Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1168: Discovering 3000+ Arches in Kentucky - Bill Fultz

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Ep. 1168: Discovering 3000+ Arches in Kentucky - Bill Fultz · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Caleb.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Quick update on Kurt's Expedition Climbing Kilimanjaro.
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: At this point, we really haven't heard a lot, which that's because he's out of service.
0:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, no news is good news.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Before he got out of service, he did say that he really enjoys his fellow climbers and the guiding company, Altaza 2, or operators, is a fantastic crew, people really professional and sounds like they really know what they're about.
0:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's great to hear.
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: In this episode, Kurt interviews Bill Fultz,
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: A bill has one of the most unique hobbies I've ever heard of, where he hunts for not animals but arches and waterfalls in the rich landscape of Kentucky.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really interesting episode where Kurt and Bill talk about
1:18
[SPEAKER_01]: The muted ventures bill has had in finding these arches.
1:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They go over what it takes to find these arches has to navigate off trail, as well as the geological forces which cause these arches to form in the first place.
1:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lynnville.
1:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Friends, we have a fun show and a little bit kind of off the beaten path show for you today.
1:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I have Bill Fultz with us here and he is in Kentucky and I did not know this until Bill told me and then another listener actually told me about this a couple of weeks ago as well.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Kentucky has an unbelievable number of waterfalls and natural arches, other formations, caves, things like that that I did not realize.
2:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Kentucky is third in the U.S. states bill correct me if I'm wrong for the number of natural arches that there are there.
2:17
[SPEAKER_05]: We're a second.
2:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
2:20
[SPEAKER_05]: We're a second.
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: well that's fantastic so bill is made a hobby he's a photographer and his work is amazing but matter of fact if you're in front of a computer while we're visiting here you need to go to his website so you can look at what we're talking about because they're gorgeous it's uh... faults photos and photos is filled with an f
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So, false photos.
2:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, he's a photographer and he's made a hobby of going and documenting these natural arches, which means he's, you know, adventuring along the way, hiking, taking the pictures, enjoying nature, doing all the things that we do, but he's also documenting these natural phenomena.
2:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're amazing.
2:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it's a different sort of an episode, but one that I am really interested in.
3:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Bill, welcome to the program.
3:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you for having me, I'm glad this will be fun.
3:07
[SPEAKER_05]: I always glad to talk about arches and photography.
3:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's interesting because people encounter nature in different ways, and the adventure sports podcast is about nature.
3:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people really enjoy encountering nature as an adventure sport.
3:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I talked to a fellow the other day, you listeners may have heard this already, but he said that he liked to do base jumping with a wing suit, you know, a squirrel suit, speed shooting.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: He liked to do that, so we could see cliffs from an angle that humans just don't get to see them from.
3:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
3:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, wow, okay.
3:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so some people really like the adrenaline sports, other people like the backpack, other people like to just camp, take day hikes, whatever it is, but however you enjoy nature, I, I encourage you to do so, and photography has always been one of my favorite ways, although I, I don't have the right equipment, I'm not a professional, but I like to stretch the limits of my cell phone camera.
4:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I do, anyway, that's what today's show is going to be about.
4:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So Bill, give us just the skinny on these waterfalls and arches in Kentucky.
4:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it surprises people to hear that.
4:20
[SPEAKER_05]: uh... right now there's a six hundred one thousand six hundred and five uh... waterfalls that are documented in the state of Kentucky and then there's another three thousand two hundred and sixty one natural arches that are documented thirty two sixty one
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[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, 3,261.
4:42
[SPEAKER_05]: There's actually several that I haven't been able to get to that number's higher, but I haven't been able to get to some of the submissions to get them in a database.
4:53
[SPEAKER_05]: So I don't even know what they look like or anything yet.
4:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Three, if you went to all of those, that could take a very long time.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not a small feat.
5:02
[SPEAKER_05]: No, no.
5:03
[SPEAKER_05]: They're, and well, some of them, they're some that require repelling in.
5:08
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, some of them are just, uh, incredibly difficult to get to.
5:13
[SPEAKER_05]: You got to wait for water levels to drop to get to.
5:16
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of limestone in Kentucky and you have it.
5:19
[SPEAKER_05]: You actually have arches that are forming inside stream beds, uh, right now as we speak.
5:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was looking through your pictures and it's hard to tell from a distance.
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[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of rock you're dealing with, but they're not all the same.
5:34
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, most of them most of Kentucky's arches are sandstone and then you have a smaller amount that are limestone.
5:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's kind of cool.
5:46
[SPEAKER_02]: What I saw in some of your pictures is some of the arches, they look like they're actually the ceiling of what used to be probably a limestone cave.
5:55
[SPEAKER_02]: They have select heights and little formations like that on them and then maybe to cave
6:03
[SPEAKER_05]: That's that's correct.
6:04
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a the Smokey bridge in Carter Cave State Park is that's how that formed.
6:10
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a counselor.
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[SPEAKER_05]: But both sides collapsed and you have this massive natural, you know, massive arch.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I know, and the sandstone ones, of course, would have formed a different way.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and we were talking before we hit record how are these things formed and they each have their own story, but some of them are going to overlap and be similar.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But for for the listeners, um, win water free cycles.
6:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
6:38
[SPEAKER_02]: What else?
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: How do these things form?
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[SPEAKER_05]: Well, basically, when water and freezing and warm cycles really hit a really what truly affects the how these are created.
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[SPEAKER_05]: Water in different ways for a long time, it's understood that rain formed the arches that are on ridges, which are
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[SPEAKER_05]: and wind.
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[SPEAKER_05]: And then you have a lot of natural bridges that were formed by water flow, rock bridge and the red river gorge is over top of a nearly constant flowing stream.
7:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So just last weekend, actually, before not last weekend was Thanksgiving, the one before that, I hiked to a beaver dam that I like to visit from time to time.
7:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And
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[SPEAKER_02]: I was standing on the beaver dam, trying to find where the water was getting through because it wasn't flowing over the top, but it's a constant flowing stream.
7:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And I could hear the water trickling underneath, and the question was, this is vaguely related, it really is.
7:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Trust me.
7:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But the question was, how does the water go through the beaver dam without washing it away?
7:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
7:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But little by little that trickle could grow and grow and grow, and it made me think well the beaver's probably maintain it all the time, to make sure that it does flow, but it doesn't wash away the underpinnings for their dam, but if you have water seeping through, even just a crack in the rock, then I would think that over the eons of time,
8:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It could open up that crack.
