Friday fold: Raplee Monocline
It’s Friday! Let’s head to Utah for a guest Friday fold photo – a river rat’s view of the Raplee Monocline!!
rivers
Basaltic strata, faulting, and glaciation in western Iceland
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
Scenes from a cut bank
My family and I went canoeing this weekend, and one of the more photogenic things we saw on the river was this fine cut bank: The bank is being actively undercut by the river, as evidenced by the overhanging soil + grass carpet, the slump scarps at the bottom (showing fresh, wet soil), and the … Read more
Sand shadow
A couple of weeks ago, before a series of snowfalsl altered my daily work routine in a destabilizing way, I took a walk through the braided floodplain / gravel fan of Passage Creek, where it exits the Massanutten Mountain system near the state fish hatchery. There, no longer restrained by the steep walls of quartzite, … Read more
New LiDAR of the Fort Valley & surrounding area
New LiDAR imagery for the Fort Valley reveals bedrock structures and subtle aspects of fluvial geomorphology.
New GigaPans from Team M.A.G.I.C.
Hampshire Formation outcrops on Corridor H, West Virginia: link (Marissa Dudek) link (Callan Bentley) Faults in the Tonoloway Formation, Corridor H, West Virginia: link (Marissa Dudek) Conococheague Formation, showing stromatolites and cross-bedding: link (Callan Bentley) link (Jeffrey Rollins) Tiny folds and faults, from a sample I collected somewhere, sometime… oh well, it’s cool regardless: link … Read more
Fluvial geomorphology of Mather Gorge
What hath the Potomac River wrought on the rocks of Mather Gorge? Some interesting shapes to the land surface reveal a fascinating history.
Natural Bridge, Yoho National Park: Bedding/cleavage relationships
Check out the scene at Natural Bridge in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada: Don’t confuse this “Natural Bridge” with the one in Virginia. Here, in the western Canadian Rockies, the structural geology is much better. You may recall that I’ve previously featured outcrops from nearby this site as a Friday fold. It’s a great … Read more
Massanutten trip double-feature
As soon as I got back from GSA, I had to run two field trips, back to back. Both are the same trip: my Historical Geology field trip to the Massanutten Synclinorium. Here’s yesterday’s crew perched on a moderately-dipping slab of Massanutten Sandstone along Passage Creek: Today, it’s the same routine all over again, though … Read more
Natural Bridge, Virginia
Our three-day karst theme wraps up today with a visit to Natural Bridge, Virginia, an impressive sight: I went to Natural Bridge early last week to give a talk to a group of Road Scholars (an Elderhostel-like program) about the Snowball Earth. Part of my compensation for the talk was a night’s lodging at the … Read more
Five new GigaPans from Thoroughfare Gap
Yesterday, I took five new GigaPans at Thoroughfare Gap, a water gap where Broad Run cuts through Bull Run Mountain, the eastern limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium at my latitude. The rocks here are the Cambrian-aged Chilhowee Group, with bedding tilted moderately to the east during Alleghanian mountain-building in the late Paleozoic. To the … Read more
After the flood
After Passage Creek receded following last week’s flood, I went down to the bridge and the floodplain to have a look around. Here’s a little bit of what I saw… Let’s start at the bridge itself. The view is to the west, and Passage Creek flows north: On the other side of the bridge, looking … Read more
Passage Creek in flood
After a night of torrential rain, Callan wakes to find his sole (vehicular) route to the outside world under several feet of flood water.
Cross-bedding in Owens River sediments
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
Friday fold: Boomer Falls
The Friday fold is seen at one of the stops on Callan’s pre-GSA-Charlotte field trip: a small waterfall in North Carolina’s Inner Piedmont.
Passage Creek the morning after Sandy
The storm treated us well last night. We got some rain and some consistently moderate wind, but nothing insane. When I got up this morning, I checked the stream gauge online, and saw that Passage Creek was up significantly, and perhaps over the little low-water bridge that connects our house to the outside world. So … Read more
Colorful confluence
NASA’s Earth Observatory posted a colorful confluence image last Thursday, and it reminded me that I have a similar site of my own to share. This is on the Icefields Parkway, north of the Athabasca Glacier and Snow Dome, a hydrological drainage triple point. Here, we’re a short distance into the Arctic Ocean drainage. (West … Read more
New GigaPans: Red hole, Blue hole
Last Thursday, I shot a few GigaPans of moderately-dipping quartz sandstone layers (the Silurian-aged Massanutten Formation) in the creek a few miles from my house. All four GigaPans are at popular local swimming holes. The first three are from Red Hole, and the last one is from Blue Hole. Check them out: link link link … Read more
Paw Paw Tunnel GigaPans
A weekend expedition to GigaPan the C&O Canal’s singular Paw Paw Tunnel results in an exposition on Devonian sedimentation, Alleghanian mountain-building, structural geology, and the incision of the Potomac River to produce entrenched meanders.