The Whites - Pre Glaciation

[dr_wu002]

Dr. Wu's girlfriend, Jess (incidentally the person who got me into hiking) is a geologist -- not This Geologist (2nd on the left, I believe) but she is one. And she's good to have on the trails because she can always answer my childish questions either about the landscape (is Mt. Washington a live or an extinct volcano?) or even biology (is this tree deciduous or carnivorous?). I really enjoy the landscape and what the mountains look like. In fact, I have a lot of the raised relief topo maps sitting near my desk at home and I often look at them.

However -- and this is something Jess hasn't been able to answer for me -- has anyone wondered or perhaps know of a study that has been done that imagines how The Whites looked before the last major glaciation? Before all the impressive valleys and cirques were carved? I imagine the mountains would be higher? Less rocky? More rocky? (Mt. Washington). I'm wondering if there exist any computer simulations that could draw an imagined 3-D topo of what the area looked like thousands of years ago. Any ideas? Any books to rec'd?

Thanks!

-Dr. Wu

 

[lumberzac]

Funny that you mention this. I was thinking almost the same thing about the Adirondacks on the drive to work this morning. I was imagining what hiking up the Great Range or Giant would be like if before Keene Valley was filled with over 900’ of glacial debris. BTW one of my regular hiking partners is a geologist as well. I call him the Rock Nazi when he doesn’t shut up.

 

[sapblatt]

Kindergarten Geology 101

The only thing I remeber from a college geology class was that these mountains were a lot higher in the older eras...not sure about anything else. Erosion, wind, glaciers, etc have made them all smaller. I also know that the Whites are considered to be a very old mountain range.

 

[dr_wu002]

The only thing I remeber from a college geology class was that these mountains were a lot higher in the older eras...not sure about anything else. Erosion, wind, glaciers, etc have made them all smaller. I also know that the Whites are considered to be a very old mountain range.

Unfortunately I never took a geology class. I think everything is a pluton.

There are a lot of geologists in the North East... I wonder if anyone has done a computer simulation.

-Dr. Wu

 

[sapblatt]

Geology

Unfortunately I never took a geology class. I think everything is a pluton.

-Dr. Wu

Isn't Dr. Daisypodiae a geologist? Thought I read that somewhere...

My geology class hardly ranks...it was basically the science class that you took if you were a non science person...we called it "science for business and phys ed majors!" It avoided the rigors of chemistry, biology and physics. The companion class, "weather and climate" was great...got a lot out of that one!

 

[DougPaul]

A whole pile of links here: http://nhgs.org/GSNH/NHgeol.html.

Doug

 

[ExploreTheEast]

I just like the phrase "Plate Tectonics." It's great to throw out in everyday casual conversation:

"If it weren't for these pesky plate tectonics, I wouldn't have been late to work this morning!"

 

[mavs00]

Also, here is brief, but simplified (for dummies like me) site that contains some interesting facts and information about the basic underlying -Geology of the Adirondack Mountains-. Check out the INTRODUCTION site for a explination of the pre-glaciation (and even further back) lay of the land.

Has nothing to do with Wu's original question about the Whites , but perhaps some (like Lumberzac) may have simlar questions about the Adirondacks.

**NOTE** - I think the text is from a book, so it does reference figures or charts that are not with it. It did not seem to hurt the understandability of the story.

 

[Puck]

I also know that the Whites are considered to be a very old mountain range.

Indeed. That is afact needed when dealing with the altitude snobs from out west. Thier peaks are new kids on the block!

 

[dug]

From what I recall from my college Geology classes, the mountains were considerably higher. I believe they were talking 20,000'+/- (take that you Rockies fanatics!) They were more of a rounded mass than the peaks and valleys seen today. There wouldn't have been the rockpiles you see today, as those were left from retreating glaciers. Of course, with the erosion cycles, there were probably periods where they were rounded, eroded down to sharp valleys, then were worn down again to rounded...then eroded into sharper valleys again. After each ice age, the mountains would change and keep taking some "off the top" if you will.

The Appalachians are one of the oldest -if not the oldest- mountain ranges in the world. As you get north into Canada, you can see the age of the exposed rocks near the sea level that go back billions of years. In terms of hight as measured from sea level, this would be pretty hard to calculate I would assume as the level of the sea is much different from today.

