jandrese said that particular formation probably wasn’t going to last much longer
Indeed. The formation had been there for over 200 million years, so it probably would have only lasted a few more hundred million years at the most. Geologically speaking, the rock was an imminent threat to children. Crisis averted!
My conscience won’t let me walk away knowing that kids could die,"
Hall said… He said after he knocked the formation over, he wished
he hadn’t and he realized he should have contacted a park ranger. But
he also said he feels he did the right thing. “As it is, I feel guilty
because I have a conscience,” he told the Deseret News. “But my
conscience also says I did the right thing.”… Hall said he and
Taylor were both “immensely sorry for any damage that we may have
caused,” or any embarrassment they brought to the Boy Scouts or anyone
else. But he also said, “One more rock falling to the ground is not
going to destroy the beauty of the park. Eventually, the erosion
brings all of them down.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/charges-toppled-ancient-utah-rock-20612183
Yeah, they learned how to offer a non-apology apology and call themselves heroes at the same time.
iirc there are signs before you enter the area there are signs that specifically prohibit you from climbing on them or disturbing them in any way. Toppling one is a really stupid thing to do.
What’s next, knock down Arches? ‘hey it’s only some rock man!’ ‘coulda hurt someone’
Goblin Valley was one of the highlights of our trip (hot as hell tho) the ‘goblins’ were a huge variety of shapes and sizes, carved by ancient streams then fossilized. It was like wandering around in an all-ochre Roger Dean painting. So sorry to hear even one of these unique formations were damaged. Their ‘apology’ is appalling - nice try on weaseling out of this scumbags. Next thing you know they’ll be removing the video from YouTube (derp!)
I am an academic geologist and part of what we do is go around and, to put it in the worst light possible, destroy rock formations.
Students are taught to be very careful - in most cases all you need is just a small fresh piece (not surface-weathered), and with practice you can obtain that without leaving obvious evidence that someone swung a rock hammer at the outcrop.
In state and national parks and other protected areas, the rock hammers get left in the car. But I’m spelling this out for a reason - even in parks, most rock formations are nothing special and are of very little scientific, aesthetic, or other value. The rock hammers get left in the van when geology students go to parks, but there’s really no reason not to pick up and break apart rocks that have already broken off a cliff face (or whatever the case may be).
The problem is, laypeople (and even most geology students) are not in a position to know what’s valuable and what isn’t (and I don’t mean economically valuable - if you strike gold the value is obvious, and whatever scientific or other value it has is doomed in that case).
For example, when you see stuff like this - all the precarious formations of all kinds all across Utah - it is impossible to wrap your mind around the timescale involved. Each and every formation has been there for tens or hundreds of millions of years, and the original orientation and position of the rock is what’s valuable scientifically, not the rock itself. A unique landscape like that is a PhD candidate interested in certain aspects of sedimentary geology’s dream, and each “goblin” is statistically valuable to that research. And never mind the fact that it’s guaranteed to have been studied extensively already - there are always new techniques etc. and other reasons to go over old ground.
Another example is in Death Valley. Outside of the dry lakebed areas, the rocks strewn about have been sitting there undisturbed by weather or animal for hundreds of thousands of years (if not longer, I can’t remember) - a fairly unique circumstance. They develop a reddish black patina called “desert varnish”, which can be accurately dated, which is very useful - only on the side facing up, and the orientation can be important, so disturbing the rock in any way destroys its value. Most people who visit don’t know that, and even if they were told, they wouldn’t understand why it matters. Because even the park rangers aren’t experts in everything, a blanket policy of preventing all forms of destruction (no matter how small) is absolutely essential.
And of course, there is plenty of scientifically important stuff not protected by parks - it’s not always obvious. All across the Appalachian Mountains are tiny geologic clues - because those mountains are old, eroded, and tree-covered, it’s much more difficult to find outcrops that tell you anything than out west. Entire theories and important facets of knowledge are based on single outcrops, and even single tiny rocks.
One example I know of is pretty interesting. Ooids are small spherical concretions within sedimentary rocks; calcium carbonate or similar minerals that formed around a grain of sand or other nucleus under the right conditions. You can sometimes see them with the naked eye, but usually a hand lens is required. They’re fairly rare. In the Appalachians, which have undergone a lot of tectonic stress (faulting and folding), you can find oolite (rock formed of ooids) that has been tectonically deformed - the spheres are squished and elongated. Measuring the deformation gives you an incredible wealth of information about the tectonic forces at work that can be obtained in very few other ways.
