Immediately following the Yangbi expedition, Will
traveled north to the Gongga Shan (Minya Konka) area southwest of Chengdu,
Sichuan, with Ben Foster, the other oarsman on the Yangbi expedition. At 7,590
m, Gongga Shan is the highest mountain outside of the Himalaya proper. With Will
as translator, they managed to reach the base camp at 5,500 m on the south side
of the peak (Figure 12), then continued around to the west and north sides
before returning home three weeks later.
Will’s description of this epic journey provides an enlightening insight into Will’s attitude toward life. On this trek, they encountered bamboo forests (home to the giant panda bear) at elevations near 2,500 m. Will had often used plant fossil assemblages as an indicator of elevation in his research on the timing and effect of the rise of the Himalayas during the Cenozoic and was disturbed to find bamboo at such high elevations because he believed that bamboo fossils in other areas indicated a much milder climate at this latitude.
Tapponnier et al. (2001) and other researchers still believe that extremely large brittle displacements and block rotations of Tibetan and southeast Asian crust have occurred as a result of India’s penetration into Asia. However, recent GPS measurements of surface motions over distances of about 100 km in western China suggest highly distributed crustal motions that are not compatible with rotations of rigid blocks bounded by large strike-slip faults (Zhang et al. 2004). Research over the past decade or so shows that crustal motion appears to be distributed over the entire region and not concentrated in major fault zones. The controversy continues.
Based on the safe completion of the 1994 Yangbi
expedition, I’ve run a geological reconnaissance river expedition in China
nearly every year since. Unfortunately, all of them conflicted with Will’s
commitments to field paleontology expeditions. Of course, those with whom he
worked benefited from this perennial conflict. We really missed him on the 1995
and 1996 expeditions on the stretch of the Mekong that we had originally planned
to run in 1989. The geology was dramatic, and there were abundant Grand Canyon
size rapids. Will was amazed by the video footage of rafts flipping in the huge
waves in Dragon’s Teeth Rapid, formed by a landslide caused by two large
earthquakes that occurred within 10 minutes of each other in 1988. We also ran
expeditions on the Mekong in southwest China (1997, south of the Man Wan Dam),
the Mekong in Qinghai (1999, its source area), the Salween in eastern Tibet
(2000), the Tsangpo in western Tibet (2002), and the Mekong in Tibet (2004). On
this last expedition, we had to hike out after 137 km, because it was not safe
for rafts. My son Travis and I spread some of Will’s ashes at Tibetan
Terminator, the rapid that forced us to abandon our effort on that part of the
river.
Each
year, Will would send me Chinese geological maps for the river segment we
planned to run, plus an English translation of the map key. After the
expedition, he would review my reports before I sent them to our host agency,
the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Will’s support was invaluable – I’m not sure we would have been
successful without it.
I’ve made a DVD on the history of exploration of
the rivers of western China based on these and other expeditions (available on
request). In addition to documenting the whitewater challenges, it summarizes
the geology and geography, and addresses the Chinese domination of Tibetan
culture and the rapid pace of dam building on rivers draining the Himalayas and
the Tibetan Plateau. There’s a high density of young, active faults and a large
earthquake about every 10 years in western Yunnan alone (Figure 13), probably
related to India’s continued northward push into Asia. Building dams in this
area creates hazards that only a culture desperate for energy would accept. Over
the years of our relationship, I valued Will’s opinions about these complicated
issues and they are reflected in this DVD.
In 2002, Will asked me to help him plan an
expedition on the Yellow River in Qinghai with Josep Pares at the University of
Michigan. In Qinghai, the Yellow River flows southeast into the Zoige Basin,
then makes a huge U- turn to the northwest and crosses the Anyemaqen Mountains
before entering the Guide Basin and resuming its eastward trend. Large sections
of young sediments in the Guide Basin suggest that this change in drainage
pattern is late Cenozoic, perhaps even Quaternary. Will, Josep, and I hoped to
examine these sediments from the river (Figure 14,
Figure 15).
Will died before we could conduct the expedition. Maybe someday Josep and I will complete the expedition in Will’s memory (Figure 16). I’m sure he would appreciate it.
