glacial landforms

Two erratics from coastal Maine

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Happy Saturday! Here are two erratics (glacially transported boulders) that I saw last week in coastal Maine. This one shows prominent subparallel striations: And this one, in the town of Penobscot, next to the greasy spoon called Bagaduce Lunch, shows aligned feldspars that suggest magmatic flow: Nothing like a good erratic to get the weekend … Read more

Friday fold: Anticline in Glacier National Park

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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…

Friday fold: Argentinian turbidites

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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

Friday fold: Found folds

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This week, for Friday folds, I offer up some random folds that have passed my perceptual transom this week. First up: In the new Netflix series Our Planet, in episode 7 (Fresh Water), an anticline/syncline pair makes a brief appearance as David Attenborough discusses glaciers as a reservoir for fresh water. Here is a screenshot: … Read more

Basaltic strata, faulting, and glaciation in western Iceland

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Today, let’s journey to Iceland, to a bit northwest of Reykjavík. This is a view from the top of the Grábrók cinder cone, across the valley to the east. With very few exceptions, Iceland is a big pile of basalt, and that shows through in the walls of this valley, which display a stack of … Read more

U-turn

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Scotland was glaciated during the Pleistocene “Ice Ages:” The signatures of glaciation are manifold in a scene like this. Most prominent and easily recognizable is the broad, relatively flat-bottomed U-shaped valley. Now check this one out: That’s a U-turn in a U-shaped valley: the valley is first gouged to the right, then turning around and … Read more

Student guest post: the Belt Supergroup in Glacier National Park

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As longtime readers know, late summer is when my Rockies students submit their final projects – web-based explanations of key geologic sites they examined during the trip. Today, I offer you a guest blog post by student John Leaming. You’ll notice that I’m not *completely* absent from the post, however – I make a couple … Read more

Glacial striations and robust hackles in Jasper

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Check out the argillite boulder in the left midground of this GigaPan, which I’ve showed here before. It was taken at the Icefields Center parking area in Jasper National Park, Alberta: link There, you’ll find some lovely orange lichens, some iron oxide staining, some graffiti, and a fair number of sub-aligned glacial striations. Also, at … Read more

Friday fold: Warspite Anticline

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A final guest Friday fold from reader Howard Allen, who I’m pleased to be meeting up with in Banff late next week… Howard writes the following in describing this lovely scene: Warspite Anticline, Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, Alberta. Photo is a telephoto shot (hence the strong blue alpine haze–the colour cast is an accurate rendition … Read more

The trail to Crypt Lake

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Today, I’d like to share some images with you from Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada. This is the Crypt Lake hike, a popular (but grueling) hike in the park. It starts at the Waterton Marina, across Emerald Bay from the Prince of Wales Hotel. Mount Crandell and the Bear’s Hump are visible in … Read more