8:10
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, absolutely.
8:11
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah.
8:11
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll take rock bridge and a red River Gorge.
8:14
[SPEAKER_05]: That's how that started.
8:16
[SPEAKER_05]: There was a crack in the rock and the water flowed under the bridge and slowly separated it and eventually continued to just wash the rock away to where you have this sizable natural bridge over a stream.
8:35
[SPEAKER_02]: you know Utah is the other state people think of that's where arches national park is of course and i have enjoyed even motorcycle trips off road in Utah and seeing amazing arches uh that are outside of the national park right and there it's it's a desert we're talking about red sand stone formations for the most part some are more blonde but uh
8:58
[SPEAKER_02]: usually they say wind, but there's also a freeze-thaw cycle with moisture.
9:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, helps.
9:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They usually say wind, but I wouldn't have thought of Kentucky that way.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And here's part of the reason why I grew up in the, uh, but hills of the Ozark mountains.
9:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a similar kind of topography, maybe slightly smaller than Kentucky, um, but probably not in western Arkansas.
9:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It gets, it gets pretty sizable, but the point is there are things like this,
9:29
[SPEAKER_02]: and not well-known at all, why is Kentucky different?
9:33
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the question.
9:35
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, it kind of started because of the, there's been, there's been something about the arches in Kentucky, people have been hunting arches in the state of Kentucky since what we can figure is from since the 1930s, maybe earlier.
9:53
[SPEAKER_05]: And people hit,
9:54
[SPEAKER_05]: we have people that are in their 70s that have been hunting archers for 40 years that are still out there hunting archers.
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
10:02
[SPEAKER_05]: It's catching on like there's more and more people that are really excited about finding that new arch.
10:08
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's part of the discovery.
10:10
[SPEAKER_05]: It's part of the adventure is getting out there and crawling through Rotodendern Thicket and upsteepills and incoming cliffs
10:23
[SPEAKER_02]: and looking for that arch that could be along that cliff, you know, I find it fascinating that there are so many there and is there a lot of gypsum in the area by any chance.
10:34
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't think so.
10:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes that'll wash away pretty easily.
10:38
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot here because, you know, and I'll say this, I bet you there's a lot more in Tennessee than anybody knows about.
10:46
[SPEAKER_05]: And there's a lot more in Alabama.
10:50
[SPEAKER_05]: If you, and there's a lot in Ohio, that nobody knows about.
10:55
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a stretch along the Appalachians,
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[SPEAKER_05]: where using a heat map, I have a friend that's in a sea that's used to heat map and taking all this information and you can see that there's a long swath of where all the urges and waterfalls are formed and it's like in a straight line between at an angle actually from Ohio all the way down to Alabama.
11:20
[SPEAKER_05]: So there's a lot of geology going on.
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[SPEAKER_05]: It's just
11:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you do this for a spill, not everybody's been to Kentucky and I admit that I've not been there nearly as much as I would like to.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to go explore it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It's just such a beautiful, beautiful place.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But can you describe what Kentucky looks like?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I think a lot of people haven't been there.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe they're thinking about Appalachia, but I who knows.
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[SPEAKER_05]: So, in the western side of the state, it's more flat and hilly, and in the eastern side of the state, it's more mountainous.
11:55
[SPEAKER_05]: So you have, in the eastern side of the state, you have a lot of, um,
11:59
[SPEAKER_05]: evergreen wrote a dendarin cliffs high cliffs, especially in the Red River Gorge and even higher cliffs in McCurray County down in the big South Fork in the southern part of the state, you know, it's there's the Western part of the state has arches too.
12:18
[SPEAKER_05]: But you don't have, you don't have the road of dendrons and things like that.
12:21
[SPEAKER_05]: It's also a lot more, there's a lot more caves in the western part of the state.
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[SPEAKER_05]: Obviously you have mammoth cave, but you have numerous more caves in that section of the state.
12:32
[SPEAKER_05]: But there's a lot of caves in the eastern part of the state.
12:36
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a beautiful state that you can go get photographs that look like summer in the
12:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and you have every kind of deciduous tree that you can imagine.
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[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some people might even say it's a temperate rainforest.
12:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
12:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I'll have to say that it's more like that in the winter.
13:02
[SPEAKER_05]: In the winter, us enthusiasts call hiking season.
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[SPEAKER_05]: None of us really go out in the summer.
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[SPEAKER_05]: We all go out in the winter, not because there's really nobody out there, but because that's whenever the leaves are off the trees, you can see the waterfalls, you can see the arches and the ticks are now, which is really important to us next.
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[SPEAKER_05]: And which ticks and Kentucky are a real problem, but there's there, you know, it's our favorite time to go hunt for waterfalls and arches.
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[SPEAKER_05]: This is the season where I get all my information in for the arch databases and and waterfall databases and whatnot.
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and we're at the beginning of December right now during this interview.
13:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So people know, and I totally get it a group in, like I said, the foothills of the Ozarks and it was the same for me, uh, winter was when I could really explore.
13:50
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
13:50
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah.
13:51
[SPEAKER_05]: That's time.
13:52
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the best time to get out there and it's it's wonderful.
13:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I like it so much more than the heat to let's uh, let's connect this to hiking a little bit and then we'll get into more details about what you do with the arches and the water falls and things like that.
14:05
[SPEAKER_02]: but some of this stuff can't be easy to get to.
14:09
[SPEAKER_05]: I know a lot of it isn't.
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[SPEAKER_05]: So some of it, it requires pushing through thick, rodendrin thickets, which like, it's like arms grabbing onto you while you're trying to push through these things.
14:25
[SPEAKER_05]: But also, when you're coming down steep hills, they're your friend.
14:31
[SPEAKER_05]: You have something to grab onto.
14:32
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not rolling down then no.
14:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
14:35
[SPEAKER_05]: So there's a love hate relationship with the with the road of Denver.
14:40
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of, I mean, in some cases, you have to repel.
14:45
[SPEAKER_05]: You're having to climb over large boulders under large boulders.
14:50
[SPEAKER_05]: You're having to walk through, you know, waste high, waste high water and a creek, you know, to get to get to the other side to get to the, you know, waterfall of the arch.
15:05
[SPEAKER_05]: It can get pretty strenuous, but the rewards often are on parallel.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: That's cool.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to mention to everyone in the West.
