Home Away From Home - The Grand Tetons
Learn With Images on the CampGeo App -
download now to get started!
[00:00:00]
Do I have your
Chris Bolhuis: When are you going to learn this?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I have your approval to hit record here?
Chris Bolhuis: oh, so now you're back to asking me what I think what is happening right now,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: every
Chris Bolhuis: usually you just tell me what to do and then I just, I reluctantly do
Dr. Jesse Reimink: There's a phrase, Chris, that comes to mind, which is throw the dog a bone. And [00:00:30] I'm throwing you a bone right now.
Chris Bolhuis: You're, you know what
you're a benevolent
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I am that? I am. I am benevolent and a dictator. That's exactly right. Very, very good description. Oh,
Chris Bolhuis: right, well. if you get cranky, Chris, then you'd know you're not being
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's right. I need to throw him a bone and, uh, you know, give him, give him the feeling of control and then it's all good. Yeah,
Chris Bolhuis: Hey, do we have video going on this
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:01:00] we got video going on.
Chris Bolhuis: good. Cause I got my nice shirt on. You see, you didn't even give me nothing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You got that looks like it's got the, uh, the little opal buttons on It or, It little, uh, yeah, fancy. That's, that's your fancy going out shirt.
Chris Bolhuis: It is. It's my did up shirt.
Got it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris is taking Jenny out to the bar.
Chris Bolhuis: Painting the town green.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that's right. And then so Chris, I called you the other day. Maybe when this was yesterday, I'm not sure which. Called you, it was like 9 o'clock or something, [00:01:30] we were talking business, And uh, Then Jenny chimes in, and then, you know, I'm putting 2 and 2 together here, And realizing you're sitting on the couch next to your wife, Uh, you're watching TV, So I just go, Chris, how's that bag of Doritos treating you?
And Jenny goes, Oh my goodness, How did you know? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I was laughing about that today when I woke up, That was funny.
Chris Bolhuis: She was actually doing work. She was working on banging around on her keyboard and you thought it was the crinkling of a Dorito
Dr. Jesse Reimink: but I wasn't wrong [00:02:00] either. You had just had some Doritos, right?
Chris Bolhuis: I did. Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris and, Chris and his Doritos. So, okay, Segway award nominee coming up here, Chris. You ready for this one?
Chris Bolhuis: Yes.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so the Bolhuis household in Hudsonville, Michigan. That's house number one of the Bolhuis. Home number two for Chris Bolhuis is Hot Tub. This is Hot Tub on his back deck. House number three.
Might be, arguably, Grand Teton National Park.
Chris Bolhuis: Yes, I,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: As far as places, [00:02:30] Crispalice spends time. It's house, hot tub, Grand Teton National Park. Probably in that order. Ballpark, maybe? I'm not too far off, right?
Chris Bolhuis: Yes. I would really love it to be Grand Teton National Park number one and then everything else follows after that, but I just can't because I have to actually earn a living. But Yeah, I, I've spent Jesse a ridiculous amount of time in Grand Tetons
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So you and, um, you and Jenny and, well, your whole family, actually, you guys have spent a lot of time there. You go there during the summer [00:03:00] science trip, obviously, we've talked about that before, but for a while, I mean, you guys had like a series of, what, six straight years or something, where your, your, like, three or four week family trip would be out to the Tetons, or at least in part the Tetons, and sometimes
Chris Bolhuis: hmm. Most of it. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So tons of time in the Tetons, which made the lead up to this episode really fun, which we just finished recording and producing, and it's now published, a Geology of the Grand Tetons audio book with images on our Camp Geo app, so you can go to the first [00:03:30] link in your show notes, download the app, the audio book for the Grand Tetons, the Geology of the Grand Tetons in 12 chapters is there now live.
And this was it. Very fun to put together, Chris. Um, yeah, very fun. And it's actually, I don't know, it's been a while. We did a Planet Geo episode like a long time ago.
Chris Bolhuis: Ooh, this was a long time ago. Absolutely. Yeah. This is season one, like
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. back in the days where it's like painful to go back and listen to, to be honest with you, uh, it's, it's, it's [00:04:00] been a minute since we talked
about the Tetons really, which is kind of a shame actually. I think, um, just because they're so near and dear to your heart and there's such spectacular geology, really.
