You’ll recall that I detailed a trip to Sugarloaf on this blog back in March of last year. Well, on Saturday (March of this year), Lily and I returned to this distinctive knob of quartzite for a five-mile hike. Along the way, we saw plenty of metamorphosed quartz sandstone (now quartzite), which was similar to … Read more
I first mentioned the Waterfall Formation on this blog in May of 2008, but this was my first time visiting it in situ. Previously, including the May 2008 visit, was memorable time with charismatic boulders of float. The occasion to see this geologic unit in outcrop was the field trip 6 days ago with the … Read more
Callan joins some students from George Mason University on a field trip to the rock exposures at Thoroughfare Gap, Virginia, where meta-sedimentary rocks are exposed in the eastern Blue Ridge province.
Here’s your Friday fold, straight from the canyon of the Jefferson River, near Cardwell, Montana. Perspective is to the south. East is on the left; west is on the right. Bigger version This is right next to the outcrops of LaHood Conglomerate that I mentioned earlier this week. My Rockies course co-instructor Pete Berquist and … Read more
Remember the LaHood Conglomerate? Here’s a few field photos of my Rockies class visiting it last July: Amphibolite clast: Marble clast: I love how well-rounded these clasts can be — like eggs. When these grains were loose cobbles, tumbling down into the Belt Sea, the Earth was only 3 to 3.5 billion years old. The … Read more
A year and a half ago, on my way back to Modesto from Yosemite, I pulled over at the side of the road and found a piece of urbanite full of whoppers. But that curiosity wasn’t what caught my eye and made me pull over in the first place. Instead, what I noticed was this: … Read more
Originally posted in September 2010 as part of this missive on the Champlain Thrust Fault. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Here’s an amazing sight that caught me unawares in Capadoccia — some paving stones outside a small “museum” (preserved Byzantine hoodoo church) that were chock full of some AMAZING trace fossils. Sense of scale is provided by a Turkish 1-lira coin, about the same size as a U.S. quarter. Check out the variety, size, and … Read more
On our second day in Capadoccia, Lily and I went for a walk through one of the valleys that are eroded into the landscape there. Bas-relief hoodoos emerging from the wall of the canyon: We came to one area with classic turret-like hoodoos: Note the gravel layers in that column’s section, and the human at … Read more
Here’s three shots of the Konnarock Formation diamictite, taken with my Nikon microscope. Field of view is about 1 cm in each shot.