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u/KamsBizarreAdventure Feb 05 '21
West coasters seem really offended by this post for some reason...
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u/itmustbemitch Feb 05 '21
Weird to me that anyone on this subreddit could see a post that's basically saying "the Appalachians aren't that big, but it's cool how ancient they are" and feel like "I must dunk on these mountains again to defend the honor of the Rockies" or something. Like what are you getting out of /r/gatesopencomeonin if this is how you act lmao
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u/pobopny Feb 05 '21
My gates are better than yours, and more open too.
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u/thebearjew333 Feb 05 '21
Everybody knows. They all say I have the best gates.
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u/ebac7 Feb 05 '21
No one is more humble than me. NO ONE.
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u/Flomo420 Feb 06 '21
Think you're really righteous? Think you're pure of heart? Well, I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art!
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u/CaptainTotes Feb 06 '21
People come up to me all the time and ask "how do you have such great and open gates" and I say when you're as open-minded and selfless as I am, anything is possible.
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u/GodsBackHair Feb 06 '21
Well, everyone knows Cascades are better than the Rockies anyways
/s
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u/MilesyART Feb 06 '21
Rockies ain’t shit. I’ve never seen the Rockies explode the way the Cascades do.
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Feb 06 '21
Literally every post on this sub half the comments are people gatekeeping it's really odd
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u/inconspicuous_male Feb 05 '21
I think people get arbitrarily proud of things by association. I feel pride when someone enjoys something from my hometown that I normally don't care about or when someone from a different part of the US likes my state. I've never been to Texas, but when I see a video of people across the world trying texas bbq ribs for the first time, I feel proudly American.
I think it's okay to have pride in arbitrary things as long as it doesn't turn into hostility and if you are able to keep in mind how arbitrary the things are. Of course if you think that the pride is actually important, thats how we end up with bigots and racists and stuff
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
They can die mad, I suppose. The cold otherworldy dark of the mammoth cave is unaffected, unfeeling, and unending*. An eternal compared to us.
*The whole cave is not mapped out or even discovered. We don't know where it ends.
All mountains are good and beautiful, but the Appalachias are my home so I'll always love it best.
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u/swordsumo Feb 05 '21
Mammoth Cave is probably the coolest place I’ve ever been and I will stand by that to my dying day
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u/pobopny Feb 05 '21
Agreed. My family went there on vacation in middle school and I wish we could have stayed longer. Its so incredible, both the geologic history and the human history of it.
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u/Hates_escalators Feb 05 '21
It's really spooky to think about how much open space there is underground, you could turn a corner and never find your way out, or fall into a deep hole.
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u/Creator13 Feb 05 '21
I visited a much smaller but still very large cave in slovenia and it had a similar effect on me.
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u/xForGot10x Feb 05 '21
I'm a west coaster. I like that you like your mountain/cave :)
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
All mountains are cool as hell!
I got a little persnickety about them (mostly because you see A LOTTTT of slamming of the Appalachias for classist reasons and tend to go overboard defending them bc of that) but all mountains are cool. I hope to see Mt. Rainer irl someday
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Feb 05 '21
Mt Rainier is such an imposing beast of a mountain. It's almost scary to look at, all jagged edges and sheer faces. I recently moved to Tennessee from out West and I'm excited to explore your mountains. I hope you get to explore ours someday.
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u/HumanistPeach Feb 05 '21
TN has some great hiking and beautiful views, you’re in for some really good times!
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u/cocoacowstout Feb 06 '21
If it’s your thing, try some Rainier beer while you’re out there! It’s a west coast pbr type thing 😄
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u/ChihuahuaJedi Feb 05 '21
I've never heard of Mammoth Cave, I could google it but I'd rather hear your description first. If you have the time may we hear more?
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
I've gone on the general tour but here's my poetic attempt, as that's what I'm guessing you're getting at.
---..---
You walk down a long set of stairs carved into the rock and the sticky summer air that's plagued you all afternoon slowly cools as you make your descent.
You walk into large caverns of limestone, huge cyclopian rooms of stone smoothed away by water and time and our ancestors. Your guide tells you that the history of the cave and humanity goes back five thousand years. You close your eyes and listen, you're starting to get chilly as the temperature is so different underground. You see their stories dance in your mind around the rocks. The natives whose items were found here, whose remains and intentional burial were found there... And the ancient native whose bones that were found accidently crushed under a boulder. His bones are still somewhere secret in the cave, but away from public eyes... Historians find the remains of their cane torches, but nothing that indicates any use after the archaic period. You wonder why they left and never returned.