Chris Bolhuis: you, you said it. I feel like we're stuck in a rut with the Tetons, but it's not, I don't mean that in a bad way. And it kind of has a bad connotation. I'd like the rut I'm stuck in. I, I never get tired of going back there. And I don't know. I'm a little torn. Cause you know how I love like diversity, I love new things and new experiences, [00:04:30] but there's something also that's really comforting about familiarity and I, I just, I feel that way in the Tetons. feel like I'm at home. I really do.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Home away from home. It's the Bolhuis home away from home. Back in the day, you guys used to have that little, uh, trailer RV that you'd go camping around places, but the Tetons are that now. The Tetons are the home away from home for you guys.
the geology, Chris, maybe what we should do, let's, do a quick overview of the ge so we have 12 chapters in the audiobook, and [00:05:00] so obviously this is like, there's a lot of content, a lot of stuff.
A lot of weedy Really cool, weedy geology to get into with this, I think, right?
Chris Bolhuis: So I was thinking about this today, actually, that think we put this together for everybody in mind. I think unless you're one of just a few people walking where you are scientific expert on the formation and the geology, the geologic story, the Tetons, unless you're one of those few people out there.
You're going to [00:05:30] get something out of what we've put together here, but I think there's something for everybody here. I think there's actually a lot for everybody here, whether you are just the casual, curious person that's going to go on a family vacation there, or whether you have a degree in geology and you want to bone up on your Teton knowledge before you head that way, you're going to get a lot out of this.
So It's not weedy. It's not out of the weeds. It's, I think we do a good blend of [00:06:00] both. There's just, there's a lot here, but I think that the Tetons are worthy of that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's true. That's very true. It is, however, too much to get into in a single Planet Geo podcast episode. So, how should we, I don't know, how do we go through this? do we cover? This is a hard thing, like how, there's so many cool events, so much depth and detail and richness to this story. but we should do a quick five Tetons, because then when we talk about our interests here and what we've learned, [00:06:30] it'll add some context to that, right?
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. That's a good place to start. Let's go ahead and do that. Let's do like a high level.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Quick question before we get started. What, on your summer science trip, how many days or time or exercises do you do with students in the Tetons, And about the Tetons
Chris Bolhuis: that's a really good question. It's, um, I don't really know how to answer it. It it's, uh, you know how I am. I'm not. A scripted I'm more of [00:07:00] the fly by the seat of my pants. If we see something, we're going to talk about it.
You know, when, when we're hiking in the Tetons, a lot of the hikes that we do, we can see these. Glacial features, we can see lateral moraines and end moraines and moraine dammed lakes and U shaped valleys and arets and cirques and horns and just all of this really beautiful stuff that they've only ever seen before in a textbook.
And so, will [00:07:30] stop and sit and talk. And eat a snack and maybe sit a little bit longer and just soak it up. And then we'll head on. we'll head on to the, whatever our destination is. So I also, Jesse, like I've got so many personal stories about the Tetons that I I like to share with my students and some of them are emotional stories, uh,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: do remember though, you have like, you do have the, the classic pull off spot where, you know, you, kind of always stop at the one pull [00:08:00] off where you're looking at the Tetons, you know, pull out the, pull out the diagrams, look and give, you know, a spiel there. I guess You need to hit some content, right? You like, you
need to hit, you know, the key points at some point in what, three days, do you spend two days in the
Tetons? three days,
three
days. Okay. So you got three days in the Tetons and you're saying you kind of intersperse the content throughout those three days.
So it's not like you
have one whole exam or something like that on the Tetons. three days of hiking around little breadcrumbs along the way, let's say, or something like [00:08:30] that.
Chris Bolhuis: You know, I'll, um, get them up to a place, let's say amphitheater lake or Delta lake or something like that, and, and go try to find a nice quiet place where I'm not going to bother everybody else with my loud, excited, you know, voice about, because he, you know, as well as anybody, I love to talk about stuff I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, uh, and you got 30 students and that, that attracts a crowd, a crowd attracts a crowd, right? so you have a bunch of hangers on that are just kind of listening and be like, what is going on right now?
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. So I absolutely do that. I like to, well, Hey, let's eat lunch and then when you're done [00:09:00] eating, let's, sit around and talk about this, you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: We're staying, we're sitting in this circ, like what's going on here? Look around you.
Let's talk about it. and that's cool.
