Facebook is all abuzz with the news of a giant hole,dubbed "The Gash" that split open the earth near The Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. The announcement and pictures of the find were made by hunters with SNS Outfitter & Guides last Friday who say it appeared sometime within the last two weeks and may have been caused by a landslide.
The initial report was followed up with some incredible pictures of mother nature's latest miracle. They make it easy to see why the locals call it "The Gash."
After the discovery, an engineer was called out to investigate and, according to the Facebook post, "He estimated 15 to 20 million yards of movement. By range finder, an estimate is 750 yards long and about 50 yards wide." Mother Nature never ceases to amaze.
Since so many people have commented and asked questions, we wanted to post an update with a little more information. An...
Posted by SNS Outfitter & Guides on Monday, October 26, 2015
As to the cause, the engineer says, "Apparently, a wet spring lubricated across a cap rock. Then, a small spring on either side caused the bottom to slide out." In layman's terms, please? Underground, there was softer rock. On the surface it was capped with harder rock. Running through the softer rock was a wet spring which lubricated the surrounding rock and caused it to slide out from under the harder rock.
Dave Petely of Landslide Blog agrees with this assessment for the most part, except he does not think the water served as lubrication so much as to cause a shift in stress. To put it in his words, "I suspect that water did play a role in this landslide, but in general the role is to change effective stress not to provide lubrication"
Petely goes on to effectively say he does not believe this was a sudden event. Instead, it was something that took place over a long period of time and, "the changes in the behavior of the springs occurred as the internal drainage of the slope replumbed itself as the deformation developed."
The break in the earth is not clean. It consists of multiple large "steps" in varying heights. Some of these steps drop several stories deep. The pictures make It look like a session of the classic video game Qbert game gone horribly wrong.
SNS Outfitter & Guides is a company that provides guided hunting tours in Wyoming and Montana. They hunt for all kinds of game including, elk, deer, moose and even prairie dogs on "over 750,000 acres of leased land."