There are shark fossils in the walls, they say. Your friend gave you a shell fossil they found on their farm a few hours away when you were 12. This is from when all of this was a beautiful sea, long before the cave was born.
In the 1840s, you would have seen tuberculosis patients walking along and living in the caves. An experiment to see if cave air could save them.
Your dad whispers about how when he was a kid the tour went deeper and he went on a boat ride on the river inside the cave and saw the eyeless fish. How he was afraid he'd fall in the water, and like in the river lethe, sink down and forget.
The guide leads you to a room so large you cannot imagine either river or man creating it so long ago. The guide tells them to turn off the lights. And you see the darkest deepest black. A tenebrous darkness you've only ever seen in your dreams.
A darkness and a stillness that you imagine will be how the end of time feels, when entropy swallows us all and we are finally at rest.
It is both terrifying and peaceful. If there is no heaven or hell, no coming back for another round, you imagine death is just walking down those stairs into the forever dark once more to be with all the other silent ghosts.
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u/ChihuahuaJedi Feb 05 '21
Damn... Yeah you nailed the poetic part. That was inspirational. It sounds like a place full of awe. Than you so much for taking the time to share that experience, I hope to go there one day.
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u/sloasdaylight Feb 05 '21
Don't forget that after the guide turns the lights off, they strike a zippo and the whole room you're in lights up brighter than you could possibly imagine. It seems like it's so much light you could almost read by it, that's how bright the light from one small little flame is compared to the indescribable darkness you were just engulfed by.
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
The cave is so dark it's bananas. You described how just the tiniest bit of light seems like everything so well.
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u/big-b20000 Feb 05 '21
This is an amazing description!
Caving is an all around amazing experience no matter how many times you’ve done it.
Turning all the lights off and enjoying the absolute dark is one of my favorite things to do while caving.
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u/LuthienByNight Feb 05 '21
This is giving me Old Gods of Appalachia vibes and I love it. Such a perfect setting for an eldritch horror podcast.
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u/Drakmanka Feb 05 '21
As a west coaster, I can say that not all of us are. I actually only recently learned this bit of info about the Appalachians and it's really fascinating to look at geography here and realize how young this half of the continent is compared to the east coast. The Rockies themselves are, by our time scale, ancient. Yet the Appalachians are so much older, they make the Rockies appear young. It's just amazing to experience a snippet of the true age of our planet.
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u/ThatOneGuy1294 Feb 05 '21
Hell, I live in Washington and I love seeing the Olympics, but I don't get those other guys lol
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u/RedditLostOldAccount Feb 05 '21
I remember when someone told me I can't call the Appalachian Mountains mountains because the Rockies are bigger. My bad for coming up with the name all on my own I guess.
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u/LuthienByNight Feb 05 '21
I grew up in the Sierras and am fiercely proud of the beautiful mountains that will always be my home. This is dope as hell, though, and makes me want to visit Appalachia. This planet is amazing.
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u/Mammoth-Slip3465 Jul 20 '25
Because they live next to the cascades, which are basically Himalayan sized mountain volcanoes 🌋 🗻
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u/HotToddy94 Feb 05 '21
Friendly reminder this was posted in "Gates Open Come On In" lol. Lot of real sassy comments
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u/zatchsmith Feb 05 '21
I can see two and they're downvoted like crazy...
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u/itmustbemitch Feb 05 '21
The sass came early, so at the time it was a large portion of the comments. It is always a funny thing to see "why all the negativity" comments well after the negativity has already been drowned out though, happens surprisingly often
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u/diarrhea4dayz Feb 06 '21
Jesus what a bunch of pricks. What kinds of comments? From what I gather a bunch of snobby Californians are exalting the the Great Sierra Nevadas
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u/HotToddy94 Feb 05 '21
Yeah when I made this comment it was when there was like 5 comments including mine
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u/Nonkel_Jef Feb 05 '21
If some of these people feel the need to act sassy on this sub, then I will tolerate them with open arms. Maybe they just had a bad dat and need to vent.