Chris Bolhuis: right on. But Jesse, know, kind of how my style is, I, I, I like to teach by asking a lot of questions too. What have we seen?
You know, what does that mean? you and I spent a couple, three hours walking down from amphitheater lake up in the Tetons.
And, and, by the time we got down to the bottom, you'd worked out the, pretty much geologic history of the Tetons,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: which is an amazing story, which we should maybe let's finally get to that five [00:09:30] minute, the brief little high level summary, maybe. And then we could get to that. So, Okay. let's start kind of in my home turf, let's
say. The early earth. There are old rocks in the Tetons. Let's put it that way. And some of these we've talked about before on this podcast, really old rocks. These what we call Archean grey nice terrains, which there's just a bunch of grey rocks. It's toothpaste rock. They're formed in the roots of ancient mountain belts. We've talked about this even recently on this podcast.
We talked about old rocks, right? There's what we would call [00:10:00] like TTG quote unquote rocks. 2. 7 billion years ago ish. That's like the oldest rocks in the Tetons that we have, right.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. But if you think about it too, this is our oldest rocks exposed in the Tetons. This is in the middle of the life of the earth.
You know,
this is, way older than a teenager. This is, half of earth's life has already gone by, by the time these rocks formed, you know, an amazing thing.
I mean, one, these are really, really old, very [00:10:30] spectacular rocks, by the way, these are awesome looking rocks. but as old as they are, only represent the, you know, the second half of earth's life. That's, I don't know,
it's.
Really cool to think
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's crazy looking at how old those rocks are. The next interval, which again, we've actually just talked about 2. 5 billion years ago, there's granite, there's a bunch of granite, and it kind of caps many of the peaks. It's, the nices, and this represents, this is, you know, I get excited about this, it represents the distillation of the continental crust.
This first distillation, which we had a [00:11:00] podcast about, the sort of nature paper we just published on this topic. But, you can look at those rocks and you could say, Whoa, the crust was getting distilled halfway through Earth's history. And that rock represents it. That's just a
cool phenomenon. And this kind of sets the stage for the old history of the
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And then Jesse, after this, you said 2.5 billion years old, so really geologically only slightly younger than the, nices that we talked about. First, you had a lot of uplift [00:11:30] that this was really deep stuff. This was deeply rooted stuff that then got brought closer to the surface and really, the next thing that we're able to see are these mafic.
What are called diabase dykes that intruded all of this stuff. It is beautiful. It intruded the stuff about 775 million years ago. So a long time went by. How do we know that this happened closer, these igneous intrusions happened [00:12:00] closer to the surface than when these older two bodies formed? How do we know that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, we can look at things like how fast the rocks cooled, and a, a dyke will intrude and it'll cool, Sort of traditional thinking was that cools fast because it's near the surface. It's fine grained. Whereas the granite right next to it cooled down slowly and therefore was probably a bit deeper,
Chris Bolhuis: Which, by the way, I have another question for you why do we call these a dia based dyke and not a basaltic dyke? What's the [00:12:30] distinction with
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, it's, uh, basically, cause an intrusive rock. It looks a lot like basalt, but you can tell from the structure that it's intruded in the crust. It's it didn't flow out on the surface, but it's pretty dang close to the surface. This is a feeder, this is a feeder conduit to a basaltic
flow, most likely.
Chris Bolhuis: And Jesse, like you can see these almost anywhere, but the most famous places is Mount Moran. you know, on the northern side of, the Grand Tetons and Mount Owen and Mount Tiwanat. [00:13:00] Um, like they're all over. If you get into the mountains, you can see smaller versions of that Morandike all over the place.
And you know what? To the, that I think is really interesting is they're almost all oriented the same way. These things run and they cut across East West in this North South trending range.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's exactly right. I mean, it's beautiful. And Mount Moran has just such an exceptional geological story all tied up into it. And you can, [00:13:30] look up a geological sketch of Mount Moran. And it's really impressive. Like it's cool how much. History is sort of shown in that one mountain range.
Or you can go to our audio book and buy the audio book. Cause we have cool images for that too.
But, but there's a, yeah, thank you. But there's a ton of information right there. Right. I mean, right in that one rock unit, Chris, like, and I'm sure you tell your students about this, right. look at that, here's the history workout, cross cutting relationships with that one mountain.
I mean, it's really, really [00:14:00] cool.