15:16
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... that there's it getting off trail is often frowned upon and the reason is because we're in such delicate dry environments here but i can say in the in the east in these places uh... where it like where i grew up you can't hardly stop the forest for claiming that from claiming that everywhere and it's very very difficult to damage it and being off trail is uh...
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not doing any harm.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll just say it that way.
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's off trail etiquette for, you know, hiking in the west as well.
15:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just say, you know, we've got to take care of where we are, but I just want to point out being off trail where you are is a whole different thing.
16:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And she taught kids, especially, it was a challenge course to help young people kind of overcome some of their own challenges, but to go off trail and learn how to find your way, learn how to maneuver in that difficult environment, and discover the things, you know, when you get off the trail, you're in a different world, and
16:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I know a lot of people here, I kind of joke sometimes if I want to get away from the crowds, all I have to do is go perpendicular to a trail for 100 yards.
16:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I won't see anybody for weeks because everyone just stays right on the trail, you know, and it's kind of like a safety blanket for people.
16:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like this is my lifeline, it's how I got in, it's how I get out.
16:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But when you are searching for these arches and waterfalls and other features,
17:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You're off trail, you ever get turned around?
17:03
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you, how do you find your way?
17:05
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, well, I, I, I turn on my, uh, track on my, uh, eye hike is one, one way, there you go.
17:13
[SPEAKER_05]: But also, I've always, um, I've always had a good memory of my surroundings.
17:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, if I go hiking somewhere, I'll generally find my way back.
17:25
[SPEAKER_05]: And I don't, I, I usually use my eye hike more for, okay, I'm looking for this arch or this lead, you know,
17:34
[SPEAKER_05]: And so often, I don't really have that much of a problem.
17:38
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a friend of mine, he goes, sometimes he tries to steer us a wrong way.
17:44
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm like, that's not the way that we went.
17:45
[SPEAKER_05]: We went this way.
17:47
[SPEAKER_05]: So I've gotten pretty in tune with my surroundings whenever I'm hiking somewhere.
17:55
[SPEAKER_05]: It which is important because, I mean, the last thing I need to do is have called search and rescue to come and get me whenever I'm whenever I'm out in the field.
18:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, when I was a kid, again, foothills of the Ozarks, I was hiking diagonally up a mountain, small mountain, through the woods, so no visibility.
18:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I didn't realize is that the mountain very gradually was curving around.
18:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought that I was hiking west and before I knew it, I was hiking north and I didn't realize it.
18:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I went quite a distance.
18:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I said, you know what, it's going to be a lot easier going in the valley.
18:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll go straight down to the valley and hike back out.
18:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know what happened.
18:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I hiked north and found myself in a completely different watershed and I had no clue where I was or how I got there.
18:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and I don't mind admitting I don't have a compass in my head like some people do.
18:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like you might bill my son does Here recognizes direction just automatically.
18:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how that works.
19:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It does not work for me for me It's more dead reckoning, but I mean stakes So that's a skill set We all do make mistakes when we're out there, but I get it
19:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's it's thick when you're in that kind of topography that changes like that and that the trees and the undergrowth.
19:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's challenging for you challenging.
19:22
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the private.
19:24
[SPEAKER_05]: There's so much to negotiate when you're out there, it off trail, it is down trees and it slows you down to like it's not like you're you're you're doing.
19:37
[SPEAKER_05]: You may do a half mile in an hour, depending on how thick, how thick and how down the trio of trees are and everything.
19:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Or how many boulders you got to scramble over, you know, it's just, it's just all defense.
19:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like a big muddy loose, ever changing, can't see very far jungle gym.
19:59
[SPEAKER_05]: That's true.
20:00
[SPEAKER_05]: That's true.
20:01
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, the one thing that I like about
20:08
[SPEAKER_02]: That's helpful.
20:09
[SPEAKER_05]: It's very helpful.
20:10
[SPEAKER_05]: You can, of course, you've got muddy areas, but the sandstone really, really helps with negotiating.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, okay.
20:23
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22:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, another thing about Kentucky is that the winners are not like high altitude western winters, but you do have a freeze-thaw cycle that I imagine really goes to work on the rocks.
22:15
[SPEAKER_02]: That's probably part of the reason why the arches are there so much.
22:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, for sure, definitely when dealing with some of the land limestone arches, limestone just has just all this all these cracks for water just push through.
22:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Like if it freezes, it can just drop that drop of piece of rock right out of there and the same thing with the sandstone, especially, you know, the sandstone, the sandstone arches have joints in on which are cracks that go like in the case of sky bridge goes along the length of the of the arch and, you know, eventually, you know, the the the freeze.
23:00
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I'll just a little bit of geology and I'm no geologist so for give me and Bill fill in the gaps.
23:05
[SPEAKER_05]: That's as I can.
23:07
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not the best geologist in the world.
23:10
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm trying to learn it.
23:11
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot to learn.
23:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there is.
23:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, sandstone generally forms like in River Delta where sand gets washed out and layered.
23:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's sedimentary and then under compression it becomes rock.
23:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And in limestone, generally forms on a seafloor where, you know, crustaceans and things, corals and what have you die over the eons and those calcium deposits collect and form the limestone.
23:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And the interesting thing about limestone is that it is basic, meaning alkaline,
23:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And so a week acid can get in there and there's a there's a acid base reaction and it eats the rock and that's why caves form in limestone so well, but that's also part of the reason why you would have limestone arches I'm sure, but these are two different types of strata that are somewhat related my guess is and I'm just guessing because I like I said I'm no geologist, but my guess is that you're in an area where there is a sea.
24:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And mountains were weathering and formed the sandstone layers.
24:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And then just beyond that, you got to the sea floor where the limestone layers are deposited.
24:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Yep, that is that's how it's, yep, that's correct.
24:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Huh, let's kind of pass on on top.
24:33
[SPEAKER_05]: You got the limestone on the bottom.
24:35
[SPEAKER_02]: What can you tell us about the ancient Appalachias?
24:39
[SPEAKER_02]: The Appalachian Mountains from Wayback, how big were they do you know?
24:43
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't.
24:44
[SPEAKER_05]: I haven't done any research on the, on the age of the Appalachians or the or, you know, how they were formed and things of that nature, just simply because it hasn't ever been hasn't hasn't been something I've had time to do.
25:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, just out of curiosity, do you see a lot of fossils in the sandstone like shells and things?
25:20
[SPEAKER_02]: There's that primarily the limestone.
25:22
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, you see a lot of pebbles and things that like that in the limestone, you will see some uh, you will, I wouldn't, it's not really like more like sea type fossils.
25:36
[SPEAKER_05]: not dinosaur type fossils, right.
25:40
[SPEAKER_05]: I know that in Tennessee, northern Tennessee, there's there's an actual palm tree fossil in the side of a cliff.
25:52
[SPEAKER_05]: And I've had somebody else report one to me that's down in down near Hazard, but I haven't had an opportunity to look into that yet.
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, see, I guess the reason I bring it up is because when you go out to try to find an arch or a waterfall or something like that, you're exploring all of this and there's so many different ways to explore it.
26:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But as you learn a little bit about the the ancient formation of, you know, these various rocks, you know, it's got to be fascinating for you to think about what nature was like then and compare it to what it's like now.
26:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, absolutely.
26:27
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it would be, it would be really incredible to actually see what Kentucky's largest arches looked like, you know, 200,000 years ago, or maybe even, and if they look nearly the same then, a million years ago.
26:45
[SPEAKER_05]: was did the shallows see form the arches that are on top of the ridges, you know, that those are questions that are actually being brought up now by people in the Kentucky Geological Survey.
26:58
[SPEAKER_05]: The most type of an arch Kentucky has is a pillar of arch, which is an arch that is alongside a cliff.
27:06
[SPEAKER_05]: Generally, those were formed by
27:15
[SPEAKER_05]: the valleys.
27:17
[SPEAKER_05]: So that there is more proof that, you know, we're suggest that the water was just is forming all these arches and it would just be fascinating to see what it would look like back whenever this was actually happening.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like the valleys are probably deeper now than they once were.
27:39
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
27:40
[SPEAKER_05]: You can you like there's a copper's creek in the Red River
27:45
[SPEAKER_05]: It's really neat because you can, you're like, whenever you hike back to it, there's no water on the stream, but you can hear the water under the stream.
27:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh.
27:58
[SPEAKER_05]: So you get up about a mile up the watershed and there's a carst, there's a big pool and all this water is flowing into a carst that's right in the middle of the stream and it flows underneath the stream at lower water levels.
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if it's making an arch down there.
28:20
[SPEAKER_05]: It could be, you may have arches for this way.
28:23
[SPEAKER_02]: right.
28:24
[SPEAKER_05]: That's crazy.
28:25
[SPEAKER_05]: It is crazy.
28:26
[SPEAKER_05]: And there's another stream over by Whittleton arch, which is near natural bridge that does the same thing.
28:32
[SPEAKER_05]: The water goes, there's a waterfall and it goes down stream a little bit.
28:37
[SPEAKER_05]: And then it just, it just goes underneath underneath the the stream.
28:41
[SPEAKER_05]: That and then reemerges, you know, maybe a quarter mile down.
28:45
[SPEAKER_02]: That's cool.
28:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So much.
28:48
[SPEAKER_02]: geology and topography and hydrology and foreign fun.
28:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's I can tucky is just dense with all of this stuff.
28:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing to me as you describe it.
29:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It kind of takes me home to the Ozarks because it's similar, but I think Kentucky is also unique.
29:06
[SPEAKER_05]: But for, yeah, I agree.
29:10
[SPEAKER_05]: There's some things in the Ozark that are pretty unique too that I've seen picture up along to that waterfalls of Arkansas group and that's cool.
29:21
[SPEAKER_05]: I've seen some really great waterfalls there in that state.
29:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, Kentucky just has, you never know.
29:29
[SPEAKER_05]: There may be four or five thousand arches in,
29:34
[SPEAKER_05]: in Arkansas.
29:35
[SPEAKER_05]: There may be that many in Missouri.
29:39
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, you just don't know because there's really not enough people out there looking to really to see if they're there.
29:46
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I can say having hiked around those areas.
29:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, there are some.
29:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, but I don't know how many it's if I saw one.
29:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It was special.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it was like, whoa, look at that.
30:00
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because.
30:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't like, oh, yeah, I stumbled into these from time to time.
30:05
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it was more like, dang, that's rare.
30:08
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
30:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's the thing, a lot of Kentucky's arches are not the, oh my goodness, they're spectacular.
30:16
[SPEAKER_05]: Many of them are just over three feet in one direction.
30:23
[SPEAKER_05]: You need three feet of visible light in one direction, for it to be equal to five for an orange.
30:30
[SPEAKER_05]: So that's what counts.
30:32
[SPEAKER_05]: So we have some really incredibly ugly arches in the state.
30:37
[SPEAKER_05]: You just go to knock it off your list, you know, or say, hey, I've seen this arch.
30:42
[SPEAKER_05]: But there's, I would be honest with you, there's probably over half of Kentucky's arches are not really worth seeing.
30:51
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, because they all, because they're just, uh, they're some that are like in the roofs of, uh, of a rock shelter, and it's six feet by an inch and a half.
31:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
31:05
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's very, very skinny, but yeah, but it's still qualifies as an archbishop.
31:10
[SPEAKER_05]: You have that, you have that three feet of visible light.
31:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I would argue that while the arch might be a little disappointing, the hike itself is worth it.
31:19
[SPEAKER_05]: for sure.
31:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, you're never disappointed when you find that arch, you know, you document that arch that hasn't been documented.
31:28
[SPEAKER_05]: All right.
31:28
[SPEAKER_05]: That's not that that's always exciting.
31:31
[SPEAKER_05]: That's one of the things, too.
31:32
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like so many people go in and they find arches.
31:35
[SPEAKER_05]: We have people that have gone in behind people and found more arches in the very same area.
31:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
31:41
[SPEAKER_05]: There's areas of the state, like McCurray County and Laura County and Wolf County in the Red River,
31:52
[SPEAKER_02]: at a cliff like you know what this reminds me of is the kind of the joy in the fun of discovery.
31:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's the mystery of it.
32:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's what's out here that we don't have in our database, but maybe even something that no one's really noticed or if someone did it may have been so long ago, you know, I could have been a could have been an eight of American two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, right?
32:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's
32:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
32:21
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, we were, uh, over the summer, uh, me and a friend hiked, uh, little sinking, sinking creek in the lead county.
32:28
[SPEAKER_05]: And I was kind of excited because I knew that there were a lot of cave entrances in this watershed.
