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
So, those sediments we saw yesterday? They’re faulted in the area around the Crucifix Site. As this image shows, the style of faulting is normal faulting: Annotated with some color to jazz things up a bit: In normal faults, the upper block moves downward with respect to the lower block. They are typical of extensional … Read more
On the September 2009 GSA field forum in the Owens Valley, the final stop of our first day was to check out the so-called “Crucifix Site,” along Chalk Bluff Road (north of Bishop, California, at the southern margin of the Volcanic Tableland). It’s called the “Crucifix Site” because there is a metal cross erected there: … Read more
Last September, at the location of the faulted moraine (eastern Sierra Nevada, California), I took some photos of some of the sexier plutonic contacts exposed in big boulders (erratics) of the glacial till composing the moraine. Check them out. What do you see here?
On last May’s GSW spring field trip to Chain Bridge Flats, I saw a quartz vein: Surely, upon looking at this photograph, you will be struck by the way the vein is not the same thickness along its length, and parts of it appear to be a white line transitioning into a parallelogram, and back … Read more
Continuing with some photos from eastern California… After checking out the faulted moraine, but before heading up the hill to check out the indurated shear zone (which you can just see in the background of this photo), we stopped to check out this visually-striking outcrop: Look at the glee on the faces of Kurt (green … Read more
Small-scale debris flows as a muddy slurry flowed over weathered-out chunks of the Bishop Tuff. Probably about two days old. Southern edge of the Volcanic Tableland, last September.
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
Back at NOVA Geoblog, I spent a portion of September and October 2009 reviewing the geological wonders I witnessed as part of a GSA field forum in the Owens Valley of California. However, I got distracted by other things, and never finished the series. I’d like to pick up on that today, looking at a … Read more