Investigate mysterious features with a geologist 

Totally the Bob Ross of Geology. Glad your channel is doing so well. Teaching people to be interested in and wonder about the world around them is so important.

I am a 72 year old Canadian and I have watched your fascinating programs with great interest. As an artist, I began watching to find landscapes to inspire my paintings…but I soon forgot about that as I was drawn into the fascination of geologic time. You not only describe the scientific side , but you are able, like any good teacher, to place it into layman’s terms so well that your vast knowledge is so understandable. When I grow up, I want to be a geologist! 😂 Thank you !

I never cared about geology until finding your videos. But now I look at the world completely differently, especially around my local area. Rocks are no longer just rocks, they're now a chapter in a bigger story that I enjoy unravelling. Thank you Myron.

I wish I had a teacher as lucid and personable when I was young . Brilliant !

Myron Cook; willing to almost get permanently stuck in a stream bank to teach us geology!

When I saw TrekPlanner visit that first feature I couldn't get it out of my head, thank you for finally explaining it!

This was a great video for perpetual learners! Thank you so much for the time and the analysis.

Well done! I thoroughly enjoy your method of deductive reasoning.Your interpretations help me to further appreciate the natural world.

Very strange features and very interesting to hear the thought process involved with understanding what happened here. Thanks Myron, always great videos!

I'm enjoying your information, Myron. I never took any Earth Science courses while in university and I'm thinking it would have been a lot of fun to take your courses. Thank you.

I'd have never come up with this interpretation on my own in a million years. Thanks for activating parts of my brain that have been hibernating. I've been seeing rocks as squiggly lines for too long.

Here in southern Québec we can't have things like that unfortunately. The ice, which was about 2.5 km thick where I currently live just a few 10 thousands of years ago, have erased pretty much everything and the rocks are a melange of many different rocks almost everywhere in the form of glacial deposits and moraines. Utah is such a wonderful place! I'm glad I do have the chance of virtually hiking with you in Utah with your amazing expertise.

This channel is one of my favorites on RU-vid. You’re a great teacher and your passion is contagious. I’ve learned a lot watching your videos. Keep up the great work and thank you, Myron.

As soon as you mentioned liquefaction, I remembered watching videos from the 2011 Japan earthquake where this occurred. It was so weird to see this happening as it was for the people behind the camera who had no idea what could be causing it.

As someone who lives in a country with no deserts and mountains, these endless vistas with mountains in the distance are breathtaking.

Many must have said it before but, you truly are the Bob Ross of Geology ! There's even the little tree 😀 This was absolutely fascinating, I live on the other side of the world but it felt like being there in Utah, beautiful place btw, with you exploring the land. Also, thank you for showing measurement in the metric system too, it helps a lot in understanding the scale of this geologic process. 👍👍👍

So interesting! Thank you so much for taking us along with you as you go exploring. I love the way you work through the possibilities and come up with the answer.

This was an exciting, thoughtful, enlightening explanation of my home. I'm in Asheville, NC, and get to see many examples nearby of the upheaving and folding you describe. Now I understand what the topo map of Western NC and Eastern TN clearly shows: these folding patterns, riven by rivers doing their job of filling in the valleys.

These are the sand blows I saw in a film about earthquakes. Thank you for the excellent explanation. Your giving a lot to watch for and I greatly appreciate it.

Quick sand is also held together with salt. If the salt is washed out, the quick sand collapses and turns into liquid. This often causes huge landslides. Yes, I enjoyed the whole video! 👍

What you describe in the video sounds alot like sand blows... The Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812. They created sand blows in the Mississippi river valley. And the negative depression in the ground some of them leave behind looks very similar. Wonderful! Now we know what they might look like thousands of years later! Foods for thoughts!