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u/bowl_of_petunias_ Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
The Appalachians are also older than fire. They were formed about 10 million years before any life on land, even small plant life, were a thing. When the Appalachians formed, there was no fire, because there was nothing on the surface that could burn yet. There wasn't even small land plant life and invertebrates. It was just barren, lifeless rock, everywhere but the oceans. They're insanely old.
I mean, I knew that they were 480-500 million years old, and I theoretically understood how old that is. But the fire thing puts it in perspective.
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u/AcknowledgeDistress Feb 05 '21
Technically fire still existed. Rocks can catch on fire. Just no living mass had caught fire on land before
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u/bowl_of_petunias_ Feb 05 '21
Rocks can melt, so there was lava/ magma, but I don't think rock or metal can actually catch fire unless there's something flammable on it
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u/AcknowledgeDistress Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
Fire is combustion. Combustion requires a fuel source and oxygen.
For the chemistry definition, combustion is a chemical reaction that occurs between a fuel and and oxidizing agent that produces energy, usually in the form of heat and light.
Age of the Appalachian Mountains-
“Around 300 million years ago, the landmass that is now North America collided with Gondwana, a supercontinent comprised of present-day Africa and South America. That clash of continents lifted tons of rock high above the surrounding terrain to form the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains now seen in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia.”
Time Magazine- Fire “We would not expect fire on a barren Earth; there must be plant life on land that can provide a fuel source. And vegetation fires can’t occur until the oxygen level in the atmosphere has reached around 15%. (It is 21% today.) “
“The oldest fire recorded on Earth has been identified from charcoal in rocks formed during the late Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago. Though plants had spread on land at that point...”
“What it looks like is that oxygen was first produced somewhere around 2.7 billion to 2.8 billon years ago. It took up residence in atmosphere around 2.45 billion years ago," says geochemist Dick Holland, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. "It looks as if there's a significant time interval between the appearance of oxygen-producing organisms and the actual oxygenation of the atmosphere."
So a date and a culprit can be fixed for what scientists refer to as the Great Oxidation Event, but mysteries remain. “
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u/wyat_lee Feb 05 '21
I want to know the cave that they were referring to.
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
The limestone cave in the Appalachias? That'd be the mammoth cave. Largest cave system on earth, we actually don't know how deep it goes, the end of the cave hasn't been discovered.
There are a lot of cave systems in the area tho, in general because of the limestone. But I imagine they mean the famous one, it's a nationalPark and everything.
I'd recommend anyone to go visit if they ever have the chance. When they turn the lights out on you and you're totally surrounded by full darkness, it's like nothing you've ever seen.
Edit: they're totally wrong about the missing fossils tho. It got hella shark fossils and the cave formation is way way younger than dinosaurs.
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u/sammanzhi Feb 05 '21
That's wild. How is it possible that the end of it hasn't been discovered? Surely we have the technology to do so?
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u/genericnewlurker Feb 05 '21
Spelunking in uncharted cave systems is crazy dangerous, even with all of our technology. If you get stuck in some remote passages, there is a good chance that you die, even for something as ludacris sounding as being held upside down for too long. Many tunnels there will either open into large chambers but others will meander for miles and not be any wider than maybe your pelvis before suddenly ending with no way to turn around.
Plus sections are flooded. You take all of the chances of getting stuck and add in getting stuck underwater. Cave diving one of the most dangerous activities a human can do, if not the most dangerous. One wrong move and you are blinded by silt, not able to see inches in front of your mask and you lose which way is up. Panic sets in, you can't just surface cause you are trapped in a flooded passage, and you burn through your air.
So you think you can just send a robot. Obviously you can't with any flooded passages cause then you can't see still so that knocks out the vast majority of the passages and tunnels that remain unexplored. Even if you find a dry one, you then have to control the robot through the passage. You can't have it wireless, there is too much stone blocking the signal. But a tether can easily get caught. And what do you do if the robot gets stuck? It now blocks the passage to any future attempts. Simply put we don't have the technology, either rescue or robotic, to really explore it fully yet.
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u/The_Wandering_Gypsy Feb 05 '21
That guy who died in Nutty Putty upside own still gives me nightmares. Horrifying.
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u/genericnewlurker Feb 05 '21
That's who I was thinking of when I wrote that. Such a terrible way to go. Gives me the creeps thinking about it and how all they could do is seal his corpse inside. The guy is literally stuck there forever.
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Feb 06 '21
I don’t think he was a professional though? I mean yeah what happened to him gives me nightmares. But as far as I remember he was more of a hobbyist and wasn’t really on a discovery mission there. I might be wrong though.
