GRAND CANYON FORMATION
It formed as the Great Flood water levels were falling
Most of the following is from:
A receding Flood scenario for the origin of the Grand Canyon at https://creation.com/grand-canyon-origin-flood
Bracketed [] headings and insertions are mine.
This doesn't explain how the Flood first formed the sedimentary strata with their loads of fossils. Strata formation was explained at cataclysmicearthhistory.substack.com/p/76-sedimentary-rock-strata-formation - - - - - -and cataclysmicearthhistory.substack.com/p/65-megasequences. The subject of fossils is planned to be covered later.
[GRAND CANYON FORMED DURING GREAT FLOOD REGRESSION]
_[Our finding is] that the GC [GC = Grand Canyon] was formed while the waters of Noah’s Flood receded from the American continent. As this receding water flowed from east to west, the GC was mainly carved out in the opposite direction, from west to east. This scenario explains many characteristic and unusual features of the GC, such as its location through the top of a ridge [plateau], its branching structure, its numerous major and minor side canyons, its meandering and the presence of multiple ‘outflow points’ in its terminal escarpment [edge of plateau].
[GRAND CANYON & GRAND STAIRCASE STRATA]
_The GC is carved through the higher points in the landscape. Figure 5 shows a north-south cross-section through the GC area, starting from the northern mountains on the left to the Kaibab Plateau and the GC on the right. This is the so called ‘Grand Staircase’. It can be seen that the GC cuts through the higher parts of the Kaibab Plateau on the right and not through the lower level near the Chocolate Cliffs in the middle.... Why would any breaching occur in a higher part right through a ‘mountain’ rather than in a lower part? The Receding Flood Scenario (RFS) is able to explain a cut through higher ground very well. Consider the GC area (indeed the whole North American Continent) being completely covered with water to a depth of 1 km or more. This immense body of water would extend 500–600 km to the east and have a similar north-south dimension. We will call this body of water the Grand Canyon Inner Sea....
[INITIAL EROSION OF SUBMERGED PLATEAU]
The Colorado Plateau is uplifted and therefore the water within the GC Inner Sea is retreating in a westward direction and the water-level is lowering. The water follows many routes flowing out of the area from higher to lower regions. When there is a submerged landform, such as a plateau, mountain, hill or ‘sandbank’, the water will not only flow to the left and right of the landform but also over its top as long as it remains submerged. The water flowing over the top will, at a certain point, increase in speed, since there is less and less room for the water to find a way. Therefore some parts of the top of the landform will start to erode faster than other parts or the sides. In this way a channel or gully will form right through the higher parts of the elevation
[CANYON LENGTHENING & BRANCHING]
As the water level keeps falling, the sides of this initial channel will emerge from the water.... But water will continue to flow rapidly because of the enormous volume of water that still needs to drain out. Thus the channel will be carved deeper and deeper.... As a result, the channel will grow longer in an upstream direction ... opposite to the direction the water flows.... Once the channel has achieved a certain length, it will start to branch out like a tree as the water continues to drain from the plateau. The main channel will develop side channels, which in turn will develop side channels [etc]. [Such] branching structure[s are observed today in] tidal areas with lots of sand, such as in the Wadden Sea to the northwest of the Netherlands.
[3 CONDITIONS FOR BRANCHING]
Niagara Falls ... shows that a relatively constant supply of low velocity water on [a] plateau can explain the origin of a V- or U-shape [valley].... Once the V-shape of the main canyon is established, three conditions are needed to form the typical branching type canyons observed in the GC: [1] There needs to be a relatively constant (or regular) supply of a large volume of water covering the raised area and flowing into the main canyon. [2] The raised area/plateau needs to be rather flat so the water can flow into the main canyon from both sides. The steeper the downstream slope on the raised area, the shorter and narrower the V-shape of the main canyon will be. When the raised area is flat, it will result in a main canyon with a long, broad V and with more branching. [3] The sediments need to be relatively soft; otherwise the erosion would be too slow to keep pace with the lowering water level. In hard rock the water would have flowed away over the sides of the raised area before any gully/canyon had time to be eroded.
[RIVER STARTED OUT VERY WIDE, THEN NARROWED]
As shown in figure 13 [not marked, but below the following image], the cross-section of the GC has two distinct shapes. The canyon of section A is broad and relatively shallow. The canyon of section B sits in the middle of section A. It is much narrower, is carved much deeper and has steeper sides. The Colorado River flows through section B. The present size of the Colorado River is a good fit with the size of this deeper canyon, indicating that this deeper section was eroded by the Colorado River over time. It also means that the flow in the Colorado River in the past (when the narrow canyon first began eroding) was similar to the flow in the river at the present time. However, the broader section, A, [must] have been eroded by a river with an immensely larger volume of flow [The GC is 4 to 18 miles wide, so the river was nearly as wide as that]. ... This broad river represents the Flood drainage-river that carved the section-A portion of the GC. ... This dual cross-section indicates that the initial volume of water flowing through the GC outlet point must have been huge. When the water level lowered, its volume decreased, creating a narrower river and eroding a narrower channel in the lower parts.