Chris Bolhuis: absolutely. I use my own pictures actually in my classroom all the time of Mount Moran. And that leads us to the next rock that we see after the intrusion of these diabase black dykes. We have just a long, long time of shallow marine sedimentary rocks that were deposited right on top of this Precambrian core, which means all these deep rooted, deep seated, formed rocks got brought to the [00:14:30] surface, eroded relatively flat, sunk down.
It's, you know, sub subsidence happened, and then we had deposition of these shallow marine sedimentary rocks. And one of those is the Flathead Sandstone, brown, light tan rock sitting right on top of Mount Moran. And it's a knife like contact between those granites and diabase dikes and the sedimentary rocks lying right on top.
So that's a long period of time. That's just
Dr. Jesse Reimink: long period of [00:15:00] time. as these interior seaways often do, they sort of come and go back and forth over a long period of time, hundreds of millions of years, depositing rocks and sort of eroding rocks, erasing the record, making the record, erasing the record, making the record. we'll get to about 160, 150 million years ago in the severe, what's called the severe orogeny period.
started to drain that sea, uplifted the land surface and drained that sea. And that's one tectonic event that is really interesting. And it is a compli starts the really [00:15:30] complicated story of the Western United States. Like that's the kind of kickoff point of complicated geology from there to present day.
let's take it from there. 150 million, 150 million years ago, Severe Orogeny. What's next in our story?
Chris Bolhuis: Well, yeah, you hit it, Jesse. It's mass confusion between the severe orogeny and the laromite orogeny. and even Jesse is trained geologists, you and I sometimes in the literature have a hard time wading through it and keeping them [00:16:00] straight. is that a fair
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, and the reason is because we don't know, the jury is still out on you know, where the severe starts, not really where it starts, but what events or what features are severe features versus which ones are later events, which we'll come to here in a minute, but the Laramide Orogeny is the next, the sort of, the other one that's quite confusing here is the Laramide Orogeny, which started much later, 60,
70 million years ago.
Chris Bolhuis: And there's overlap between them. Like when did the severe end and when did the Laramide [00:16:30] begin, but between the severe and the Laramide, there was another shallow sea that invaded the area, a very, very important sea called the Western Interior Seaway. And this, this went from, the Northern territories of Canada that you're very familiar with all the way down to Mexico.
I mean, this was, uh, it dissected North America into two parts, almost all the way through, or literally all the way through. So that happened. And then the Laramide happened that began, [00:17:00] you know, around 80 million years ago, and it finally drained the Laramide Orogeny is this famous, Western iconic mountain building event that really resulted in muscular shoving mountains vertically, as opposed to the severe, which was a lot more low profile.
It was more, we call thin skinned kind of a mountain billet event. So Yeah. you had this, the Laramide Orogeny that happened and that was, a big deal. We get into it as much as we [00:17:30] can our new audio book. but yeah, that's, that's the next event that finally drained the seas away for
good.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: right. and this is, as you said, muscular, I think that's a great word for the Laramide. Muscular orogenic system, big mountains, these really high, high mountain belts that were formed around this time period. The Teton Fault, however, which is what is so dramatic and striking or why it's the reason why the Tetons are so dramatic and striking is you're looking at a normal fault when you're looking at the Tetons [00:18:00] and that activation well, there's some debate about this, but we're talking like 10 million years ago.
So this, this particular feature is not a compressional Laramide feature. It might be reactivating an old Laramide feature, but it is a normal fault. It's a completely different structural, style, structural pattern from compression. This is a more of an extensional feature. But 10 million years ago, that Teton fault started move in the direction that it's currently moving or has been
moving in the recent history.
Chris Bolhuis: that's right. [00:18:30] And that's amazing because what that means is that Grand Tetons are the youngest mountains in North America. You know, they, they didn't begin forming until 10 million years ago, but you know what? Most of the movement has occurred in the last 5 million years. from a geologic perspective that's really not a long amount of time. So these are the youngest mountains. So Jesse, why is it? Possibly, that the Grand Tetons have really [00:19:00] accelerated their uplift in the last five million years in particular, the last two million
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so there's a, there's a debate, I think, in the, in the community about the impact of the Yellowstone Hotspot Track. In the Yellowstone Hotspot Track, we've talked about this through, we have an audio book on the geology of Yellowstone, but there's this big swath of no mountains just to the Northwest of this, which is where that Yellowstone hotspot truck passed. And now the Yellowstone hotspot is where it is in Yellowstone at the moment. But this was a dramatic event that affected the [00:19:30] tectonics of the area. Most likely. It's up for debate about how dramatic that effect was, but it certainly had at least some impact on the Teton fault in particular.