32:34
[SPEAKER_05]: And so we were going to specifically to hike to the, the little natural bridge.
32:38
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like five feet.
32:39
[SPEAKER_05]: It's right at a cave opening.
32:41
[SPEAKER_05]: It's really, really, really, really neat.
32:43
[SPEAKER_05]: And on our way to it, I looked over and I said, man, that looks like that's an arch over there.
32:49
[SPEAKER_05]: And I could see, see the cave opening, and I'm like, there looks like there's something else going on there.
32:55
[SPEAKER_05]: So we went to the bridge, we come back, and I scrambled down into the creek.
33:01
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lady and a man there with a boy, and they're playing around in the rocks or whatever.
33:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And I go over and sure enough, there's an arch.
33:11
[SPEAKER_05]: And I didn't think that there was an arch on the other side until I looked inside the cave and I could see light coming in.
33:17
[SPEAKER_05]: So I climbed up the other side and I'm standing there and I'm I you know tell my friend Dustin that's with me and I said man this is there's this is a twin arch and the lady down below me she goes I was here last month that wasn't there before and what was amazing was is what I figured out was that there had been like a serious deluge of rain and it had come down And there's a series of k the cave follows along the creek
33:43
[SPEAKER_05]: The cave had such a volume of water.
33:45
[SPEAKER_05]: I believe it blew the limestone out and formed one of the arches the other arch I believe form that way too, but it was much it was older was an older form this this one here the one that was on the right was I was brand new and you could just see where the where the rocket just crumbled and fall down below close to the entrance to the arch.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the odds of that?
34:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, I mean, to document an arch that literally is less than a month old.
34:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I get to tell you this story, Bill, that's only vaguely related, but it was so hilarious.
34:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone told me about this probably 20 years ago.
34:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even remember who it was, but they were visiting Bryce Canyon and they have all of the clay stacks with a hard rock cap.
34:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
34:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's that iconic landscape, you just don't see anywhere.
34:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And they had gone to visit with some friends
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: one of the the stacks collapsed a while.
34:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's such a rare, you know, it's like these things have been here for who knows how many of the guns and one of them collapsed and crumbled down.
34:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the gals there said, Oh, that was so cool.
34:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's stay and watch another one.
34:58
[SPEAKER_02]: The scope of time involved right some of these things is so big.
35:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We just still it doesn't register, you know, in our minds, but for you to find an arch that was new.
35:10
[SPEAKER_02]: We're talking about how old, weeks old.
35:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah, just a few weeks old.
35:15
[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy.
35:16
[SPEAKER_05]: It was absolutely insane.
35:19
[SPEAKER_05]: I did not expect, I mean, I was hoping that I'd find some arches along the, along the creek that hadn't been documented.
35:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Because after a while, it's kind of like, hey, after a while, you start to get an eye for it.
35:31
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, this looks Archie.
35:33
[SPEAKER_05]: And so you start, you know, you, I mean, this cliff line looks Archie,
35:37
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, this, this watershed looks Archie, and you tend to start the, I mean, of course you bust out sometimes and then I didn't often didn't find anything, but you start to get in tune with the, the geology.
35:51
[SPEAKER_05]: and are able to increase your chances of finding an art.
35:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's really cool.
35:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You kind of get a six cents about it.
35:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's kind of an intuition.
36:00
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's kind of an intuition.
36:02
[SPEAKER_05]: It's kind of like waterfall swirls.
36:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Like whenever I first started photographing waterfalls, I never paid attention to the leaf swirls that were in the foreground.
36:11
[SPEAKER_05]: But then you realize, oh, wow, you can do a long exposure and make this beautiful leaf swirl.
36:17
[SPEAKER_05]: And then every time you look at a waterfall, you look for a leaf swirl.
36:22
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the same thing with a cliff line, you look at a cliff line and you're like, oh, that looks good, you know.
36:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what's fun about it is that you're a photographer.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you naturally are developing your eye for subtledes in the landscape and the lighting.
36:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And that takes you to a different level of observation than maybe the average person would have.
36:47
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the beautiful things about photography.
36:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it takes you to a deeper connection with what's going on around you just because you're taking time to see.
36:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Yep, you know, looking at a waterfall, you're like, this is where how the waterfall looks best.
37:02
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's the same with an arch.
37:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I want to, when photographing an arch, I want to accentuate the size of the arch or the color of the arch.
37:13
[SPEAKER_05]: I once had someone tell me that you can't shoot an arch the first time and really get it right.
37:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And that can be true sometimes because you come up to the arch and you just really sometimes it's really hard to figure out how the arch looks best.
37:32
[SPEAKER_05]: But I kind of feel that I've gotten a pretty good handle on shooting arches.
37:36
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm not all of them I've ever posted, you know, there's hundreds of, you know, hundred arches that I've never posted photographs of, not for my photography gallery, just because I either couldn't figure it out or they just weren't, you know, just weren't attractive enough.
37:55
[SPEAKER_05]: But I generally, I'll go ahead and shoot them anyway.
37:58
[SPEAKER_02]: My family and I visited Archie's National Park several years back.
38:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember there are a lot of Archie's there that I couldn't get in the frame.
38:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
38:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, oh, it just kind of looks like a chunk of rock.
38:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
38:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Can't get the effect, you know, because you're working within the limitations.
38:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, that could be tricky.
38:19
[SPEAKER_05]: You can, uh, for me, uh, going wide with a wide angle lens is best for best for Archie's.
38:27
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you shooting with, is it like a 25 or a 35 or 16 to 35?
38:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh wow, okay.
38:34
[SPEAKER_05]: So go wide and you could really accentuate the arch.
38:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Now it doesn't always work for your, obviously your smaller arches and whatnot, but it's still can if you've put it on the ground, I've seen people in myself make smaller arches look a lot better than what they really are.
38:54
[SPEAKER_02]: you get the rabbit-sive you, yeah, that's really fun.
38:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have so many more questions.
39:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's transition a little bit here.
39:05
[SPEAKER_02]: People in Colorado like to bag 14ers.
39:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And
39:09
[SPEAKER_02]: doing that just gives you an excuse to get out and climb mountains, right, but there's there's something to chase and it gets you out the door a little bit more for some people and I love stuff like that and I've interviewed people that they've chosen to chase whatever their thing is they've chosen to chase it and it's become the thing that.
39:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of a driver for the fun they have.
39:33
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you don't have to have a list that you want to check off, but if you do have a list for some people that's really motivating, you are keeping databases, you're helping to build the databases for the waterfalls and the arches and explain these databases because other people are going to say, oh, I'd love to see some of that stuff.
39:53
[SPEAKER_02]: How could I learn more?
39:54
[SPEAKER_05]: So the database, we'll go with the waterfall database, so the waterfall database was originally created by Christopher Morris, who's still involved with the project and he created it because that nobody would share any waterfall information with him.
40:11
[SPEAKER_05]: And so he created the waterfall database and then began hiking out.
40:17
[SPEAKER_05]: He would, he's a, he's a surveyor and he began pinpointing places on the map and hiking out to them and he has submitted to the data, he has the most submissions to the water falls database.
40:29
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like 400 and something different waterfalls and he did a lot of off trail hiking to all these to help seed the database besides the
40:40
[SPEAKER_05]: you know, 40 we knew about.
40:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:44
[SPEAKER_05]: And so this gave people an opportunity because the database also gives you can submit waterfalls.
40:51
[SPEAKER_05]: So all you have to do is photograph GPS location and so you can submit it to the database and we'll put it in there.
40:59
[SPEAKER_05]: I think there's 111 waterfalls on a clickable map that you can see mostly pictures of.
41:07
[SPEAKER_05]: There's mostly pictures with them all.
41:09
[SPEAKER_05]: There's information on how tall they are, how wide they are, what rock they're in,
41:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, it just gives the GPS location and a point on the map.
41:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Anybody that wants to take the GPS location and put it in the remote, they can go and hike to any of these waterfalls.
41:23
[SPEAKER_05]: The waterfall database also features a trip section that I wrote that that gives detailed directions to, I think, 21 or 22 waterfalls in Kentucky.
41:34
[SPEAKER_05]: And it also has maps.
41:36
[SPEAKER_05]: And I have gotten a lot of feedback from people that really,
41:40
[SPEAKER_05]: love these trip sections because it's really inspired them to get out there.
41:45
[SPEAKER_05]: It's really helped them to go to these places that not a lot of people get to go to.
41:52
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, some of some of them, some people do a lot of people do.
41:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Comberland falls is in the in the trip section.
41:59
[SPEAKER_05]: But town Creek falls, which is in Monticello, Kentucky.
42:03
[SPEAKER_05]: is not a lot of people know about.
42:06
[SPEAKER_05]: It's about getting people out to visit these places, but also to help scatter people out.
42:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Everybody concentrates on going to Kentucky's Red River Gorge.
42:19
[SPEAKER_05]: There are so many other places in Kentucky that are worth going to go see.
42:24
[SPEAKER_05]: Nothing to take away from the Gorge's Gorge's incredible.
42:28
[SPEAKER_05]: But when it's crowded, or when they do close it down in the winter, you've got a huge swath of Daniel Bay of National Forest to go to.
42:39
[SPEAKER_05]: Nice.
42:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Like down into Laurel County and Whitley County, Whitley County is got plenty of Whitley County's only got like 50 arches that have been documented.
42:51
[SPEAKER_05]: I bet you anything, there's another 2000.
42:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Wow, because nobody's really gone in there and dug it out.
42:58
[SPEAKER_05]: Everybody's digging out Laurel County and Creek County and sandwiched in between is, is Whitley County.
43:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So so much to explore and discover.
43:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's fun.
43:10
[SPEAKER_02]: That's fun.
43:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So how many waterfalls did you say are in the database now?
43:17
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, there are 1,600 and five waterfalls in the database.
43:22
[SPEAKER_05]: There are 100 and 111 are visible on the map.
43:28
[SPEAKER_05]: Problem is, we have a back-end issue with the waterfalls, data bay, debt website.
43:34
[SPEAKER_05]: We're going to have to rebuild it and repopulate it, which we thought was going to be a big problem, but we found out it's not.
43:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Now we're just trying to find the time to do it.
43:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's fun.
43:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to tell a story about my daughter when she was barely talking and she talked early.
43:50
[SPEAKER_02]: She was probably 18 months old or something when this happened.
43:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We went to a waterfall in British Columbia, Canada.
43:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And we stood there and it was amazing and we started getting all the benefits.
44:02
[SPEAKER_02]: that come with falling water.
44:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, maybe you know more about this bill.
44:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It just, people say maybe it's negative ions, maybe it's the spray, it's how fresh the air feels, it's the natural setting, it's the sound, you can feel the ground shaking and whatever it is, it feels, it feels healing.
44:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost.
44:21
[SPEAKER_05]: It is absolutely a healing experience.
44:24
[SPEAKER_05]: I can explain to you what it is, but I go to a waterfall and I photograph it and I feel cleansed.
44:32
[SPEAKER_02]: reset.
44:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
44:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
44:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we went to this waterfall and we're hiking back out and I picked my little daughter up because she was tired of course.
44:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I started explaining to her, I always talked to my kids way above their age level.
44:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was explaining how the earth has seasons because it's tilted at 23 degrees and how it's, you know, it goes around the sun and how the seasons change and where the only planet we know of that has
44:58
[SPEAKER_02]: liquid water and frozen water at the same time and how such a special miracle it is that we live in a place where we can have a water cycle and it makes things like waterfalls and waterfall and then she interrupted me and just said dad, it just makes us feel good.
45:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And here she again, she's like 18 months old.
45:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought yes, that's wisdom.
45:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to shut up and just enjoy where we are, you know?
45:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
45:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So amazing.
45:24
[SPEAKER_02]: If people can go to your waterfalls database and you just said 1,600 and 5 are there that they could explore.
45:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay.
45:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So you said you have to have three feet of light in one direction for it to be an arch.
45:38
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
45:38
[SPEAKER_02]: What's a waterfall?
45:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, usually we kind of usually have a three or four feet.
45:45
[SPEAKER_05]: It has to be a waterfall.
45:47
[SPEAKER_05]: um, for it to be like a documental waterfall, though I was, Chris and I talked about it recently and because Kentucky has, it's got a lot of small watersheds.
46:01
[SPEAKER_05]: So we have some documented waterfalls on some pretty small watersheds.
46:05
[SPEAKER_05]: It was like if somebody's willing to send it in and document it, then we'll go ahead and accept it.
46:11
[SPEAKER_05]: It is kind of where we're at with that.