I also found some weird rocks, not as massive as what you show here, but as mysterious. I went to Landers, CA last month and found some very weird volcanic rocks. I had uploaded the video, two kinds of rocks are shown in it. First rocks had weird protrusions (nubs?) like the ones found in so called megalithic walls of Inca and Egypt. Second rock type, definitely volcanic, had a string of harder rocks arranged in linear fashion. Have you seen this kind of rock formation? What are they called? Please take a look, I thought they were andesites, but I could be wrong. Thanks,

Funny thing, just yesterday I rewatched a great documentary made by the channel "Deep Dive," about the 1811 earthquake that struck New Madrid, MO (link:ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Kn2KFC8cX-g.html). Similar liquifaction events were also recorded during that tragic, tragic event, and even as someone with little experience in geology, my brain still went haywire as I connected the dots while watching your video. (Also, very cool to see what these intrusions look like after millions of years of erosion) Immensely entertaining and educational video as always, Mr. Cook. Professionals like you who communicate and educate with passion is the very thing that makes RU-vid such a great place.

I don't know of anyone who has investigated this interesting phenomena of the rock formations Myron. Thanks for doing your very best at explaining it and with so much gusto too. Appreciate the fine video work in the making of this video.

This one was absolutely mind blowing!!! I was certain that first one was man-made! You are a great geologist, thank uou so much for helping us understand such complex geology. Keep up the great videos! 😎😁

Another fascinating video. Thank you for spending so much time making these.

Your channel found me at the perfect time! I need a couple days of bedrest, but now I kinda congratulate my busted knee. Thank you so much for not filling your videos with a sensory overload! Your vids are very well suited to my Audhd mind. Cheers from 🇸🇪!

you bring infectious enthusiasm to your subject. I feel like I could get into geology watching this.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching that! You are a great teacher and I appreciate how you lead us to think of different possibilities or scenarios, but ultimately explain what you you've learned and what you know. I kept hypothesizing and guessing all the way through! Thanks so much for sharing your expertise & knowledge.

That was the best and most enjoyable video you made yet. I'm in my 80's and have traveled the Western U S extensively but never came across anything like these features. Thank you for sharing your geological adventures with us.

What a great video. There's nothing more satisfying that finding a mysterious lump in a desert taunting you with "Come on then, brainbox. What am I?" all tied in with a terrific hike (mind you - on "slow" sand. That's tough going). Coincidence note: The randomly-selected, self-refreshing image I get when I switch on my laptop showed cottonwood tree in a hole in the Grand Staircase desert this morning.

Hi Myron. When I camped at Kodachrome Basin State Park, I saw many tall rock tubes sticking up vertically. Looking at the matrix, it was bleached sand and very small rounded gravel. I found the tall tubes rather mysterious, but it appears that something very similar to what you described happened there too (sand 'volcanoes' due to liquidification caused by earthquake). Not too sure what formation(s) (are) is involved was, but the overlying formation was eroded away exposing the tubes. From its location, I'm assuming the eroded layer was Tropic Shale and the tubes are from underlying Dakota Sand Stone. Bad guess?

Wow! That was some very interesting geology. What a great demonstration of critical thinking and the application of geologic science to explain natural features of the earth. This is why I really enjoy learning about geology!

I was 100% wrong in how I thought they formed! I imagined a muddy area, with swirling currents carving out circular depressions, like the features we sunned and soaked in along the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania, eventually silting up and forming hard walls and plugs. So cool that these features formed in a moment. Thank you for your fascinating and relaxing videos.

Thank you for creating this and educating us on the mystery and your hypothesis! I appreciate you, Myron!

Very interesting! I have an old sand volcano remnant fairly close to me at the very south eastern part of Sweden by the Baltic sea. It sits right at the waters edge and when it's filled with sea water you can use it as a bath tub!

Myron, walking the dog this morning I saw a scale model of sedimentary rock production. A pile of sand was washed down into the ditch. You could see the silt the radicals being carried along and dropped were the velocity no longer able to move them. It splayed out in a semi circle . I was able to see this cause of your teaching and influence. For that I am most appreciative. It looks as if a puddle formed then when it finally bust through the sand it gushed into the ditch in a miniature torrent. I'm guessing cause it rained at three in the morning.