[LARGE LAKES FORMED PERPENDICULAR SIDE CANYONS]
The side branches are perpendicular to the direction of the main part of the GC [and they] would have formed in a similar way to the rest of the GC but after much of the CG Inner Sea had drained from the plateau. The side branches extend into regions where there were still huge amounts of water [lakes on the Kanab & Coconino Plateaus shown on 1st image above] that still needed to drain. The only way these enormous amounts of water could drain was to the lowest point in that area, which was toward the GC channel. ... It can be seen that a large lake form[ed] in the northern part [of the plateau]. As this lake drains into the GC, its borders decrease, closely following the tip of the [side canyon called] Kanab Canyon right until the lake is completely drained. We need to take into consideration that a lot of water from the northeastern part of the Colorado Plateau also would have found its way through Kanab Canyon until the water level was so low that the gap north of Kaibab Plateau at Chocolate Cliffs ... was closed. The Havasu Canyon to the south [would have formed similarly]. ... It would not be unreasonable [to suppose] that the landscape today has remained similar to what it was back then and that the subsequent changes have only been relatively small. ... These lakes released their water into the side branches of the GC in the same way that the GC Inner Sea earlier flowed into the GC on the Hualapai Plateau. At the overflow points of these lakes ... waterfalls like the Niagara Falls, but much larger in size, were carving both side canyons at the same time.
[MEANDERS IN SOFT SEDIMENT ONLY]
The Colorado River is meandering at Marble Canyon. ... One prerequisite for a river to meander is that the sediments it flows across are soft, not hard. Meandering is caused by a combination of erosion and deposition of sediments. What could possibly explain that the Colorado River is meandering in hard rock? The likely answer to this would be that such rock wasn’t that hard when the Colorado River originally carved it.... Another prerequisite for meandering is that the water has to flow slowly enough to deposit the sediments. The uniformitarian explanation for this feature is that the river first formed in deposited alluvium and that after uplift of the Colorado Plateau it continued eroding down through the hard rock.... Nevertheless, at Marble Canyon there is no alluvium on the plateau, neither is there any trace of a previous alluvium.
CREATIONIST VIDEO ON THE GRAND CANYON
HOW THE COLORADO PLATEAU UPLIFTED
The article above seems a bit weak on explaining the uplift of the Colorado Plateau. Mike Fischer's website at https://www.newgeology.us/ explains the Pangaea breakup and the rapid separation of the continents. He says a very large asteroid impacted just east of Africa, which shoved the Americas away to the west. The initial shock caused impulse mountains to form on the near side of continents that moved away, like the Appalachians in eastern North America. As the Americas slowed down due to friction building up under these continents, magma began to stick to the underside and raised up the Rockies and the Andes. However, the Colorado Plateau was also uplifted partly by overriding the East Pacific Rise, which is an underwater ridge similar to the Mid Atlantic Ridge. On this webpage, https://www.newgeology.us/Northup%20on%20Gen%2010.25.pdf , Mike says:
Noahic flood deposits are lifted from hundreds of feet to many thousands of feet in the Andes by the crushing, buckling and intruding forces produced along the leading edge of South America as it ... dove into the great Humboldt [Atacama] trench 20,000 feet below the sea along the western edge of the continent. The great glaciers of the world are deposited on the volcanic ejecta and the folded flood strata that was folded well after the Noahic flood. The crust reshaping heat of the leading edge of our own great plate produced by its overriding of the Pacific ocean bottom powered the intrusions and uplifts of most of our western mountains. That is true throughout the Central Rockies where the continent apparently overrode and settled over a hot plume welling up out of the rheosphere, of the Sierras, the Klamath Mountains, the Cascades, the Northern Rockies and the Canadian Rockies wherever I have examined them. It is obvious that it is impossible to consider the division of the continents and the Biblical ice epoch to be part of the closing events of the Noahic flood. That view… simply makes hash out of the physical and Biblical evidence. To ignore the massive geological evidence which contradicts this position and to ignore the Biblical evidence while insisting that these events are an integral part of the conclusion of the Noahic flood utterly obscures the actual event series which followed the Noahic flood.
So Mike thinks that the Pangaea breakup occurred about 500 years after the Great Flood. I used to agree with him on that, but for several months now the evidence from other Creationists seems more persuasive, that the breakup occurred toward the end of the Great Flood. I'll have to reread this webpage of Mike's above to see if I can understand his arguments better.