46:14
[SPEAKER_05]: That's one of the things, too, is that mentioning about the waterfalls.
46:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Like Kentucky only has three waterfalls that run year-round.
46:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Cumberland falls, dog slaughter falls, and eagle falls.
46:27
[SPEAKER_05]: All of them are all there within a three mile radius of each other.
46:32
[SPEAKER_05]: All of the rest of Kentucky's waterfalls are all rain-dependent.
46:38
[SPEAKER_05]: and the best time to visit them is in the winter.
46:41
[SPEAKER_05]: In the summer, or once you get into, once you get to about June and you get through the dry season of the fall, the water's absorbed by the trees, an inch of water fall and the winter is completely different than an inch of water fall in the summer.
46:57
[SPEAKER_05]: All that water's absorbed by the foliage.
47:01
[SPEAKER_05]: So that's one reason why we all get out in the winter because there's nothing to absorb that water up.
47:08
[SPEAKER_05]: So you can have a hundred acre waterfall that will look fantastic in the winter where it's dry, you know, 95% of the time in the summer.
47:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I have to wonder if,
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: if there's not just so much underground water as well.
47:27
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why you had so many arches in the first place.
47:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of that water comes down and just goes somewhere.
47:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh for sure.
47:34
[SPEAKER_05]: That's another condition too.
47:35
[SPEAKER_05]: Going into the car system.
47:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so fun.
47:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So you also have a database for the arches.
47:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
47:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you have a database for landforms.
47:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so the landforms collects the arches and the waterfalls, and it also includes overlooks, which I think we've got 348 overlooks, and then train tunnels, and then we're adding natural chimneys to the database one of these days.
48:10
[SPEAKER_05]: It's on the list.
48:11
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not really sure when that'll happen.
48:13
[SPEAKER_05]: But
48:14
[SPEAKER_05]: We have information on about five or six natural chimneys.
48:17
[SPEAKER_05]: And so we thought, well, we'll go ahead and make a database.
48:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And then one of our historical or chunters said, I know where a ton of chimneys are.
48:26
[SPEAKER_05]: So he's going to help see completely see the chimney database that will be building eventually.
48:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, describe a chimney.
48:35
[SPEAKER_05]: A chimney is a basically a column of rock.
48:42
[SPEAKER_05]: like what you have out west, but it's not a who do it's rock that that the cliff line has eroded away all the way around and basically left this abandoned column of rock.
48:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so it doesn't have to be hollow on the inside or anything.
48:58
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no.
48:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just talking about talking about a stack of rock, a really tall gym.
49:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, just a very, really tall stack of rock.
49:06
[SPEAKER_05]: I know like five or six of them now, so.
49:09
[SPEAKER_05]: And they are unique under where a couple are in Ohio as well, you don't see, they're actually more rare than arches obviously.
49:18
[SPEAKER_05]: They're pretty rare, at least in the state so far, but again, there may be there's maybe plenty out there first to discover.
49:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You know where we live, there were massive volcanoes in the area and they deposited.
49:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, millions of years ago, a lot of stuff that was built out of the volcano that made brecha, which is kind of a soft rock that you whether it's very, very easily, but then there are also some lava flows and basalt deposits on top of that.
49:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So you get the hard top layer in the soft sides.
49:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So we get a lot of those sorts of things where things just stand.
49:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, wow.
49:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we call them palisades here.
49:59
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
50:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But they could be chimneys, there are some of those as well, but we don't have the arches too much is just going to crumble in fall apart, but it's so amazing.
50:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter where you are in the natural world.
50:13
[SPEAKER_02]: There are unique things that were built by that place's geology and by the animals in the plant life and the topography, and there's so many ways that you can explore.
50:27
[SPEAKER_02]: it's mind blowing and you're making me want to go to Kentucky and just hike around.
50:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds, it sounds really delightful.
50:34
[SPEAKER_05]: Come on over.
50:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you mentioned that some of these places people have to repel down into.
50:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just kind of curious.
50:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there safety concerns that people should be aware of?
50:50
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, yes, there are safety concerns.
50:54
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of people that fall off cliffs because they're not paying attention because I mean, there's a lot of cliff walk and that's involved.
51:01
[SPEAKER_05]: And getting lost, getting stuck somewhere, you can't get out of.
51:07
[SPEAKER_05]: You gotta know your limitations and be aware of that.
51:12
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't suggest, first timer is going out, going off trailing.
51:17
[SPEAKER_05]: without any experience really you gain that experience because it happens a lot in the gorge people get lost and Wolf County search and rescue is called in or one of the other emergency responders are called in to save people that have fallen off cliffs who've got stuck where they shouldn't be got lost their telephone quit work and so they didn't know where they were they you know just all kinds of yeah there there are safety concerns but you know if you know your limits watch where you step
51:46
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, right.
51:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Watch where you're step and keep be mindful.
51:49
[SPEAKER_05]: Be mindful of yourself.
51:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Huh, in your surroundings.
51:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds really fun.
51:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that out in in the West, we generally have very long big views and we can see the lay of the land.
52:00
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a mountain that's, you know, 10 degrees from north or whatever.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you can find your way because there's that mountain you can always see, but that's not always the case in the forest.
52:09
[SPEAKER_05]: No, no, not, not Kentucky.
52:11
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, yeah, there's some high points and you can see it off or off of it, but you don't have any towering points.
52:16
[SPEAKER_05]: Like all the points, like if you're up on an overlook, we'll say like buzzard rock and McCree County, but you see way off into the distance, but you're almost at, you're almost the same level as the distance, even though the valley is going through, you don't have any towering,
52:37
[SPEAKER_05]: mountains.
52:39
[SPEAKER_05]: You have to get further down into southeast Kentucky before you start getting into different heights of mountains and whatnot.
52:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, in a opinion, if you're in the valley, you don't get that view either.
52:53
[SPEAKER_05]: No, no, if you're in the valley.
52:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you just have to stay in your watershed.
52:58
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, if you go around to the next watershed, you've got to, oh, that's the thing, too, is like you're hiking in the valley.
53:06
[SPEAKER_05]: The watershed will always take you back to where you can't generally.
53:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
53:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
53:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's a good word.
53:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it sounds like a delightful place.
53:16
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
53:17
[SPEAKER_02]: How can people get more information?
53:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We've talked about your database, and we've talked about your photography website, but list all of that for us again.
