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
While out in Death Valley with my Field Studies students last March, we encountered an extraordinary fold in Mosaic Canyon. Check this thing out: The rock is the Noonday Dolostone (“Noonday Dolomite” in mineralogically biased argot). It may be hard to make out what’s what there… So let me assist with a little annotation, tracing … Read more
Some of the dynamics of small-scale mass wasting in granular materials are captured in this animated GIF from sand dunes in Death Valley.
Today, we take a look at an outcrop of young, basically unlithified sediments east of Bishop, California, on the way out Poleta Road, toward the White Mountain Research Station’s Owens Valley Lab, where you can get a nice view of the Coyote Warp Relay Ramp. These photos were taken just west of the bridge over … Read more
All seen last March in Death Valley, at Mesquite Dunes…. within ten minutes of one another.
Callan’s field studies class journeys to Searles Lake, California, a playa rich in evaporite minerals both prosaic and exotic.
I know we spent time last Friday on some nice folds in the Poleta (?) Formation in the White Mountains of California, but here are a few more that I saw on my way up to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest… Some elliptical objects caught my eye: Traced out along the plane of bedding, these … Read more
I’ve been showing a lot of photos lately from my field course’s trip up into the White Mountains. While we were driving up the road from Westgard Pass to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, we saw something interesting going on in the southern Owens Valley. Take a look at this view to the southwest, from … Read more
After a roadside explanation just an hour and a half earlier on how the relationship between bedding and cleavage can reveal whether bedding is likely right-side-up or up-side-down, my students and I were walking up the road to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of California, and I saw this outcrop that … Read more
Callan and his field studies students encounter a lesson in the White Mountains of eastern California that combines bedding, cleavage, folding, and even fossil archaeocyathids!
A few shots from a week ago today, when my students and I were exploring the White Mountains of eastern California, just west of the Deep Springs Basin…
Some views from the airplane, over southern Wyoming (first two photos) and north-central Nevada (last four), last Saturday morning… A canyon: …and zooming in to the middle area of the previous photo: Strata upwarped into a structural dome (that has been “planed off” to be topographically horizontal, revealing a bull’s-eye-shaped outcrop pattern, then differentially weathered … Read more
… a brief glimpse of summer in the Rockies: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbRx7W1nYUk”] Footage shot south of Blacktail Butte, in Jackson Hole, looking west towards the Teton Range, in Wyoming. July 2011. Gros Ventre River terrace in the mid-ground.
Visit the “faultcano” in the Owens Valley of eastern California: a cinder cone which has been cut and offset along a normal fault associated with Basin & Range extension.
The other day, Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous posted some pictures (and video!) of the Teton Range in Wyoming, a normal fault-bounded block of rock that has rotated along a north-south axis, with the west side dropping down and the east side rising up relative to the floor of Jackson Hole. This is classic “Basin … Read more
A quick post to share a few images of an outcrop I visited last September out in California’s Owens Valley. This is a spot where alluvial fans coming off the eastern Sierra Nevada were overrun by a basaltic lava flow (Jeff, Kim, Fred, and Kurt for scale): The unofficial term for these conglomerates deposited by … Read more
Continuing with the recounting of geological sights in the Owens Valley, California, area… This one is in the Pine Creek area. Take a look at this photo: No, that’s not just a portrait of Jeff Lee and his awesome handlebar mustache. Look behind Jeff, on the hillside above. See the little step down that the … Read more