Callan Bentley Looks like we’re sticking with the U.K. for Friday folds, for the time being… This lovely beast comes to us from Torcross, via Danny Stubbs, who shared it on Twitter this past week. That’s from the Meadfoot Group of slates, cross-cut by quartz veins. In this follow-up image, Danny shares that sometimes the quartz veins … Read more
For the Friday fold this week, we travel to Northumberland, U.K. for this beautiful fold pair: Robert McKibbin posted this image on Twitter this week, and graciously allowed me to feature it here. Thank you Robert! Happy Friday to all.
Working up some new images for my free, online Historical Geology textbook, I annotated a photograph I took in March of this alluvial fan in southern Death Valley. The development of desert varnish on older parts of the fan shows their age visually in a quick and easy way of determining fan deposit sequence: I’ve … Read more
A hilly region of Cornwall, U.K. features beautiful folding, and a fuzzy field assistant!
Busy weeks lately; apologies for the minimal bloggery, friends. For this week’s Friday fold, I offer you a view of some of the outdoor decorations at our new house: In the lower basket there is a cut and polished block of Castile Formation rock gypsum + limestone, showing varves that have been folded, apparently by … Read more
Callan reviews two well-written books about of enigmatic creatures of the deep: eels and lobsters.
I went on a day of field work last week to Corridor H, West Virginia, to help make drone-based photogrammetric 3D models of the huge outcrops there. One site we stopped at is this beautiful V-shaped syncline in Devonian-aged Helderberg Group limestones. Click to enlarge Here are two layers traced out: Here is a GigaPan … Read more
I spied an anticline last weekend while engaging in a day of solo geologizing along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. At Two Mile Run Overlook, I gazed west toward the southern tip of Massanutten Mountain, and noted what appeared to be an anticline in the Blue Ridge foothills: Annotated: And here it is in … Read more
Exploring his new digs in Charlottesville, Callan is introduced to a large exposure of phyllite at a dam’s spillway. The foliation there is folded in many ways. Share in a dozen field photos of the site…
The Friday fold is spied below, in the Montanan landscape near Dillon, from an airplane high above…
A few recent reads, reviewed: Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers The third science fiction novel in the Wayfarers series, this piece examines the culture of the Exodus Fleet, a group of big spaceships that contain most of the human population of Earth, running their own society with a principle idea being that … Read more
Reader Michael Hiteshaw spotted some amazing folds this week while watching Kayak Session TV on YouTube. Though there’s a dramatic arc of “saving” a deer, both Michael and I felt our eyes drawn to the canyon walls where there are gorgeous folds in several sizes and shapes, with an emphasis on chevron folds: The … Read more
My friend Alan Pitts is orchestrating a virtual field camp for George Mason University this summer, utilizing outcrops in central Italy’s Apennine Mountains. Here’s a 3D model he just posted of one of the most impressive outcrops there: the chevron folds in the Scaglia Rossa limestones at Lago di Fiastra. I featured the site as … Read more
Reader Christian Gronau writes with this Friday fold contribution: Greetings from Cortes Island, BC – at the opposite end of the Strait vis-a-vis Lopez Island. Your Mountain Beltway blog is always of interest, and I have been following it for several years by now. Thank you for putting the effort into this worthwhile website. Quite … Read more
The Friday fold shows some sheared quartz-filled tension gashes in sandstones of one of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound.
Some web research led to a serendipitous discovery and further exploration. Wherever you’re sheltering in place, you don’t have a view that’s this grand. Slip away for a few moments to the high country of Montana’s Glacier National Park, where an anticline may be seen in the towering cliffs…
Zoltán Sylvester brings us this Friday’s fold: And there’s more where that came from: These are deepwater strata of the Lower Cretaceous Rio Mayer Formation, exposed near Lago Argentino, Argentina, south of the lake’s northwest “arm,” about here. They were deformed so exquisitely during Andean mountain-building. Zoltán is a talented photographer, and you should check … Read more
Eric Fulmer (who pitched in with last week’s Friday fold) returns this week with another treasure. He writes, I was in Hopeville, WV a couple of years ago. The entire area between Cabins and Hopeville is a real joy (geologically and recreationally) as some of the most resistant rocks of the Mid-Atlantic Appalachians are folded … Read more
You might think that the last two months would have been a good time for reading, given the social isolation and stay-at-home orders. But that hasn’t worked out to be the case for me. The stresses of the pandemic, new and different work responsibilities, new homeschooling responsibilities, ongoing textbook writing and an impending move for … Read more
Reader Eric Fulmer has contributed a fold as a balm for the end of another week of COVID-19 self-quarantine. Check it out: Eric writes, I was in Hopeville, WV a couple of years ago. The entire area between Cabins and Hopeville is a real joy (geologically and recreationally) as some of the most resistant rocks … Read more