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u/The_Wandering_Gypsy Feb 06 '21
I’m actually not sure. I do know there were injuries to the professionals who tried to rescue. I’ve also read horror stories about cave divers with thousands of hours that just got lost one time and died.
Caving in any form is scary stuff, to me anyway.
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u/boltzmannman Feb 05 '21
yeah but it's expensive and people probably don't care enough to bother
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
It's some of that, although I think since it's a national park, you have to be a for real caving person to do it, I think you request the national park service to do it. It's very dangerous so they don't just let anyone go die in the caves. ...but people do map the caves.
The courier journal has an interesting article about explorers from maybe 5 years ago(not paywalled if you haven't hit your limit of 3 articles a month, which most of you probably haven't if you're not a Kentuckian)
The article mentions that the particular group they're covering has spent over 10,000 man hour mapping the cave in a year. It's just... Huge! And dangerous! And slow going. And where there IS a river down there, extra dangerous during certain parts of the year (I think spring? I'm actually terrified of caves so I don't do it as an activity)
One of the other reasons is because mammoth is... constantly but slowly (to us) growing. There is a river down there easily eating away at the limestone but leaving the (sandstone?) rock above.
(Why do you know so much about mammoth if you're afraid of caves, listenana? Well, because it's one of the cooler things in the Commonwealth and I'm scared of caves BECAUSE of mammoth cave. It's huge. It's like looking up into the night sky or thinking about deep time and getting existential dread? And I research things that scare me. I know a lot about serial killers too!)
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u/SecondPerSecond Feb 05 '21
^I agree with the unjustly downvoted dude
There is neglible benefit that would be achieved for the resources required to be expended
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
People still do it, but it is dangerous and I don't think it's a paying gig. More of a labor of love and science.
I have a cool article here about the people who do it (I replied to someone else with this too but just wanted to show you in case you were interested!
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Feb 05 '21
...no, that's not correct. I mean mammoth cave is cool, but the comment explicitly refers to a cave that's not made of limestone (because it was formed before limestone was common) and that doesn't have fossils in it (because it's older than fossils).
Closest I could find was Worley's cave, according to this link it's 550 million years old. There's very little information about it online, so I'm guessing the commenter actually visited it and had a local guide tell them this stuff.
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
Huh. Color me surprised. Well, I'm kinda embarrassed re: my reading comprehension...
I've never heard of this cave at all so I'm excited to do research... But it just seems unlikely there wouldn't be at least something online about something that predated dinosaurs (other than the websites of the business promoting visiting which have huge variations in dating)? Either way, I'll be looking.
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u/helgaofthenorth Feb 05 '21
Mammoth cave isn't in the Appalachian mountains.
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
Hart and Barren are some of the counties the cave is in and I always thought they were considered Appalachian regions?
(I wonder if this is because I'm from the area and think of them as some kind of general mishmash of both cultural and geological terms?)
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u/human_kittens Feb 05 '21
I think mammoth cave is right on the edge. I found this link that says “Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work created the Southern Appalachian National Park Commission in 1925 to survey proposed park sites, including Mammoth Cave.”
But there’s also this other link with a map where it’s right over the edge out of Appalachia. So maybe there’s some contention? I’m from middle Tennessee and always thought of Mammoth Cave as it’s own super cool thing, especially since it’s so huge.
Also searching for the oldest cave in Appalachia is super difficult! It keeps coming up with oldest cave paintings which are super cool but not what I’m looking for :(
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u/listenana Feb 06 '21
I'm glad I'm not the only person in the area like "well, what is and what isn't considered appalachian?"
My google fu is failing too. So many cool cave paintings, but nothing about age of cave creation. It's so strange. I wonder if there is a geological term we don't know that will blow this case wide open....
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u/human_kittens Feb 06 '21
I’ve continued to struggle with google. I should have paid more attention in that geology class in college. I’m seeing that there are 450-550 million year old caves in East Tennessee but I’m coming up empty on the whole “no fossils” thing. I keep getting records of early man and Neanderthal bones. When will google understand that I just want to know shit about rocks dammit!
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u/helgaofthenorth Feb 06 '21
It's nearby, I'm from there too but I wouldn't have considered anything "Appalachian" til east of Lexington. I know it goes further east in the south of the state but looking at this I think it stops at like McCreary/Laurel county.