53:25
[SPEAKER_05]: So there's the KY Landforms database, which features a clickable map to the waterfalls, the arches, the overlooks.
53:37
[SPEAKER_05]: and tunnels of Kentucky, then there's the KY Arches website that features not only the map with the arches, but it also features a trip section to I think 15 different arches that have detailed directions.
53:57
[SPEAKER_05]: There's also historical information on
54:03
[SPEAKER_05]: our chunters of the past.
54:05
[SPEAKER_05]: We've done features on our chunters of the present.
54:08
[SPEAKER_05]: And also explains the types of arches.
54:11
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we also discuss arches awareness, which covers the abuses that happen to Kentucky arches.
54:20
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot.
54:22
[SPEAKER_05]: We have a problem with pavolink, which is,
54:26
[SPEAKER_05]: where people dig for Native American artifacts under arches.
54:30
[SPEAKER_05]: We have people that camp under them.
54:32
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not allowed to camp under arches.
54:33
[SPEAKER_05]: It makes them brittle and fall.
54:36
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we have people that like to spray paint arches.
54:39
[SPEAKER_05]: And so that's not cool.
54:42
[SPEAKER_05]: That requires a lot of work to get that off.
54:45
[SPEAKER_05]: And you know, all this stuff damages arches.
54:48
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
54:49
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we have the waterfalls database, which, uh, and also with both the, with the arches and waterfalls databases, there's information on all the top 10 waterfalls, top 10 submitters, uh, top 10, uh, heights with all that.
55:05
[SPEAKER_05]: There's, there's a whole top 10 section, which is really, really cool.
55:08
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, the Kentucky waterfalls, uh,
55:11
[SPEAKER_05]: KY waterfalls database also has a clickable map, but currently it does just goes to the land forms map.
55:18
[SPEAKER_05]: But there's also the information on the trip section.
55:23
[SPEAKER_05]: There as well, which 22 waterfalls, I think.
55:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we want people, if people want to contribute to the to the effort, let's say they spot an arch somewhere.
55:35
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they could, what do they do?
55:37
[SPEAKER_05]: If they go to the landforms page and up on top, it says mid and arch or submit a landform or you can, you can do it from the waterfalls or the, uh, or the urges, you can just click some, you know, submit and, you know, as long as it has a photograph and a GPS location.
55:57
[SPEAKER_05]: It you're good to go send an email sometimes we get double submissions and I I'm I'm pretty good about reaching back out to people and saying hey we already have this in the database we have quite a few that we keep private arches at least numerous reasons we have agreements with some of our junters not to share them and then we have
56:19
[SPEAKER_05]: We have some that are roadside that are not covered in graffiti that we don't want ever covered in graffiti so we don't we don't put those on there and then you know other protected arches if they're in you know nature preserves or things of that nature.
56:35
[SPEAKER_05]: and privately and we definitely want to make sure that landowners people aren't going on to landowners property and whatnot.
56:42
[SPEAKER_05]: And that applies with the waterfalls too.
56:43
[SPEAKER_05]: There's not as many waterfalls that we keep hidden, but there are, there's probably a few hundred that we keep from the public just because of of those similar reasons with the arches.
56:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's that's cool.
57:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to ask that question and you answered it already.
57:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So, very, very cool.
57:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to mention your photography again, faults, photos, FUL, TZF, OTOS.
57:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like you sell and license your photography through that.
57:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I do.
57:19
[SPEAKER_05]: I license.
57:20
[SPEAKER_05]: I license rights to photography for
57:29
[SPEAKER_05]: where they licensed about a hundred images and Kentucky State Parks, they out licensed about 30.
57:37
[SPEAKER_05]: So yeah, I licensed out and then I also do self-prens.
57:41
[SPEAKER_05]: And usually it's not like a click on a worker thing.
57:44
[SPEAKER_05]: You just have to reach out to me and I'll go print it and send it to you.
57:47
[SPEAKER_05]: I haven't had time to settle that stuff up.
57:50
[SPEAKER_05]: A little bit busy.
57:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's beautiful and everyone should go look at your work because you're doing a very,
57:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking at it now and I see one that reminds me of the arch to Triumph.
58:04
[SPEAKER_02]: you know in France or something and there are others that have waterfalls going down through the arches which I mean the combination uh it's just and of course you have the beautiful foliage of Kentucky road of dindrons they're stunning well i'm just gonna say they're stunning they're they're really really beautiful so oh here's one horse head arch now that's
58:31
[SPEAKER_05]: So that one was originally named Angel Windows and in our Facebook group, the Kentucky Waterfall's Arches and Landscapes group.
58:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Somebody posted the picture of that and somebody said, oh, that looks like a horsehead.
58:46
[SPEAKER_05]: yeah and it took off and that is one of the most searched my most searched photographs that's its nickname what we have with you know and that's what everybody calls it so yeah it's a really unique arch that it looks like a horse head I had been there 20 times and hit never notice that it looked like a horse head still that fellow posted that photograph well
59:14
[SPEAKER_02]: very, very fun.
59:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you so much for sharing this with us, Bill.
59:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm fascinated and it's always fun to find out about things that people can do and I shouldn't say unexpected places because people know Kentucky's amazing.
59:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, well, but nobody, nobody knows it.
59:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Kentucky has how many orches it has or as many as well.
59:37
[SPEAKER_05]: And I know that the websites are a direct result to eco tourism in the state.
59:43
[SPEAKER_05]: And I've been told that by somebody that that was speaking with the tourism director of McCree County, McCree County said the websites are a direct result of, because it's one of the poorest counties of the state of how many people are coming
59:59
[SPEAKER_05]: and hiking and visiting.
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_05]: And that for people that like those long hikes, that's lower section of Kentucky's great for it.
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_05]: For the Big South fork, you've got eight, nine, ten mile hikes going on there.
1:00:13
[SPEAKER_05]: And then if you want to take the shelter we trace National Recreation Trail, that there's like stretches from Tennessee all the way up to I-64
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we should have talked about that too.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We burned up our time, though.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it, and it wasn't burned up.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I thoroughly enjoyed this video.
1:00:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I get it.
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but thank you so much for sharing this with us.
1:00:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And everyone you heard, boots, photos, the KY Landforms database, KY Waterfalls database.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_02]: That's how you can find out more.
1:00:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And until the next show, go find your mysteries out in the woods.
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Get out there and have some fun.
1:00:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.