Gaping Gash Opens Up In Wyoming Mountains

NPR

Published November 2, 2015 at 12:35 PM CST

A giant fissure has opened up near the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. (SNS Outfitters Guides/Facebook)

Wyoming, home to Yellowstone National Park, is known for spectacular geological phenomena.

Recently, a huge fissure in the Earth –about 750 yards long and 50 yards wide — was discovered in the Bighorn Mountains in north-central Wyoming. It’s being called “The Crack” or “The Gash.”

“It appears to be a landslide, and the crack, or gash, or however people refer to it, is the top part of the slide, where it’s pulled away from the slope,” Tom Drean, the director of the Wyoming State Geological Survey, tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson. “Often what you see in landslides is a whole broken up surface that moves down. In this case it looks like it was a block of the earth that moved down the slope.”

Drean says it is not a threat to infrastructure or humans, because it’s so remote.

“Had an event like this occurred in a populated area, it would have been pretty devastating,” Drean says.

Guest

Tom Drean, director of the Wyoming State Geological Survey.