Very, very interesting ! You explained this very well. I was in that area last year and had no idea these were there. A great reason to go back. Thank you again for a superb video !

I'm 84 and have spend much of my life exploring the World around us and especially the Great Four-Corner area. Every time I returned Home I promised myself that I had to take a Geology course!! Of course that never really happened, to any degree, so the next trip out exploring would produce the same result!. Thanks for giving me an easier way to get some basic understanding of how great Nature is!

This area also has cold water (CO2) geysers in some locations. Chaffin Ranch, a.k.a. Champagne, geyser is my favorite. You’ll find it right near where the San Rafael river crosses the lower San Rafael road’s path. I stumbled upon that one by pure accident while riding a motorcycle in the area and have been returning to it many times now. Fascinating geological process that facilitates this.

Another fantastic and well done presentation. Really enjoy your articulate but modest way of enlightening me! Thank you, sir!!

love your teachings.thanks Myron keep them coming

Totally awesome Myron, thanks.

This is fast becoming one of my favorite channels. Y'all got a patreon?

The formations created by intense plasma and electro-magnetic 'storms' on the Earths surface are amazing, and native legends from around the world support the rapid, violent changes that occurred perhaps at the time of the Younger Dryas event and not by millions of years of wind and weather erosion and sculpting. Keep up the explorations Myron, your videos are appreciated by those of us who see things a little differently from academia.

I appreciate how you do much more than just tell us what we are looking at, you gradually reveal it. You lead us to the correct answer slowly, encouraging us to reason on the evidence. We learn and retain new information better that way. School would have been more enjoyable if my teachers had taught that way. Thanks Myron!

I’m delighted by your enthusiasm; it is infectious. Thank you.

Amazing, Myron! Thank you. As a fellow Wyoming geologist, I'm so thrilled you are putting out these videos. This one in particular is delightful because of how you walk us through the scientific method. Thank you so very much for all you do. We'll be sharing this with our children. 🙂 By the way, I've seen miniature version of this (a "sand blow" I suppose it would be called) in the Great Divide Basin in Battle Spring Flat. Biggest difference is the scale due to the absence of lithified layers above the liquefaction layer. Anyway....such a neat video. Thank you!

Thank you, sir! I always greatly respect the scientific method. I was a professional investigator for many decades. Great stuff here! I hope to see more of your scientific work. All the best!

Excellent again. Thanks Myron

I saw the first feature on The Trek Planner a few months ago. He was speculating on how these were made. I’m glad to see that you visited this site and found a solution.

I saw a video that hypothesized that these were ancient grain storage, hunting blinds, houses, ect. Thank you very much for the knowledge!!! Makes more sense the way you explained it. It also explains the reports of water shooting into the air when the new Madrid earthquake happened in early American history! Spot On!!

Fantastic as always. Thank you for your thoughtful and easy to follow presentations. A tiny niggle, as a fluent two measurement system Canadian I feel compelled to note that one foot is about 30cm, not 23cm :)

Thx Myron so enjoyable and logical and love your manner and simple expression and profound evaluations

Great teachings Myron...thankyou😊

Myron, you are the best! I love your videos! My brother and I were avid rock hounds as kids in Ohio. We always wanted to be geologists or archeologists when we grew up. He has passed but he would have loved your channel as well. 😊

Will the untouched Sand Blows (volcanoes) in the southern Mississippi Valley from the New Madrid earthquake in 1811 and 1812 turn into those features millions of years from now?

Thank you. Fascinating subject and engaging presentation.

