Mount Washington 5: glacial features & views

Busy days here in DC and northern Virginia… Blogging time has been limited. A few more shots from this past summer’s time at Mount Washington, to fill the void… Prius atop mountain: The Great Gulf: Hikers in relatively warm weather: Another look down the Great Gulf: Glacial cobble of diorite, exotic to the top of … Read more

Mount Washington 4: folded granite dikes

We now return to Mount Washington, New Hampshire, where our intrepid heroes summit the mountain in a mere three hours (from Pinkham Notch via the Lion Head): To refresh your memory of the story so far, we had seen metamorphosed turbidites, like this one (new image): …and checked out some gorgeous metamorphic porphyroblasts of “pseudoandalusite,” … Read more

Mount Washington 3: turbidites and their metamorphism

After my cousin Brad caught up with us after our Pinkham Notch roadcut excursion, we started up the trail at Tuckerman Ravine, and then detoured to go via the Lion Head. Immediately, we began to see some freaking awesome metamorphic porphyroblasts. During the Acadian Orogeny (in the late Devonian), the original muds and sands (deep … Read more

Accretionary Wedge #28: Deskcrops

In honor of this month’s Accretionary Wedge (geoblog carnival; this month the theme is “deskcrops”), I recorded the following short video, showcasing some samples I have in my office: stromatolite (western Montana), conglomerate (Patagonia), schist (New Hampshire), anorthosite (New York), amygdular meta-basalt (Virginia), amphibolite (California), hematite concretions (eastern Montana), and a stretched-pebble lineated meta-conglomerate (Turkey).

Another metamorphosed graded bed

Over the summer, when my blogging access was limited to my iPhone, I uploaded a photo (taken with the iPhone) of a metamorphosed graded bed on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire. Here’s another one that I saw, further down on the mountain, on the Auto Road (famous for its iconic bumper sticker): Lens … Read more

How to prep your pocket fold

“Pocket folds,” as my Rockies co-instructor Pete Berquist has defined them, are rock samples exhibiting folds that are small enough to stick in your pocket (and take back to your lab). Here’s a pocket fold that I found last week in the White Mountains of New Hampshire: I brought it home, and today I unpacked … Read more