Foreword 6 THE STORY BEGINS 8 First questions, brief answers 9 An extraordinary story 10 An astronaut’s view 12 A pilot’s view 14 A motorist’s view 15 View north 15 View west 18 View south 19 A mountaineer’s view 20 CARVING THE RUGGED PEAKS 24 Steep mountain slopes—the perpetual battleground 24 Rock disintegration and gravitational movement 24 Running water cuts and carries 26 Glaciers scour and transport 28 Effects on Jackson Hole 30 MOUNTAIN UPLIFT 36 Kinds of mountains 36 Anatomy of faults 38 Time and rate of uplift 40 Why are mountains here? 41 The restless land 43 ENORMOUS TIME AND DYNAMIC EARTH 45 Framework of time 45 Rocks and relative age 45 Fossils and geologic time 46 Radioactive clocks 47 The yardstick of geologic time 48 PRECAMBRIAN ROCKS—THE CORE OF THE TETONS 51 Ancient gneisses and schists 51 Granite and pegmatite 55 Black dikes 58 Quartzite 63 A backward glance 64 The close of the Precambrian—end of the beginning 64 THE PALEOZOIC ERA—TIME OF LONG-VANISHED SEAS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE 66 The Paleozoic sequence 66 Alaska Basin—site of an outstanding rock and fossil record 66 Advance and retreat of Cambrian seas; an example 69 Younger Paleozoic formations 74 THE MESOZOIC—ERA OF TRANSITION 79