First of all: does anyone know its name? I’m asking here because I don’t even know what to Google for.
Anyone know its geology?
– It doesn’t look erosional because there are several places where the elevation rises and then falls along its length without any evidence to my untrained eye of landslides.
– It doesn’t look like a basin and range because it’s too long and narrow and is not in the Basin and Range province.
– It does look rifty because the sides in satellite view look like the Rio Grande rift. However, it seems to merge with the escarpment to its north so I am not sure if it is part of the escarpment where the other side of the escarpment hasn’t gotten around to eroding yet.
At least one section of it is called “Burro Canyon.”
I’m not a Geologist, but it looks like it’s part of the Colorado Plateau, which has been pushed upwards over the millennia.
It show as Burro Canyon on the Gaia GPS app. On the northwest side of the canyon is the Coconino Rim. To the east is the basin of the Little Colorado River. There appear to be multiple Burro Canyons in Arizona. I have driven past there a number of times on the way to the Grand Canyon. It appears to be on the Navajo reservation, Navajo route 6150 crosses it near where the side canyons join. I don’t think my RAV4 would handle that road or I might be tempted to take a look next time I am up there (might have to get permission from the Navajo anyway).
ETA: As to what it is, it looks like a wash (a river which only runs during a rainy period) that might be slowly carving its way to the Little Colorado. Check back in a million years to see how it’s doing.
Note that a bit north of there the Little Colorado carves its own canyon which is quite impressive, it just pales in comparison to its big brother downstream.
here’s a more zoomed-in map with the feature in question. The Little Colorado is indeed close but runs perpendicular to “Burro Canyon” to the northeast, going through Cameron.
It looks like a wash to me as well from a zoomed-out view, except that in places, for instance the zoomed-in place I linked above (35.788, -111.622) it rises in elevation rather than declines as it moves toward the Little Colorado, and indeed, some places there appears to be washes that cut across it from the northwest to the southeast.
It may have been a wash at one point in time but was then blocked by uplifting or landslides.
Thanks, that’s it! It’s definitely in the same spot as what I am looking at. It doesn’t look like the striking sandstones of the rest of the monocline, but it is close to some volcano remnants so it could have been flooded with a sheet of lava at one point, or my untrained eyes could just be misled.
I’m having trouble getting a good feel for the 3-d topology from looking at the Google satellite image, but if you have worked out that there’s a valley feature that does not descend consistently, it would likely be a graben.
The whole area has fabulous geology, so there’s a lot of resources out there.
One of the links on that page takes you to a download for the Cameron quadrangle geologic map, pdf here:
Don’t bother trying to download that to a phone - it’s a big file, you need some RAM and processing power to render it. All the formations and fault lines are mapped in great detail, you can figure out exactly what you’re looking at.
Pkh & Pkf (blue) are members of the Kaibab limestone formation - this is what you are standing on at Grand Canyon Village. Pt is Toroweap, Pc (yellow) is Coconino, the next two layers down. The Coconino is the first major cliff that you see near the top of the Grand Canyon
Qay (beige) is recent alluvial deposits; Qb, Qmb, Qbt (purple/pink) are all basalt from lava flows, I presume the arrows show the direction of flow.
Thanks for the link, that picture has a great resolution to it. I also did not know that the blue and light blue were limestones since it just said “sedimentary” on the map but from satellite view they definitely look more like limestone than sandstone.
Yeah, upon closer inspection you’re right. It does seem like water might flow southwest to northeast through Burro Canyon then turn right into Tappan Wash (I believe that is the name of the wash that crosses at that point).
ETA: Google Maps calls that wash “Burro Canyon Wash”, at least at a point further downstream. “Tappan Wash” I am getting from an Arizona backcountry guide. That wash does end up at Tappan Spring, which then flows into the Little Colorado via Tappan Spring Canyon.