How were the Grand Canyon and other canyons carved?
Canyon's Quiet Carver
How were the Grand Canyon and other canyons carved?
Stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and your brain does a little double-take. Something carved a gash a mile deep and eighteen miles wide into solid rock. What kind of monster does that? The answer is almost funny: a river. Just water, doing the most patient thing in the world.
Here's the trick water uses, and it's sneaky. On its own, water is soft. But moving water grabs sand and grit and pebbles and carries them along like a pocket full of sandpaper. Every grain that tumbles past the rock scrapes off a tiny bit. The river isn't cutting with water. It's cutting with the stuff the water carries.
