean." 

Since I live smack on top  of (not beside) the Fountain Formation, it is nice to see it get some attention. 

Also  I like the image of Colorado 9 through Summit County with glaciers on it.

A project of the Interactive Geology Project at CU-Boulder, which has its own YouTube channel.