Mysterious gaping crack opens up in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains

The huge crack that suddenly appeared in Wyoming has stirred curiosity, but there is a scientific explanation. 

|
Susie Neary/AP
A sheep grazes on US Forest Service land in the Bighorn Mountains in northern Wyoming on Aug. 22, 2015. A massive crack has opened up in the foothills of Bighorn Mountains.

Deep in the foothills of Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, a dramatic giant crack has opened up in the ground.

Named "The Gash" by stunned onlookers, the huge maw, which some have described as  "a mini Grand Canyon," is estimated to measure 750 yards long by 50 yards wide.

First reported by hunting company SNS Outfitter & Guides on their Facebook page, the massive crack is said to be a geological event and nothing manmade.

According to SNS Outfitter & Guides the gaping hole, “appeared in the last two weeks on a ranch we hunt in the Bighorn Mountains. Everyone here is calling it ‘the gash.’ It’s a really incredible sight.”

Randy Becker, one of the hunters to see the crater, added, "An awesome example of how our earth is not as stable as you might think.

"Awesome forces at work here to move this much dirt!!”

SNA Outfitter & Guides shared findings from an engineer in Riverton, Wyoming who examined the area, in a follow up post.

"Apparently, a wet spring lubricated across a cap rock," the company wrote on social media. "Then, a small spring on either side caused the bottom to slide out. He estimated 15 to 20 million yards of movement."

While impressive, this gaping back-country sinkhole is nothing apocryphal, but rather geological. 

A Wyoming Geological Survey expert called it a “fairly small event given the overall aspect of how big landslides can be.”

"A number of things trigger them, moisture in the subsurface which causes weakness in soil or geology, and any process that would weaken the bedrock or unstabilize it somehow," Wyoming Geological Survey’s manager of groundwater and geologic hazards and mapping, Seth Wittke, told Grind TV.

Wyoming Geological Survey’s public information specialist Chamois Andersen told the Powell Tribune "an early, wet spring and summer" may have also "had a lot to do with it."

"It is not uncommon to have slides like that," she said.

So, will The Gash keep growing?

“Yeah, as long as there’s room for it to move it could keep moving,” Wittke said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Mysterious gaping crack opens up in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1031/Mysterious-gaping-crack-opens-up-in-Wyoming-s-Bighorn-Mountains
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe