Sort:  

Thank you. It's an incredible place, particularly Canyonlands, I feel like all I did there was wander around saying 'wow'. Water may be slow but it's one hell of a sculptor.

Randall Carlson has some theories worth looking into if you haven't. He's talking about it happening quite fast, all at once.

I'll have to look into him, I'm not familiar with him. Seems he's going to be just a bit south of Red River Gorge in October for a 'Middle Cumberland Plateau Flood Tour'. Sounds festive.

He's on a couple Rogan podcasts on Youtube still. Decent starting point I suppose but there's quite a bit out there on the guy and his words. It boils down to glaciers with lakes on top cracking open and draining out ferociously near the end of the ice age, to put it simply.

Dump a large bucket of water on sand. It'll yield nearly the same results in your photos, on a smaller scale.

Oh, glacial lake outburst floods? I've been down some wikipedia rabbit holes on those, there were a bunch in the western US, the scablands in Washington are a result of that I think.

Yeah. Plenty of locations, plus that water still travelled. It's fascinating. Makes more sense than a slow release in my opinion. Slow release over time still contributes, of course. Wind erosion as well. So many things. No doubt nice to look at though.

I hadn't heard of it before I stumbled upon it on wikipedia, but yeah it's quite fascinating. I've driven through the scablands in Washington, although I didn't know about it/them at the time, was a rather interesting landscape. I'm sure there was a bit of both at varying times but it's hard to imagine a slow release creating those scablands.

Speaking of slow and fast erosion of both the wind and water variety, I've got an old post you might appreciate. It's from a place in New Mexico with slot canyons and hoodoos, all kinds of fun stuff to look at.