PART TWO B: A Sinkhole Complex at the Southeastern Nash Draw Boundary (in two sub-pages)
We have now crossed to the other (east) side of the little limestone ridge, and are looking at another basin with tall grass on this side, with a sinkholes into the ridge as its terminus as well as another channel that seems to lead around the ridge into the other (west-side) grassy basin.:
The edge of the main sinkhole for this side is visible to the lower right in the above photo, and also in this next photo:
From that sinkhole we now turn around and follow the flank of the ridge toward the south and see yet another cleft into the rock of the ridge. There must be another borehole at its terminus:
About halfway, we look back (northward):
When we get to the other (south) side of the little ridge, there are lots of holes!
More holes come into view as we turn west and see the little grass-filled basin where we started:
The next four photos give an inside look into several of these sinkholes. The first two photos are into the large vertical holes seen in the last two photos. With a long rope to tie to the nearest tree, and a year of strength-training, I could climb in and out of these holes to see how far a human could walk or crawl underground into them:
Geologists have actually counted and characterized the bands in these limestone formations and described their makeup to determine the small environment changes that caused them to have very slight differences in their properties as they precipitated from sea water over many hundreds of thousands of years.
There were also a few sub-horizontal sinkholes, like the one pictures in the next two photos. (Too small for me to enter.)
Alas, we have come to the end of our sinkhole explorations. For now.
Go back to the First Permian Basin Dynamics Page
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