Ableman's Gorge

With winter fast approaching, it will soon be time to hole up inside with strong brews and fondly recall the summer and all the outdoor activities therein. One new spot I went to this year was Ableman's Gorge up by Baraboo. There are a couple parking areas on Hwy 136 and one of them has a nice artesian well where you can fill up your water bottles before venturing. It was some fine tasting water.





Across the road is a path which leads to the entrance.





Here's a description of the place from the DNR:

Ableman's Gorge is a classic gorge cut by the Baraboo River through Baraboo quartzite, Cambrian sandstone, and conglomerate. The cliffs and rocky slopes rise about 200 feet above the river to form a wall nearly three-fourths of a mile long, oriented east-west, which then abruptly turns south for a similar distance. ..The site tells a fascinating geological story of changing conditions in an ancient sea that first rose quietly against a cliff of quartzite and then, as layers of sediments gradually decreased the relief between sea floor and land, surged against the top of the cliff, wearing away quartzite and depositing a layer of cobbles and boulders across its upturned edge.

After walking down a short wooded path, you finally see the 500 million year-old rock.






There's just something awe-inspiring about looking at cliffs and knowing that it took millions and millions of years for that rock to form and that it's been there for hundreds of millions of years. It has witnessed ancient seas, asteroids impacting the Earth, the rise and slumbering of the Silurians, &c. They were sitting here back when my ancestors were wee bivalves. In short, these rocks are really old and the mind reels when trying to contemplate just how old they are.

I'm no geologist but according to my friend Dogger who reads such tracts, some of this stuff…





…is quartzite which is used for railroad ballast. (I.e. – the rocks between the ties.) In the distance, we could see derelict mining equipment on the other side of the Baraboo River.





We took a walk along the rock faces and found some holes dug into the ground that had stone facades attached to them. These were apparently storage areas for dynamite back in the mining days.





The trail emptied out onto the highway and across from a very significant rock.

Doggers says, "There's Van Hise Rock. He basically invented geology there."

"No shit?"

"No shit."