Ha! Totally called it-any time you see cylindrical bodies of sand with reduction/bleaching of the iron in the grains, it screams fluid escape structure. But these are definitely the biggest clastic dikes/sand boils I’ve ever seen…truly massive, even if you take away all the extra concretion around them. One has to imagine these originated from earthquakes related to subduction under the native/continental Jurassic arc that went through the southwest down to Mexico and/or the Nevadan orogeny. I also wanted to say I loved how you brought up the indigenous tower rooms, both in terms of recognition of their cultural achievements but also because so many people wrongly attribute geological features to man-made structures, especially among the conspiracy-minded, and it’s important to show people how to resist that tendency to jump to such conclusions. PS: Myron, given that you live in WY, when I first saw some of the way these things eroded, into low-lying meter-scale circular rings, it reminded me of a set of really interesting features in your state that I think would make for a really terrific video in the same vein. Have you ever seen or heard of the meter-scale (32m mean diameter) secondary impact structures found at the bottom of the Permo-Pennsylvanian (280 Ma) Caspar formation, that pockmark almost the entire northeastern surface of the Sheep Mountain Anticline, just SW of Douglas? Truly astounding preservation, the perfect horizon just happens to have been uplifted and exposed at the surface today, complete with impact breccias and planar deformation features in quartz. These are secondary impacts, impacts from pieces of debris from a larger meteorite impact somewhere relatively nearby (as yet undiscovered). You can actually observe them on Google Earth, for example, at 42.652009°N 105.449561°W and 42.647850°N 105.449133°W. Also there are some located near Mule Creek, for example at 42.190475°N 105.820359°W, about 19km WNW of Garrett. Check out Thomas Kenkmann et al. (2022) in GSA Bulletin vol. 134 no. 9/10, as well as Kenkmann et al. (2018) in Scientific Reports vol. 8, no. 13246 for several better images and deep discussion. I would *love* to get a glimpse of these things on the ground, and with your cinematographic chops and drone capability, I can imagine the images would be astounding. One of the things I like most about your videos/channel is that you always find incredibly unique sites that are well off the beaten path both in terms of geography, and also in terms of geology. The outcrops you cover are always unique geological mysteries that lend themselves very well to a certain pedagogy about how field geology is conducted, and it’s great. I think the Sheep Mountain Anticline site (they call it the “Douglas Strewnfield”) also fits your criteria of geologically unique and off the beaten path, and lends itself very well to a “mystery” type of narrative journey. Like sand boils/sand volcanoes/clastic dikes, many do not know that secondary impact structures are possible, let alone that 280 million-year-old such structures buried millions of years ago can be preserved, after being uplifted during the Laramide orogeny and denuded exactly to the point where they are cropping out at the surface today. Just wanted to throw that your way, because I think it would make for a super interesting video! Awesome work as always. 👏

Huh. I always wondered how "and on that day all the great springs of the deep burst forth" (Gen. 7:11) might have worked. This goes a long way to explaining that. Very cool. Thank you for the journey into this geological aspect.

In 1983 “Sand Blows” or artesian fountains erupted after the 6.9 earthquake in the Lost River Range at Borah Peak in central Idaho. These can be seen today near Chilly Buttes of Thousand Springs Valley. Given time, geologically speaking, it’s easy to imagine the features you were exploring. Well done Thank you

Thanks yet again Myron! Your videography is great. This is a special part of the country to me as I have traveled this area extensively and never tire of it's beauty. Seeing the San Rafael reef in the background at the beginning of your presentation was a treat.

Karst is possible in sandstone , especially when the cementing mineral is calcite . I have seen quite a number of features in sandstone that are almost without a doubt formed at least in part by dissolution . I have also seen solution process in shale . I am also familiar with sand blows / volcanoes . These are very common features in the New Madrid region and other active seismic zones . Very good video .

Very cool video and I compliment your editor as well! So, the whole process of liquefaction and sand volcanoes is actually pretty easy to understand and I've messed around at the beach doing almost exactly what you did, playing in the mud. Is this easy to recreate in a lab with an aquarium perhaps? I'm curious to understand how the water gets trapped like that such that it escapes so quickly! I realize of course that in geologic terms of time, it's a subtle process and so I can kind of envision it happening. But then I think too, that water is also constantly trying to escape during the process and thus the scenario could never occur in the first place. I think it would be fascinating to demonstrate in a lab, how this might be recreated. I'm not a teacher or anything, but I'm sure a demonstration of the process would enlighten students when they see how complex processes work!

