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Wyoming residents are in awe of the sudden appearance of “The Gash” or “The Crack” in the Big Horn Mountains.
It isn’t known exactly when the crack — located near Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains — formed. On Tuesday, K2 Radio, a radio station in Casper, Wyoming, uploaded a series of photos taken by Casper resident Randy Becker of the massive gash in the ground. On Thursday, KTVQ out of Billings, Montana, updated a story of their own with a possible explaination of the crack’s origins provided by SNS Outfitter & Guides Service out of Wyoming.
A post on SNS Outfitter & Guides’ Facebook page reads: “An engineer from Riverton, WY came out to shed a little light on this giant crack in the earth. Apparently, a wet spring lubricated across a cap rock. Then, a small spring on either side caused the bottom to slide out. (The engineer) estimated 15 to 20 million yards of movement. By range finder, an estimate is 750 yards long and about 50 yards wide.”
Becker has been back to see the crack three times since he first snapped photos of it on Oct. 24. It’s like a magnet, he says, and he can’t help but be drawn to it.
“I was so stunned by the magnitude of it — the size and the scale of what an event it would take to create this large of a cleft in the earth,” Becker told the Journal. “I took so many pictures. It was unbelievable. It was an amazing thing to see.”
Becker has hunted in the area for 15 years. The last time he visited the area before the crack existed was in November of 2014. He said it was pretty jarring to go back and see the landscape change so drastically.
“It is awe-inspiring,” Becker said. “The thing about it is that I think we believe that the earth is relatively stable, and things are solid. This could happen anywhere. I think it just lets you know that the earth is not fixed like we believe it is. … It’s something I’m really happy I got a chance to see and witness and document.”
Agencies/Canadajournal
