THE CATSKILL GEOLOGISTS BY PROFESSORS ROBERT AND JOHANNA TITUS - Two Mountain Streams

CATSKILL - We had long thought that we had been EVERYWHERE in the Catskills. After all, we have been in this Catskills geology business for decades. But we were wrong. You see, we have lately been, more and more, using Google Earth on our cellphones to get around. We always thought we knew how to get there from here, but those little techno-monsters know better! Recently we were on our way to the Time and the Valleys Museum in Grahamsville to give a talk and we let the phone guide us there. It did - and it did it well. We turned onto something called the Peekamoose Road and instantly knew this was going to be good. It is a beautiful drive that takes you up Peekamoose Mountain. This is a classic Catskills landscape, and it was becoming late spring, and the greenery was starting to crowd the road. Neither of us could remember ever being there before, but we were truly glad to have found it. The road took us up a long incline. Steep slopes descended from left and right. We were driving parallel to a narrow creek called Bush Kill that lay at the bottom of a vee-shaped canyon. It was just a small stream but, because of its steep slope, it had a powerful flow. This stream had cut its steep, deep and picturesque canyon. See our first image.

We continued on to the top of the slope, crossed a divide, and began a descent down the Rondout Creek. That was a mirror image of our uphill trek except that we drove by a fine waterfall named Buttermilk Falls. (It’s sometimes called Peekamoose Falls.) See our second photo.                                                                            

This wasn’t just a scenic drive; there was a bigger story here. When we were undergraduates, our professors taught us that these sorts of things were called “youthful” streams. These were seen as being almost modern landscape features. Recent disruption of the landscape had led to the formation of new streams. This is especially common in a newly deglaciated region. These young streams, being glutted with meltwater, had been extremely erosive; they cut their way down through the underlying lands. Young streams were deep and narrow just as we had seen. Waterfalls were to be expected. Given time erosion would broaden and reduce the steepness of this youthful land, and it would mature. That’s what we learned when we were young, but the theory of stream development has changed, and these views are now considered obsolete. However, the notion does still give you a frame of reference to view this landscape. It has been a scene of deglaciation, and those two streams are, indeed, young and have been very erosive.

But there is something else; this is a wonderful scenic drive during the leaf season – right now! What were you planning to do tomorrow?

Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”