and so that was around 5 million years ago, and we've gone through this before, but the last. A couple million years is when the big eruptions occurred in Yellowstone Park proper, like the eruptions that occurred where the caldera is today in Yellowstone National Park. That's five million years ago, the hotspot track starts to get close to the Tetons, [00:20:00] and then the big eruptions start two million years ago.
Chris Bolhuis: I think the takeaway with this whole thing and this discussion about the Teton fault, the takeaway for me is that these mountains are born from seismic disaster, it's locked up it's dormant, it's seemingly quiet and nothing's going on and hundreds or thousands of years go by and a massive earthquake rips, and there's offset by, as much as 10 feet in an instant, really.
And so [00:20:30] it's punctuated violence that's separated by quite a long time from a human perspective in terms of quiescence.
Not a lot going
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. super cool. And then the last event, Chris, really, that uh, I think had something to say about sculpting the beautiful terrains. We've alluded to it at the
outset here, but
Chris Bolhuis: to say. Yes,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: something to say about it is glaciation. So the glaciers came in and did all this amazing glacial carving of the Tetons that just makes such spectacular and classic textbook, [00:21:00] geological, glacial features that you have
varets and horns and cirques and all the really cool stuff that, uh, that you have there.
Chris, what's your favorite glacial feature in the Tetons?
Chris Bolhuis: Well, you know, I get excited about this because glaciated mountains, glaciers, they are what make mountains. beautiful to me. they make them angular. They make them chiseled and sharp and jagged and just rugged, I guess is what I would say. My favorite glacial feature. I mean, this is impossible to answer, [00:21:30] but when I'm sitting in Jackson Hole and I'm looking at the Tetons?
What strikes me the most, I guess, are these, all the horn peaks, I can't get past them. they're spectacular. I don't know how else to describe it. I mean, they make you feel small. They make you feel humble.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: totally. Just really,
Chris Bolhuis: what I love.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: look so cool. So cool.
Chris Bolhuis: What about you? Jesse?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I really like I like the glacial lakes. I mean, I, it's hard to beat walking up and seeing a little lake in this big beautiful tarn and just like having the [00:22:00] walls all around you. It's just totally cool. Yeah,
there's
Chris Bolhuis: And when, when you come across a glacial lake like that, It's a rule have to swim,
it doesn't matter how cold it is. It's going to be
cold. It's a glacial lake, you know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: but
Dr. Jesse Reimink: cold.
Chris Bolhuis: yes, but you have to take advantage of that and experience to get the full experience. You have to swim.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I agree completely. So Chris, that's our, quick and short sort of summary, quick and dirty summary of the geology of the Tetons. I'm curious, well, what I want [00:22:30] to, what I want to know from you is, during this process, Especially, I mean, even putting together a Planet Dew episode, let alone a big audio book on the Tetons, there's always rabbit holes that we kind of end up going down, right?
What was your favorite rabbit hole or favorite realization, maybe, or something like that? What was your favorite sort of thing that pushed you further than you had thought about the Tetons previously?
Chris Bolhuis: That is a really good question. I can't wait to flip this right back to you. So be ready. [00:23:00]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: oh
Chris Bolhuis: Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: think about that.
Chris Bolhuis: you know, Jesse, you and I, over the last four years in this podcast, have had a lot of discussions about the Laramide Orogeny and about the Severe Orogeny and what we know and what we don't know. And there's a lot of debate.
There's, I mean, that's a, that's putting it mildly, but I think for me, The biggest rabbit hole was going down that path of parsing them out. And I have more clarity [00:23:30] than I've ever had before in it. I mean, it's not a huge section of our audio book. It's a part of it, it's not a massive part of it.
And the reason is because it played a role in the formation of the Tetons, but it, really has. Not a ton to do with why the Tetons look the way they do today. it was a part of the story, but it's not, it wasn't a major part of
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, that's a good, it's a good, uh, rabbit hole then. That's like a perfect
answer to the rabbit hole [00:24:00] question then, because it's not an essential piece to the puzzle necessarily, right? because as we said, the T Town Fault is much younger than both of those
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Before I flip it back to you, I want to just say one other thing is that another rabbit hole for me that I've really come to appreciate. but man, it just takes so much time, um, working with you in learning about these early rocks and how they pertain to the formation of continents. That's a really cool thing for me.