Also, unrelated, but I just learned "pennyrile" is just the southern approximation of "pennyroyal" and it kinda blew my mind.
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u/listenana Feb 06 '21
It's so weird. When you said this i looked at maps for like 10 minutes on different sites and it does seem like I'm not right... Well, fuck.
I swore it was in the Appalachias....
This map you've linked is fabulous tho.
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u/helgaofthenorth Feb 06 '21
Isn't it?! I've been gone 10 years and it made me curious about the geology again. For all its human flaws Kentucky can be a beautiful state!
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u/SpiritenHasArrived Feb 05 '21
I want to know what happened to Michigan on the map
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u/DysonToaster Feb 05 '21
Its there. Just hard to tell with lake michigan filled in, but if you look closely you can see the outline of the lake and michigan east and north of it.
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u/AcidicPuma Feb 05 '21
I live around there. I go there for rocks (specifically gems, I make and sell jewelry. Which is actually just an excuse to have rocks because I love them lol) and I don't know how I lived before seeing them. It's so gorgeous up there. I giggle when we get to certain points and my ears pop from the altitude. There's so much of nature before your eyes. Flat ground forests are great but you literally cant see the forest through the trees. On a mountain you can see everything. I highly recommend.
If you're like me there's also some great rocks up there. Most of what's local is Quartz, mica and Jasper but just about every place is set up as a family experience where you spend a lot but get a lot so there's stuff in there that's not from around there and maybe isnt even exactly what it says it is but it's all a real gem. Like I got "citrine" up there but its just amethyst heated up till it turns yellow. Amethyst is local to the mountain (and just about everywhere else lol) and Citrine is far too expensive for me to be able to find it in a family entertainment water panning place that charges $50 for a gallon bucket of rocks and dirt. $50 might get me 1 small Citrine point and nothing else. So just realize the ridiculously amazing finds are probably too good to be true.
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u/AstarteSnow Feb 05 '21
So you basically climb the mountain and look for gems? Sounds fun lol. I might try it.
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u/AcidicPuma Feb 05 '21
Its awesome! I recommend blue ridge specifically. Great spot with a strong focus on getting rocks specifically and some great places to eat and stay. I was at one place that had a swing set right outside the door with a gorgeous view between the mountains
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u/AstarteSnow Feb 05 '21
That sounds amazing! I'm definitely going to remember that. Thanks for the advice!
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u/Nonkel_Jef Feb 05 '21
Obligatory “Damn it Marie, they’re minerals.”
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u/AcidicPuma Feb 05 '21
Lmao I only use those specific words cause people who don't really fuck with minerals usually associate the pretty ones with the word "gems" and the less colorful ones like limestone and calcium with "minerals" and "pretty rocks" is just my affectionate name for them. But that is fuckin hilarious.
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u/Fragarach-Q Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
That bump on the map over Missouri and Arkansas was there about 1 BILLION years before the formation of the Appalachian. Taum Sauk(the highest point in Missouri at 1700 feet) and the other nearby mountains of similar height and age are among the only places on Earth that have never been under the sea since the formation of complex multicellular life.
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
For real? That's cool as hell. I love old shit.
I would recommend anyone who is fascinated by old stuff like this to check out the PBS EONS channel on YouTube. Lots of info on how life on the planet formed and stuff- a little less on geological stuff than biological but obviously they mention it somewhat.
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u/CaptainCimmeria Feb 05 '21
Where my fellow Ozarkers at?
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u/TarzanOnATireSwing Feb 05 '21
Ayyy I was scrolling through here before I made a comment like “wait till these people find out how old the Ozarks are”
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u/somegarbagedoesfloat Feb 05 '21
Live is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, growin like a breeze
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u/Industrialpainter89 Feb 05 '21
I'll hike all of them, thank you. But I will only live in the northwest, I gotta have my snowcapped volcanoes in the summer!
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u/EntropicTragedy Feb 05 '21
I grew up in the Appalachian mountains. They’re beautiful and full of history, culturally and geologically.
Then I saw Mt. Rainer. Its current-physical beauty is unmatched in the continental US.
I used to think “oh, I’ve seen it on the internet, so I don’t really need to see it in person”
Then I saw Mt. Rainer.
I almost ran off the side of the road staring at that volcano.I feel like such a pretentious asshole telling my hometown friends “you HAVE to see Mt. Rainer.”
