A Peculiar Horseshoe

The autumn of the Great Yarlung Zangbo Canyon

Airscape of the Great Bend (by Che Fu)

　　A canyon with a great bend is its most ocular and most striking image - the great canyon has a strange horseshoe-like bend along Mount Namjagbarwa in the east end of the Himalayas. The miraculous combination of a high mountain peak with the deepest canyon constitutes a miraculous sight seldom seen in the history of river valley development. As a matter of fact, the great bend canyon is formed with numerous small canyons overlapping with one another. The deep V-shaped 
    

the vertical bend near Bangxin

The Great Yarlung Zangbo Canyon under the blue sky and white clouds (taken by Wang Wei)

canyons interlink one after another and this reflects that the upraising of the crust is violent and surging. The river in the valley cuts downwards intermittently; thus produced the overlapping folds of the V-shaped valley. As a result, we find the reminder of the planation surface in the section of the river valley, terrace in-between valleys, benches, proluvial fan etc, all these make the slope surface have gentle layers of turns. The river valley cuts into the base rock and forms the embedded meander and the intersection of mountain mouths.