Do I have any study to prove any of this? No....

 

[jjmcgo]

Question about rockpile

Dug wrote: "There wouldn't have been the rockpiles you see today, as those were left from retreating glaciers."
Were the rocks at the top of Mt. Washington, the long scramble over boulders to the summit, left there by glaciers or is Mt. Washington one rock with a million fractures?

 

[^MtnMike^]

The Roadside Geology Series books for Maine (by D. W. Caldwell) and Vermont & New Hampshire (by Bradford B. VanDrver) have a lot of information about the geology of the Whites.
The first few chapters of each book cover the geologic history of the state(s) from the first mountain building event up to the most recent glaciation.

^MtnMike^

 

[Willie]

Dr wu002,

If you’re interested in communicating with someone that may answer your question, contact Woodrow B. Thompson at the Maine Geological Survey (Geologic Mapping Section - Glacial Geology). He’s familiar with research on glaciation in the White Mountains. His e-mail address is on Maine’s Geological Survey’s web page.

 

[dug]

"Were the rocks at the top of Mt. Washington, the long scramble over boulders to the summit, left there by glaciers or is Mt. Washington one rock with a million fractures?"

Probably a little bit of both. Both, as the glaciers retreated they left their mess. Some of that mess may have been directly from Washington. Good point.

 

[DougPaul]

Were the rocks at the top of Mt. Washington, the long scramble over boulders to the summit, left there by glaciers or is Mt. Washington one rock with a million fractures?

The regions of angular rocks of the same rock type are probably frost fractured Mt. Washington. Rocks that have been carried by a glacier tend to be rounded (or at least have the corners rounded off) and may vary in type (depending on where they have been carried from).

Doug

 

[Seeker]

The regions of angular rocks of the same rock type are probably frost fractured Mt. Washington. Rocks that have been carried by a glacier tend to be rounded (or at least have the corners rounded off) and may vary in type (depending on where they have been carried from).

Doug

Yep--what Doug said.

 

[Papa Bear]

"Were the rocks at the top of Mt. Washington, the long scramble over boulders to the summit, left there by glaciers or is Mt. Washington one rock with a million fractures?"

The type of formation on the top of Washington (also Jefferson and Adams) is called "Felsenmeer" - a wonderful German word meaning "sea of rocks". They are caused by alternate feezing and thawing.

"Erratics", on the other hand are carried along by Glaciers and often deposited when Glaciers retreat. They stand out prominently from the sourounding terrain and are generally not on peaks. They often consists of rock type not found in the area where they lie - since in fact they came from somewhere to the north. Glen Boulder is an erratic. There's also a beautiful one in Arcadia National Park which you can't miss when you drive by just past Eagle Lake way up on the ridge.

 

[forestgnome]

Madison Boulder, very near my home, is a huge erratic. It's worth a visit if you're really interested in them. It stands out dramatically from the surrounding terrain, looking very out-of-place. It's noted in the AMC Guidebook.

 

[Dugan]

Glacial erratics are found throughout MA also.

According to a very good Geology 101 teacher from years ago - consider also that a curvy line traced from Long Island to Cape Cod is the terminal moraine of the last glaciers. Also that the glaciers were 1-2 miles thick, and that the majority of earthquakes in New England today - thousands of years later - are still the earth's crust rebounding from the pressure of the glaciers.

Also according to this teacher and the assigned text, the Whites were thought to have rivaled the Himalayas, since the orogeny that created each is similar. The instructor said that the Whites were formed the last time the continents all bashed together. They formed a land mass that's today called Pangaea. Likewise, the Himalayan mountains are forming as the result of two different plates with land masses on the edges being forced together (Australian-Iandian Plate being forced northward into the Eurasian plate), which is how the Whites would've been formed. I know of a link to a computer sim that shows the theoretical break up and formation of Pangaea, http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/parks/animate/, but it doesn't include weathering that formed the Whites as we know them.

The USGS has an interesting site on earthquakes. It clearly depicts that the majority of quakes appear on the edges of tectonic plates. K2 may outpace Everest yet!

 

[dr_wu002]

Thanks for the replies so far, everyone! This one is a little more complicated than the other things I posted yesterday regarding "alpine spiders" and "alpine zones." I'll comment more after someone named Rosinante posts some comments about Glaciation.

-Dr. Wu