It's your [00:24:30] wheelhouse, but for me, I'm, I'm playing keep up on that. it's something that I really enjoy though. I love to learn. and, uh, that's, that's another thing that really has, has been satisfying for
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, that's a good one. I mean, that's a, it's a deep one, the severe versus laramide. I mean, part of the complexity is that it's so different across different parts of the Western US. So if somebody asks like, what's laramide? It's a hard question to answer. But if you're like, what's the difference?
Yeah. Yeah. Or what is the impact of those two in this one area Teton National Park? That's a [00:25:00] bit of an easier, bite to take out of the topic, right? Cause it, you can map the severe faults versus the Laramide faults. people have mapped these things in different areas. So it gets easier if you really focus it in on one setting, maybe.
Chris Bolhuis: when I think about that, I, I think a lot about, well, what's the difference between say, Glacier or, the Canadian Rockies versus, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, huge, huge differences between them and, and therein really lies the difference
between the Severe and the [00:25:30] Laramide,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: for sure. That's a really good one, Okay, Jesse. I'm going to flip it back to you. What was, what was your favorite rabbit hole or what was your favorite thing? Maybe that you learned as we put this
Yeah, um, I think, I think the Teton Fault was probably it for me, this is a struggle, for me as well, and it kind of It's stuff we've talked about before, with the Grand Canyon, how did the Grand Canyon form, when did the Grand Canyon form, the debate around [00:26:00] that is very similar to the debate around the Teton Fault activation, I think, because these young events that we can like, still see happening, there's all sorts of different data sets that could be brought in to the, The discussion or the debate.
And so you have people that are like mapping terraces and you have people that are looking at ancient fossils and some young sediments somewhere and they're putting rates of fault movement onto the Teton Fault. And then you have the geochronologists not quite like me, but the [00:26:30] people who date the rocks and when they're uplifting in the same way that they date the Grand Canyon and get these kind of exposure ages, like there's all sorts of different tools that people can use.
And sometimes that information is conflicting. And so that one was really deep dive on, the question of when did the Teton, when did the Grand Teton start to lift up and what was the rate through time? Like we said, 10 million years, 15 million years, it started. How fast has that been? And has it been constant through time?
Like that's a, a big question that there's a lot of [00:27:00] debate about. And it's a super interesting one, I think, but confusing because there's so many different data sets that people bring in with very different, sometimes conflicting results.
Chris Bolhuis: But this rabbit hole that you went down led you down a path where you flipped something to me not too long ago, just a few weeks ago about the math behind it.
How the length of the fault and the uplift of the fault, how they play into each other, which I think you flipped me this
and actually you, you kind [00:27:30] of like, you just added a comment to something that I had
done.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: a little, yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: instantly mad. I'm like, where are you getting this
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Where's this number coming from that you added a sub sub comment in the script? Yeah. that was a really interesting one. So, you can calculate Well, you can actually kind of see it. It's kind of beautiful. You look at the Tetons and you look at the peaks, and you said the flathead sandstones on Mount Moran, just the top of it, the grand, the middle Teton, those don't have any at the tops anymore.
Whereas if you go to the edges, [00:28:00] if you're looking at the Tetons, you're right and left, the sediment, the sort of sediment that used to be on top is. present in place if you go further along. And what that means is that the Tetons, what you're looking at is the The most movement along the fault is right there, and so if you can calculate the amount of vertical movement along the fault right there, which people have come up with something like six kilometers or more, of vertical uplift in that one location, then there's been a Basic physics about normal fault movement [00:28:30] that if you say that's the maximum movement the fault must be at least some length And if you plug this into that equation, you get like 100 to 120 kilometer long fault which Extends into and perhaps north of Yellowstone National Park So this research group's idea was that actually Yellowstone hotspot track didn't really Initiate the fault.
Yellowstone obliterated the fault. The hotspot, just like Chris, you were teaching me the geology when we were driving through the Snake River Plain, and I was a high school student, I was sitting in [00:29:00] the front the bus, actually the front little stoop, you the little stairs there, and just asking you questions about the Snake River Plain, and you're like, look to your right, there's mountains, look to your left, there's mountains, look ahead of us, there's no mountains, look behind us, there's no mountains.
What are we driving along? You I was like, river system, blah blah blah, no, rivers can't cut through those kind of mountains at this scale. And we're driving through a hotspot track, where the hotspot had just blown its way through the mountains, or just carved its way through the mountains. This Sort of style of research had proposed that the hotspot [00:29:30] blew through the Teton fault too, and that the Teton fault used to be super long, but it's been blown apart by the hotspot track, which it's very cool.
I mean, what a cool, what a cool idea. And it. could be right or could be wrong. It requires testing, but what a cool idea. I don't know. I love that. That was interesting.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. The things we learn as we do this kind of work is, uh, ah, it's
just great.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you know what's fun about it, Chris, is that it certainly obviously applies to these spectacular places. Tetons, [00:30:00] Mammoth Cave, this deep, rich, geological story, obviously applies to those locations, but it actually can be applied anywhere. That, there's interesting stuff.
all around you, sort of no matter where you are. There's a deep, rich, interesting geological storyline behind it, I think. and we get emails from listeners that are kind of along those lines, like, oh, I live in Florida and I never really thought about this before, but I was reading about this aspect of beaches and how cool is that, or whatever, you know?
I mean, it's super interesting and it's kind of [00:30:30] everywhere. So it's easy to go down these rabbit holes and get super excited about things. I would have never guessed going into this, Chris, that I would read, you know, five papers on the Teton fault formation necessarily and get
super into the weeds about it.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, I agree. And this brings me so much clarity
in my own head. The way that what I know about the Tetons now is organized in a different way
than ever
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So Chris, one final question. Let me just wrap up here. What will you, if anything, [00:31:00] Tell your students this summer. at the time of recording, we gone on summer science yet. I mean, will you tell a different story when you're standing somewhere, not maybe different, but an additional story? And what is that? What do you think?
Chris Bolhuis: all right. I don't know,
Jesse
Um,
I, I don't know. It's, it is a tough one.
You know, I'm at the stage of my career, that I know so much about the Tetons and I have so much familiarity with them. I have to curate what I'm gonna tell my kids. what I'm gonna tell the students in front of me what stories I can't [00:31:30] tell 'em everything.
It was just too much. But I think this year I'm gonna bring in, the math. Of the fault,
you know, the, the way that there's a rhyme and a reason to this, I at least want to talk about that because, I've a perfect place to do this
it's a place where we can see the displacement.
At the base of Tiwanat,
it's the cathedral group turnout, and we can see 60 feet of, displacement along the Teton fault
that's happened since the Ice Age, because [00:32:00] that displacement cuts right across a glacial moraine, and the moraine can't be any older than, you know, 13, 14, 000
years ago.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and so you can look, you can stand there and be like, look to your north. What's north.
of you? It's Yellowstone. we just came from there. We're just going there, whichever way you do it. and
yeah, that's cool. That'll be a cool visual for them.
Well, I hope they get excited by that because they, they dang well should.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, if they, if they're not, then they better act it
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's right. they
better pretend.
Chris Bolhuis: So that's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, That's [00:32:30] exactly right.
Exactly right. Well, I don't know, Chris, what do you think? kind of a wrap on, uh, it's so interesting how. Much we've learned throughout this process and all these, It's so fun. It's fun. I mean, like you've said this many, many times.
This is the best professional development you can do. it's, you know, go start a podcast.
So you're forced to talk about it and forced to learn about it before you talk about it. It's so good. What do you think? that a wrap?
Chris Bolhuis: That's a wrap.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. Sounds good. Hey, you can support us. We always appreciate that.
Two ways to support us. First of all, you can download the Camp Geo app. Go to the first link in your show notes. [00:33:00] We have a bunch of free content there. Basically the introduction to geology class that Chris and I teach at the college level. you can also purchase access to a bunch of audio books that we have there, including the geology of the Grand Tetons, geology of Yellowstone, geology of the Grand Canyon, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
You can also go to our website. That's planetgeocast. com, there you can support us. Also send us an email, planetgeocast. gmail. com. We love getting questions and love to hear some feedback. Follow us on all social medias at planetgeocast.
Chris Bolhuis: [00:33:30] Cheers.
