Friday fold: recumbent fold at Two Medicine Lake, Montana

Here’s a photo from Tom Biggs (University of Virginia), taken on the NOVA Rockies field course last summer. It shows a recumbent fold along the Front Range of Glacier National Park, in Montana, just north of Two Medicine Lake. I hope you get some ‘recumbent’ time this weekend… I know I could use some rest. … Read more

Friday fold: Kink band in Lodgepole Limestone, Sacagawea Peak, Bridger Range, Montana

As I’ve mentioned previously, I spent some time making GigaPans this summer out west. Here’s Lily and me on the crest of the Bridger Range, enjoying the clear skies and great geology: When this portrait was taken (by our friend Lindsay), I was shooting this GigaPan: link Try exploring it to see if you can … Read more

Guest post: The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff in the greater Yellowstone area

This is the third of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Matthew Mann University of Virginia The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff is a 2.1 Ma tuff deposit that is centrally located in Yellowstone … Read more

Guest Post: Glaciation in Glacier National Park

This is the first of several guest posts that will appear here this week, all written by students who participated in this past summer’s Regional Field Geology of the Northern Rocky Mountains course. by Madeleine Rushing Northern Virginia Community College Sedimentary deposition typically is seen as horizontal strata, layered one on top of the other … Read more

Friday fold: Sandy Hollow, Montana

Today, a view to the southwest, from close to the hinge of the main anticline in the Sandy Hollow area, a classic geological field mapping locality in southern Montana: Triassic-aged Dinwoody Formation dominates the main part of the scene. Note how the strike and dip of the positively-weathering strata wrap around. Our Rockies students mapped … Read more

Rockies 5 concludes

My Rockies field course has wrapped up for another year – the fifth year in a row I’ve run this intermediate-level ‘regional field geology’ course in collaboration with Pete Berquist of Thomas Nelson Community College. We were fortunate to be joined by two other professional geologists this year: Chris Khourey of NOVA and Tom Biggs … Read more

Headin’ west

Well, it’s that time of the year again. Tomorrow morning, I pack up the car and head west. I’m giving myself five days to drive out to Bozeman, Montana, with three stops along the way to see people I like and talk about interesting stuff. Next week, my family flies out to join me. It’ll … Read more

More xenoliths from the Boulder Batholith

The week before last, I showed you the Boulder Batholith, as it crops out southeast of Butte, Montana. Today, I’ll share a few more photos of xenoliths (or perhaps microgranular mafic enclaves?) from that same outcrop: Man, I miss that old Swiss Army knife. The damned security actors at Calgary Airport confiscated it last summer. … Read more

First day of class

Today is the first day of class for the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College. For the first time in seven years, however, I won’t be in the classroom. For the 2012-13 academic year, I’ll be on sabbatical. Sabbatical is a magic word in my mind. It’s a brilliant idea to allow motivated professors … Read more

Friday fold: scenes from the trail to Bertha Lake

Given that I’m leaving tomorrow for the Canadian Rockies, I’ve been inspired to look through some of my photos from last summer, and to realize how few of them I’ve blogged so far. So let me show you some folded things today that Lily and I saw the afternoon we arrived at Waterton Lakes National … Read more

Floe Lake hike

Last summer, my wife and I spent some time in the Canadian Rockies. One of the things we did was to take a three-day backpacking trip to Floe Lake, in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia. We picked a rough couple of days for hiking – We got a lot of Canadian Rockies precipitation out there: … Read more

Plane views: Powder River Basin and Black Hills

Happy fourth of July! Here’s two scenes that are emblematic of America, as seen from my airplane window last March flying from Reno to Minneapolis. Here’s the scene in the central Powder River Basin of eastern Wyoming: If you zoom in, you’ll see what caught my eye – regular rectangular excavations into the surface. These … Read more

Plane views: Wyoming

I wanted to pick up where I left off months ago with some airplane photos as I was flying back from my California field class (over spring break). All views are to the north (out the left side of the airplane as we flew from Reno to Minneapolis). We crossed from northern Nevada into Wyoming, … Read more