Such an enjoyable adventure as always with Myron. Thank you!

I understand very little about geology but your videos make me feel like going into an adventure of discovery. Thanks for taking us with you.

I really enjoy your videos. I have always been fascinated by rock formations but never had chance to study geology. It's like your episodes are tailor made for me:)

Hope you don't get upset if I disagree. It would seem your sand spouts would have the same material all the way through, & thus; when eroding; there would be a solid cone; not a hollow, circular one with differnt materials, that have inner laticed structures. The Mud Pots seam to be a better fit. I.M.O. Thanks, more Geo-power-to-ya!

I really enjoyed your new video. I learned so much. Thank you. I RoccoMend this channel. Myron explains complex ideas in simple terms so I can understand them easily. That's a sign of a great teacher!!

Fantastic journey of discovery. Thank you!

Who else just came here from Wirtual's stream?

Thanks again, Myron! It was fascinating, as always.

Always a wonderful adventure! Thanks so much!

Myron, I enjoyed the way you weaved your thought process into a story that was both interesting and educational. You pulled us into the problem solving, which was a bonus.

Once again I loved the lessons, scenery and even the roving green Jeep! Thank you!

That was just a great video Myron! It was also fun to see if you were going to get out of that mudhole without pulling your foot out of your boot. 😊

As a Metallurgical engineer, I really appreciate your observations and analysis of our natural geological wonders.

Another excellent presentation & investigation. Thanx Myron !!!!!!!!!!!!

Well like always, I'm standing here scratching my head with my mouth hanging open. I'm getting better at not commenting till videos done. Thanks Myron. I was visualizing whirlpools of sediment. You have opened my mind to a new stratosphere, geology gives me goose bumps.

Thank you so much for this lesson on sand volcanoes. New to me entirely. Makes perfect sense as explained.

Fun and Fascinating World* Thank you for sharing Myron Cook~~~

Pattern recognition is probably the greatest human development In my humble opinion, love your channel.

Always so interesting! Thank you! ❤

Awesome job and explanations. Thanks Myron I’ve really enjoyed this.

Myron: I just discovered your wondereful channel a few days ago and have watched almost all of the videos you have made. As a professional physicist in Mexico, my knowledge of geology is pretty basic. However, coming from a place where cretacic rocks are everywhere ( The Tehuacan Cuicatlan biosphere reserve) I have always had a fascination with rocks. Coming to your channel and learning so much and being awed by your beautiful wyomming hikes feels like coming home to me. I look forward to keep enjoying many more. The video on the huge salt structures at the gulf of Mexico and the largest landslide ever in Wyomming have been the most amazing videos I have seen ever. Looking forward to enjoying many more videos from you. P.S. Loved when you presented your fantastic jeep loving crew. Muchas gracias!

THANKS FOR YOUR PERSISTANCE

Thank you Myron for another excellent presentation.

Thank you for your time..

I loved this very fascinating episode! Thank you all very much!

~ you're a valuable link as to keeping this massive "open to enterpretation" subject grounded .

Thank you for this amazing exploration!

Completely stunned by how cool your channel is. I'm happy I found it. As a kid and into adulthood I've always been amazed by what I find out there hiking. You give me a better perspective on what I've seen and make me wanna get into it all deeper. Great stuff my man. Great, great stuff. Subscribed.

Wow, you rounded up all my questions and skepticism at the very least.

I absolutely love this channel and your work thank you so much!!!

You had my attention and I enjoyed your scientific thinking. I am so happy I found your video. Thank you!

Brilliant, Doctor! I notice on my hikes in the foothills of Pikes Peak that very many stones and boulders are carvings of the landscape in which they dwell. Of course the terrain will have changed since they were carved.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge

A pleasurable learning experience, thank you.

The video is very interesting. Liquefaction and settling reminds me of Lake Tahoe. I remember seeing all those rocks on the bottom floor of the lake, so close together, wondering where they come from. Thanks for posting intriguing information.

Fascinating. Great work.