There’s a known outcrop that contains deformed ooite that I went to on a field trip as an undergrad student. The professor had been there every other year or so for at least twenty years, and said that because some people take samples from the outcrop (since it’s rare), it’s now almost impossible to find something to see. The ten or fifteen of us spent half an hour searching around, and we did eventually find a piece to look at - but not before a large boulder (kill-by-crushing size) was almost dropped on some students by people who climbed up the cliff to try to find this thing (it was me and another guy, not going to lie).
So in a weird way, there’s actually some truth to these guys’ assertion 
But if it hadn’t been for people destroying the outcrop in the first place, we wouldn’t have been driven to climb up where there were loose boulders. 
They have all the qualifications to run a frat house or run for congress. But they should be asked to resign by the Boyscouts of America.
“Man is a bad animal.”
It has not been in that state for 200 million years.
That’s why I have trouble working up so much anger over this. Geology isn’t set in stone ironically. It’s always changing, just too slowly for us to perceive most of the time. This particular one was not going to last another 100 million years though, nature had already removed all but the tiniest sliver of support on it. These guys hastened the process, but they didn’t do anything that wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Of course that sounds like a justification for murder (he was going to die someday!), but this was more like removing the feeding tube from a hospice care patient.
Animals don’t give a shit about knocking over rock piles either.
If you disagree with the USGS geologists who estimate that it has, please feel free to display your credentials as a geologist and submit your findings.
Without human help, the rock wasn’t going to fall over anytime soon. Notice how Scoutmaster Butterball Dudebro had to expend considerable effort with his La-Z-Boy-toned arms and make several attempts to topple it.
Also:
Hall, who is also a scoutmaster from Highland, said some of their Scouts were jumping on the structures and they noticed a large boulder on top of one structure was loose.
“My conscience won’t let me walk away knowing that kids could die,” Hall said.
Mr. Hall, why were your Scouts jumping on the structures? I’m pretty sure park rules forbid that, you jackass.
Exact;y, it’s a boulder on a pile of dirt that’s been there a couple hundred years. 50 million year ago, Everest didn’t exist, Pennsylvania was at the bottom of the ocean, and Florida hadn’t formed yet, Panama was still an island wandering around the Pacific, etc etc.
I do actually agree with you in principle, but I don’t know what your expertise and educational background may be regarding geology, so I’m going to sound patronizing and try to explain.
Aesthetics aside, the scientific value of formations like this comes from a variety of things. Broadly we’re interested in how it formed, and how it got to its current state. And that second part is generally the more interesting, in cases like this especially.
Let me bring @PrestonSturges in too. Yes, those things are true - 50 million years ago things were very different.
How do we know? By carefully studying things like this dumb boulder - in their natural state. Every little detail is potentially a clue to deciphering the past.
And though it may not look like it based on common human experience, this particular boulder probably would have sat there for thousands more years at the very least, if not longer.
It took 200 million years for erosion to get it to this point. True, it wouldn’t last much longer - but “not much longer” in geologic terms is thousands of years (and actually, in common geological parlance, more often means millions of years). It has value, aesthetically and scientifically, that would have lasted for all that time for everyone to enjoy.
The term “gentleman” has a fairly specific meaning on BoingBoing, most of the time.
Yeah, they learned how to offer a non-apology apology and call
themselves heroes at the same time.
They’re going to make excellent congressmen and I expect to see them in Washington soon (if the felony charges don’t stick, anyway).
I learned this concept when I earned the Geology merit badge. I’m guessing these fellows skipped that one.
Wow. If only there were some organization with the goal of taking young men and teaching them how to camp and hike properly, with respect for their environment, things like this wouldn’t happen.
“Leave no trace” does not mean “Turn off the camera.”
Since 1991, three slabs of sandstone measuring 30, 47, and 70 feet (9.1, 14, and 21 m) long have fallen from the thinnest section of Landscape Arch, prompting the Park Service to close the trail that once passed beneath it.
Well, I guess the solution here – particularly if people perceive these rock formations as dangerous – is simply to close off access to them. After all, if some child did die there, that’s probably what they’d end up doing, right?
Alternatively, if there are certain rock formations that people feel are worth preserving over the (human scale) long term, there’s some precedent. Just sayin’.
Maybe they thought it was part of the Beryllium Sphere and they really needed it to fix the NSEA Protector.
If only it had actually been part of the Rock Monster.
They are Boy Scout leaders. They are the ones that are supposed to teach Boy Scouts NOT to do this stuff.
…waits for Banksy to stencil social reply in NYC cafe.