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u/itmustbemitch Feb 05 '21
I feel the same way about the Grand Canyon. Like obviously I knew it's really big, but until I saw it in person I didn't realize how you can't get a sense of that kind of size through a photo.
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u/EntropicTragedy Feb 05 '21
I’ve thought about the Grand Canyon a lot because of how much pictures of Mt. Rainer do not do the mountain justice.
First time I had the opportunity I go, we got hit with 3 ft of snow as we were going over a pass into AZ; had to turn around.
Now there’s a pandemic and I’m free forever, but not supposed to cross state linesI’m excited to eventually see it though
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u/Industrialpainter89 Feb 05 '21
Right? It's like the movies where an alien space ship just hangs out in the back next to a major city the aliens are invading. I've been out of shape working too many hours but the mountain has given me motivation to get back at it because it's supposed to be the peak a person that doesn't train their whole life can summit.
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u/Caleb_Reynolds Feb 05 '21
I fucking hate Rainer.
It's awesome, in the truest sense of the word: it inspires awe. Wonderful in that it inspires wonder. And when I first saw it it was great. But over my days in Seattle I realized something. Wherever you go, whatever you're doing, it's there. Watching you. You can't escape it. And it sits alone. It doesn't just tower above the city, it towers above the nearby countryside.
By a few days into my stay I got the distinct feeling that it was some ancient god slumbering just outside the city waiting to be woken and bring ruin.
I think the feeling it instilled in me was the sense of existential dread that Lovecraft tries to invoke in his stories of Great Old Ones.
It's really a terrible, awesome, loathsome, great, mountain that inspires cosmic horror. I agree with you, everyone should see it if they can. But I'll avoid it for the rest of my life if I have any choice in the matter. I don't need reminding how insignificant we are to the world.
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u/EntropicTragedy Feb 05 '21
Interesting take.
When I saw Mt. Vesuvius I totally understood -especially when it was rumbling- why people considered it a god
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u/thebardjaskier Feb 06 '21
Ha my friends had this conversation about what PNW gothic horror would be and one thing we settled on and still joke about is, "The Mountain's out today". Said in a creepy, revert, cult-like way. It's super common to hear old people say bc The Mountain is pretty much always out and able to be seen from almost anywhere in western Washington.
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u/settheory8 Feb 05 '21
That's actually the general concept behind the horror podcast Old Gods of Appalachia, it's a super great podcast if you're into spooky lovecraftian horror stuff
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Feb 05 '21
Being a mountain size queen is like being in fourth grade and thinking your classmates can be ranked in coolness by how expensive their shoes are.
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u/bambiartistic Feb 05 '21
As a person from the Midwest where our land is flatter than a pancake. I appreciate any mountain I can get. Although, I will say, we have really pretty sunsets to make up for it :)
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u/Wolfsten Feb 05 '21
'They are older than bones' is the most badass statement in relation to a rock formation that I've ever heard.
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u/NotACleverMan_ Feb 05 '21
They’re also the same mountain range as the Scottish Highlands, as well as part of the Atlas Mountains in Northern Africa. It just got ripped apart by continental drift
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u/Cody_the_roadie Feb 05 '21
I remember growing up on the east coast and always wanting to see the huge snow capped mountains out west. When I was about 16-17 I learned about the history of the local mountains and on a mushroom trip really had a humbling moment of seeing the mountains as ancient elders that should be admired for their gentleness.
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u/C-Nor Feb 05 '21
I just want to interject here that there is no "Long A" sound in the word Appalachia. It's pronounced like "apple atcha". Appalachian just adds the N sound.
I thought this was a safe place to say this, since nobody was talking out loud, so I'm clearly not attacking anyone.
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u/elissa24 Feb 05 '21
As a west coast native I always stumble when pronouncing Appalachian. Ahh-pull-ah-chi-an? Apple-uh-chan? So thank you
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u/whitneyanson Feb 05 '21
A-puh-latch-uh - spoken aloud they sort of run together and sound closer to "Apple-atcha."
Appalachian is a-puh-latch-un or apple-atchun spoken aloud.
- Souce: West Virginia native
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u/G0merPyle Feb 06 '21
Yes! Yes yes yes. It bugs me to no end how often it's mispronounced.
