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aidangull — Ribbon of Water
Published: 2009-07-20 19:46:58 +0000 UTC; Views: 220; Favourites: 7; Downloads: 1
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Description
View of the upper part of the previous waterfall in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.Related content
Comments: 16
Love the colors in this photo. The rain really brings out the different shades of bedding in that sandstone. 
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This is only a hundred feet off the highway, so we weren't too worried. But it was a pretty big storm, so most canyons in this area had streams and waterfalls going.
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Oh nice. Yeah I've seen some videos of sudden downpours in the Southwest before, specifically of one in Moab where over the over the course of a few minutes there are literally dozens of waterfalls streaming off the cliff faces.
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That happens out there because there is little soil and vegetation to absorb the water, letting it flow over bare rock. It does make for dramatic views, though.
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Yeah, not to mention those monsoon storms can dump several inches of rain in a very short amount of time. The water has literally nowhere to go but downstream. And yeah it really does. I'd love to experience something like that from a safe vantage point one of these days. XD
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It is something to see. But these were taken during field camp, where the west had record rains, and it is something else to work in it for six straight weeks.
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Heheh, I know all about field camp in the rain. I think there were maybe three or four whole days during the entire camp duration where it didn't rain. We had a couple days where we didn't even go out because it was pouring and our gear was still soaked from the previous day. 
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We had similar lack of luck with weather. Torrential rains, a near miss with lightning, severe winds, occasional snow flurries, and one hail storm that caused the snow plows to be called out in the middle of June. But we still had to go out and work, regardless. But the few good weather days were likewise spectacular.
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Mother nature doesn't stop for field geologists. XDDD Eh, it builds character.
Where all did you guys go for your field camp? I'd imagine you guys did stuff in and around Death Valley and the Basin and Range areas. A lot of cool geology out those ways I know.
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Where didn't we go!?
Our main regions went like this: Southern Utah --> Eastern and Central Nevada --> South eastern Oregon --> Northern Sierras and Lake Tahoe --> Central Sierras, Mono Lake and Yosemite --> Coastal California --> Mount Lassen
It was an epic trip, but the weather followed us everywhere.
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Wow a little bit of everything. Nice man! 
Lessee, I only went to three different locations around Alaska. First stop was five days in Healy to look at fluvial sedimentary rocks with interbedded coal, then a rainy two weeks in Denali to map more sedimentary rocks cross cut by faulting, folding, and igneous intrusions, and finally an incredible three weeks in Limestone Gap (which is like 100 miles north of Anchorage) mapping heavily faulted and folded marine sandstones, mudstones, and limestones. What we lacked in location quantity we certainly made up for in geologic quality, so it all balanced out.
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Very impressive roster. At least you got to spend more than a few days at a time in one spot. The longest time we ever worked in an area was six days.
With us, the Utah/Nevada portions were mapping Paleozoic sed rocks (mostly marine but with some other types) and the overlying Cenozoic volcanics. Oregon was all focused on geomorphology, and that had a really steep learning curve. The portions in the Sierras were focused mostly on mapping intrusive and metamorphic rocks. And the coast was kind of our reward, where we just traveled and listened to lectures at each place, focusing on crustal deformation and transport caused by the active margin. Of course, we also had a handful of day trips and side projects that were focusing on local features as well.
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Yeah, it was really nice that we spent a good amount time in each location, especially Limestone Gap. For that segment of camp, the first fifteen days or so were dedicated solely to identifying and interpreting the rock units we'd be mapping, and we worked on unit descriptions and compiled thorough stratigraphic sections. We also did a few collective observation exercises to start getting an idea of the structural geology happening in the area (and there was a LOT of that XDD). The rest of the time was spent mapping in groups of four, with the final day being the traditional climb to the top of 7000ft Billy Mountain (which I nearly fell off of during a self-botched trundling attempt...XDD). Limestone Gap: fun, challenging, the highlight of my field camp experience. 
Awesome
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Sounds like a really epic place.
Yes, indeed we did. At a place called Pancake Summit we spent five very frustrating days, but got to see plenty of fossils. One hillside was covered in loose gravel, but the gravel was made up of crinoid stem pieces. At another spot in the area we found brachiopods weathering out of the rock. One particular piece we found (and unfortunately lost) was a single, almost perfectly preserved brachipod sticking out of a piece of rhyolite. One of the Tertiary flows that had covered the area had apparently picked up a loose fossil, and so it was when we found it.
We were going to spend some time trilobite hunting at a place called Notch Peak, after looking at the metamorphic aureol, but unfortunately yet another storm rolled in with lightning striking dangerously close.
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Oh it is, it is.
Aha very cool. Shame you lost the hitchhiker. He'd have made a sweet display piece.
Yikes man. Sucks you guys didn't get to go hunting but better to be safe than struck by a rogue bolt. Thankfully the only thunderstorms we had happened during our rest/report writing days in Fairbanks.
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I look forward to seeing them.
Yeah, but it would have been nice to bring back some cool souvenirs.
As it stands, we bet the field camp for the year following ours might have come across a lot of the gear we dropped at the brachiopod area, since we lost two hammers, a couple lenses, a clipboard and a jacket. We ended up with a net loss by the end of it.
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