Gerudo Desert

[Hylian Knight]

In TP I've noticed that the Gerudo Desert is completely separated from the rest of Hyrule. I'm curious to how do you think this happened.

I always thought some natural disaster like an earthquake or landslide caused Gerudo Valley to cave-in.

 

[Din Akera]

I have had this theory before as well. I think an earthquake may be responsible, but it may be more likely that the river to Lake Hylia simply continued to carve its way through the rock and became too deep and too wide to cross on foot or by a bridge or on foot. TP takes place more than 100 years after OoT. In OoT Gerudo valley's river had already made a huge gap and the bridge had already failed at least once. Rivers continuously eat away at the earth around them, causing it to crumble, widen, change shape, and even change direction. This can be seen easily with any major mountainous river, from Canada: The Athabasca and bow rivers are the two that stand out in my mind. It is very likely/possible that the river broke away large pieces of earth and rock and the bridge was destroyed, but the river continues to supplement the lake environment and starve the desert. In turn this created TP's map that we see today.

 

[Hylian Knight]

Learned something new just now, Thanks.

 

[JuicieJ]

I think they did that to make sure you couldn't go there early. Kinda like how you couldn't get in the Gerudo Valley as a kid by going across the bridge. (Really, you can't get into the Valley as a kid, anyway. It'd be extremely difficult to, as you'd have to travel that path to the temple backwards by yourself.)

 

[pupairo12]

I would believe that the Hylians set off some sort of explosives to block the path between the Gerudo and Hyrule after Ganondorf's plan was exposed. This would effectively cause the Gerudo Race to die out, as there would be no one to have children with. While this was going on, the Hylians were desecrating the Spirit Temple and turning it into the Arbiter's Grounds. Also,I agree with JuicieJ, it's probably also a way to keep you from getting there too early. I just wish once you got in the desert you could get back to Hyrule Proper without using a portal.

 

[Seth]

That would be a heck of an explosive to do that not sure the technology exists there. tbh I never even thought about it, I suppose it could have been an earthquake. But remember in OoT you had to cross that bridge over the canyon to get to Gerudo desert and fortress, maybe it is just a reference to that canyon? Perhaps it got even bigger over time because of earthquakes idk.

 

[KaeporaGaebora]

Think back to OoT. You saw a river that connected Gerudo Valley and Lake Hylia. It is possible that the river eroded all the rock abd made it to dangerous to go by foot or make a bridge. And they didn't want in the Gerudo Mesa to early. Kinda like OoT.