rockies

Friday fold: near Mistaya Lodge in the Canadian Rockies

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Quick, awesome Friday fold here from the Canadian Rockies and Maggie Romuld: Maggie also posted another intriguing image of her hiking in the Canadian Rockies – and set geoTwitter abuzz with a discussion of whether she had captured load casts bulging out of the bottom side of a bed or stromatolites projecting upward from the … Read more

Friday fold: Crumpled Dinwoody Formation, Sheep Mountain, Wyoming

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Today for your folding pleasure, I give you two field GigaPans shot by Jeffrey Rollins, a two-time Rockies field course alumnus and Old Dominion University student working under my colleague Declan De Paor, assisted by NOVA student Bridget Gomez, during last summer’s extended GigaPan expedition at the Sheep Mountain Anticline, Wyoming. This particular outcrop was … Read more

The Revenant, by Michael Punke

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On the recommendation of my friend Troy Holland, I just finished reading Michael Punke’s novel about Hugh Glass. The book has been optioned as a film, and because it stars Leonardo diCaprio, it will doubtless be a hit. What got Troy’s attention, though, is the director: Alejandro González Iñárritu, the guy who gave us Babel, … Read more

Rockies student projects, 2015

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Another year, another batch of student projects from my Rockies field course, each intended to elucidate some aspect of the geology of the Montana / Wyoming Rocky Mountains for the general public: Geology of Grand Teton National Park (Marcell) Tilted glaciolacustrine beds near Glacier National Park (James) Blog on various aspects of the field course’s … 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

Friday fold: Yin-Yang at Swift Dam

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What is Matt looking at here? Matt was one of my Rockies students this summer, a geology major at the University of Virginia. Together with another UVA student and students from Mary Washington University and George Mason University, Matt embarked on a mountain-climbing hike during our evening camping at Swift Dam, near Depuyer, Montana. The … Read more

Friday folds: Fox’s and Foch’s

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A final Friday fold (for now) from Howard Allen: This is : A view south across Kananaskis Lakes, Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, Alberta, through mist/low-hanging clouds. Snow highlights the Sarrail Creek Syncline and Warspite Anticline on the north faces of mounts Fox (left/east) and Foch (right/west). Rocks are Lower Carboniferous carbonates of the Banff, Livingstone … Read more

Ichnofossils in Gog quartzite

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At the Spiral Tunnels overlook on the Trans-Canada Highway, you can look at trains. Or, you can check out some lovely trace fossils in boulders which divide the viewing area from the highway: These are in the Gog Formation, a Cambrian-aged quartz arenite, mostly fused to quartzite nowadays… I know which subject I would choose … Read more

Friday fold: Ouray Limestone, Colorado

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Kim Hannula shares a fold today: Kim says: The rocks folded here mostly the Devonian Ouray Limestone. There’s a fault through the outcrop, and another fault to the left of the photo. Regionally, the faults are mapped as normal faults, mostly with the east (right in photo) side down. Locally, that’s not what I see … Read more

Bedding / cleavage relations in the Stephen Formation, Yoho NP

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Good afternoon! Here are a few photos, both plain and annotated, showing the relationship between primary sedimentary bedding and tectonic cleavage in the “tectonised Stephen” Formation atop the Cathedral Escarpment (in Yoho National Park), just northeast of the Walcott Quarry where the (thicker, basinward) Stephen Formation hosts the Burgess Shale. Weathering exploits both these planes … 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

Exploring Wind River Canyon’s Great Unconformity in outcrop and hand sample (via GigaPan)

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Over the summer, I shot these two GigaPans of the “Great Unconformity” in Wind River Canyon (Owl Creek Mountains), Wyoming: link link This week, Team M.A.G.I.C. (by which I mean my student Robin Rohrback-Schiavone) finished up a series of three macro GigaPans of rock samples from the site (made with our one-of-nine-in-the-world GIGAmacro rig by … Read more

Friday fold: below the Dorado Thrust

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Here’s a scene from last summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rockies course… students examining and sketching some tight folds in Cretaceous strata of the Western Interior Seaway, crumpled beneath the Dorado Thrust (a more southerly equivalent of the infamous Lewis Thrust to the north)… I’ve featured this site before, in a previous Friday … Read more