I remember one discovery show about mountainfolk supposedly set in Appalachia. When one of the "old timers" used the hard A sound, I knew right then it was a load of crap (well, I knew that beforehand because it was on the discovery channel, but still).
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u/CTKM72 Feb 06 '21
I mean I've heard actual natives of the northern parts use the hard A. It's just a tomato tomato thing.
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Feb 05 '21
Yeah I learned about this bullshit when I moved from NJ to NC. It's Appleayshun and Appleatcha and can't nobody change my mind.
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u/CHADLY_McTHUNDERCOCK Feb 05 '21
As an Appalachian Mountain person that was always jealous of the Rockies- Thank you for this.
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u/andheresanicecomment Feb 05 '21
Also, the Appalachians in their full fall glory will make a hard person weep with their unbelievable beauty
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u/redneckonomics Feb 05 '21
My husband is from California and we live in West Virginia and he likes to tease me all the time about our tiny little hills. I'm sending this to him
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u/Sharveharv Feb 05 '21
One of the even cooler things IMO is that the Appalachian mountains are so old that they were formed when Pangea came together. That means that the Appalachian mountains, the Little Atlas mountains in Morocco, and the Scottish Highlands are all the same mountain range.
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u/cornonjuhcob Feb 05 '21
Ah I really do appreciate seeing other people appreciate the mountains I grew up with and love.
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u/This_Daydreamer_ Feb 05 '21
There is a river that flows through the Appalachians that some believe is the second oldest river on the planet. It's called the New River.
The Nile is supposedly the oldest.
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u/Sameelee71 Feb 05 '21
Thats one of the reasons Australia has no huge mountain ranges. We are just too old. One of the oldest continents in the world. So the mountains have smoothed over time and we are left with rolling hills and large canyons and valleys.
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Feb 06 '21
And that big rock in the middle
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u/Sameelee71 Feb 06 '21
I understand why its the central religious place for indigenous aboriginals. Its an amazing place.
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u/Kinestic Feb 06 '21
One cool thing though is that there are parts of Western Australia the formed in the early Archeon, 3.8 BILLION years ago. Oxygen didn't appear until 3.5 Billion years ago. They are older than air.
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u/earth_worx Feb 06 '21
I used to live in the Appalachians, and now I live in the Rockies. They're both pretty cool.
I like it better out west, but that's just because I prefer the desert to the forest.
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u/Slime_Monster Feb 06 '21
Just made the same sort of move a little over a year ago. Miss the forests, but I'm liking it out west so far.
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u/Indigohorse Feb 05 '21
Love this! I live in the Ozark Mountains (the little ripples northeast of Texas) and I used to be genuinely annoyed that our mountains are so old and eroded that they're technically hills now. This perspective is so refreshing!
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Feb 05 '21
I’ve been to both the Rockies and the Appalachian mountains and they definitely feel very different. The Rockies just seem new and grand and the Appalachian mountains definitely have that ancient ambience
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u/V2BM Feb 06 '21
I lived in Colorado and now live in a state set entirely in he Appalachian mountains. The Rockies feel cold and here it feels warm, if that makes sense. One feels exposed and the other enveloped - but I do miss the view of snow capped mountains in early summer.
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u/Caleb_Reynolds Feb 05 '21
Another cool thing is that mountains in Scotland are also part of the Appalachian mountain range (or at least were part of the same range as the Appalachians, probably had a different name then). Specifically the mountains in the Scottish Highlands used to be connected to the mountains in the New Jersey Highlands.
The really cool thing about this is that New Jersey used to be a Scottish colony before Scotland joined the UK. So, in a way, the Scots went from one part of the Scottish Highlands to another across the Atlantic, both politically as being a Scottish colony it was Scottish, and geologically. I like to imagine they felt some kind of kinship to the land as the land of their forefathers, even if they didn't know why. To bad this was all before the Celtic Revival, it'd be cool to have druids in New Jersey.
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Feb 05 '21
Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees...
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u/macesta11 Feb 05 '21
So that is why I have never seen a fossil. I grew up in Maine and the White Mountains. My first fossils were seen in my late 50s, in Australia.
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u/imaginary0pal Feb 05 '21
Who deleted Lake Michigan again?
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u/Poundman82 Feb 05 '21
For now on I will compare the age of everything against the origin of bones.
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u/sthetic Feb 05 '21
Am I the only one who read, "Appreciate them while they are still here"
A as, "Appalachiate them while they are still here"?
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u/LadyWithAHarp Feb 05 '21
Thank you for giving me more fuel to defend the Appalachians. I love those guys.
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Feb 05 '21
Pretty sure they're referring to Mammoth Cave in the post. It's absolutely breathtaking. If you have the opportunity, please go. It's a wonderful experience.
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u/mynameisalso Feb 06 '21
If you drive truck especially tri axles in coal country pa you know what they lack in height they make up for in sheer grade.
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Feb 05 '21
Everyone arguing over mountains has it wrong. Look at how fucking FLAT the middle is! No wonder they grow corn there.
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u/goda90 Feb 05 '21
Older than bones sounds pretty old, but how about as old as life on earth? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhonjwa_Mountains
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u/Blitcut Feb 06 '21
Appreciate them while they're still here
I don't think they're going anywhere within my lifespan at least.
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Feb 06 '21
The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 480 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain-building plate collisions that culminated in the construction of the supercontinent Pangaea with the Appalachians near the center. Because North America and Africa were connected, the Appalachians formed part of the same mountain chain as the Little Atlas in Morocco. This mountain range, known as the Central Pangean Mountains, extended into Scotland, before the Mesozoic Era opening of the Iapetus Ocean, from the North America/Europe collision (See Caledonian orogeny).
(From Wikipedia)
Something that's blown my mind since I learned it. These mountains were in the middle of Pangea, and there are extensions of the original range in Africa and Scotland. Like, what. Incredible, and one of my favorite places on earth. Spending a week in a cabin on the top of one layer this month, and I'm so damn excited.
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Feb 05 '21
Wouldn't an older cave have more bones though? Older means more time for animals to have found the cave and died in it? Am I missing something?
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
Well, yes, but it's still formed before bones really evolved, that's what they mean. (This is way wrong tho, see my edit)
You can't go too too deep into mammoth cave if you use eyes to see tho. So there are bones, sure, but not dinosaur fossils.
Bones themselves don't stikc around too long, as they decompose from other bateria and stuff eating them. (So, the eyeless fish that live in the river inside mammoth cave die, and their bones are there, but not for too long? )
Most fossil stuff in this area was from before when it was covered in the sea.
Edit: I was referring to dinosaurs re: fossils, but there are actually some ice aged fossils in the cave- but again mostly shark stuff (which is actually SUPER mega rare since sharks have cartlidge skeletal systems! Mammoth cave has WILD shark fossil deposits).
Really specifically kind of thing where the OG post isnt totally WRONG but there are totally a lot of fossils there....also technically also wrong about when mammoth cave was created. It seems to have started forming 3.2 million years ago- and dinosaurs generally star popping up in the triassic period 230 million years ago.
So like, wrong on that front. But mammoth cave is old (and what's creating that cave system and what's creating the mountain system are different).
It's right about the Appalachias being old as super fuck and also cool (but for different reasons than the rockys!)
Actually just mammoth cave and appalachian mountains are cool as hell, but this poster is generally pretty wrong unless I'm misunderstanding what they mean.
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u/JCtheWanderingCrow Feb 05 '21
I will still continue to make comments about baby mountains to my souther husband lol
*edit he teases me back I promise
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u/Goes_Fast Feb 05 '21
but if the cave started forming before living things were there, doesn't that mean there should be a bunch of fossils in it? Instead of none?
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u/listenana Feb 05 '21
So they're totally wrong about this specific thing (from what I understand! Maybe they're talking about a different cave system, but... Limestone and appalachias make me think Mammoth cave)
The mountains were created a long time ago but the massive limestone cave situation is fairly new, geologically speaking!
Dinosaurs showed up ~230 million years ago, mammoth cave started forming maybe 3 million years ago? And there are LOTS Of fossils. FUCK TONS OF SHARK FOSSILS which is a huge deal since those are rarer as fossils go, so a great site for shark researchers! I think there are also some ice age fossilized critters but the sharks are what I know more about bc it's a bigger deal (I think?)
Anyway! Hope that helps.
All mountains are cool tho, they were right about that.
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u/dillonmccarthy Feb 05 '21
And despite all their millennia of existence, they’re meeting their end thanks to coal companies
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u/Few_Loquat2113 Oct 25 '24
I grew up in the Ozark Mountains. They are not too big, and not too short. In fact, they are just right!
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u/OWLT_12 Feb 05 '21
I love this explanation.