It’s all over!

Six weeks of blood, sweat, and tears have brought us to our final day.  Okay, maybe not too much blood and maybe not a lot of tears, but they were definitely there!  We have successfully completed field camp!  The final week was a long chaotic one.  It started with our final mapping project and ended with our final mapping and written exams.

We were given our final mapping partners and spent four days out in the field mapping contacts and interpreting structure.  It was our largest mapping area.  The first day was spent walking around mostly confused trying to get comfortable and familiar with the area, but the second day was business as usual.  It is amazing how all the information we have learned so far is coming together.  We are all mapping robots now.  I think we all felt pretty comfortable after the fourth day and took our maps back to begin our cross sections and our first geologic field report.  I enjoyed writing the report, since we could tie the depositional and tectonic history of the region with what we actually observed in the field.  It felt like all the puzzle pieces were falling in place at just the right time.

Yesterday was our final mapping exam.  We were given only 6 hours in the field to map and then 3 and a half hours in a classroom at Snow College to complete our cross section and lithologic descriptions.  It was the most stressful thing I have done in geology so far and I am glad it is over and behind me.

Today was our final written exam, and I am also glad it is over.  Now all we have to do is pack, clean, and celebrate!  The best way to describe field camp was from previous field campers: “It is the best time that you never want to have again.”  I wasn’t entirely sure I believed them when they told me that, but I can now say that is a pretty accurate way to describe this whole experience.  However, I will miss the beautiful landscapes that we have been so lucky to map, camp, and study in.

We also want to give a special thanks to all of the instructors and teaching assistants that have helped us learn and survive this six week field camp.  Thank you to Dr. Tom Darrah, Dr. Dan Kelly, Dr. Cristina Millan, Dr. Terry Wilson, Will Blocher, Connor Gallagher, Tricia Hall, and Erica Maletic.  We literally could not have done this without you!  And thank you to everyone that cheered us on from at home!  Your faith and support in us kept us all going!  And that concludes OSU 2016 Geology Field Camp!

 

Great Basin and North Cross-Section
This week we had our last field trip of camp to the Nevada-Utah border and the north cross-section. We headed to the west after a weekend of working on our mapping assignment. In this new geologic area we saw one of the best field examples of a Metamorphic Core Complex (MCC). The low angle fault was a part of a shear zone that exhibits brittle deformation on the hanging wall and ductile deformation on the footwall. One of the goals of the field trip was to analyze the principle stresses of the two different types. We used data collected in the field to concluded they were apart of the same extensional forces! Being able to confirm a hypothesis from my own observations made this my favorite assignment so far! We also hiked up to the largest parasitic fold I’ve seen near the detachment fault so of course we had to get a picture.
Our last night camping was an interesting one as we attended a star gazing lecture at the Great Basin National Park Visitors center where rangers gave us a new history on the night sky, and we got to look up in their telescopes! Ranger Justin, who is attending OSU SES in the fall, taught us a lot about the stars and then gave us a tour of Lehman Caves the next day! The caves, at a cool 55 degrees, were a change of pace from the constant desert heat. Seeing all the columns formed after millions of years of growth put it in perspective the one inch a century growth of the stalagmites and stalactites forming from water interacting with the carbonate bedrock.

After an informational trip, we headed off to start another cross-section. This was one of the more challenging assignments and definitely took the longest. We used three landscape pages of graph paper for this cross section! Traveling through the cross section to describe lithologies and identify contacts was something we were familiar with now in week five. It was really satisfying seeing all we have learned come together. This area was very complex but with each assignment we are getting more confident in our skills.

We are in the home stretch and it is bittersweet to almost be finished. Just a few more assignments before we can call ourselves real geologists!

It’s all downhill from here … or in our case all uphill! 

This week consisted of another field trip, another mapping exercise, and a climb to Mt. Nebo’s summit.  What a week it was!  Tuesday morning we had a lecture on petroleum geology and then hit the road for our field trip.  Our first stop was at Thistle to view the 1983 landslide.  The slide has a volume of about 28 million cubic yards and is on average 40 feet thick.  It was amazing to see and learn about these destructive hazards.  We went to Little Cottonwood Canyon where we were able to see the evidence of glaciation, isostatic rebound, Lake Bonneville, and the Wasatch Fault at the Gilbert Geological View Point and we even stopped to see a place where the Wasatch Fault was excavated.  We were able to put our hands on an active fault, which was pretty darn cool!  We camped that night in Little Cottonwood Canyon, which was beautiful.  The second day of our field trip we went up to Alta where we had some fantastic views and learned more about intrusive igneous rocks and contact metamorphism.  Overall the field trip was an amazing experience and we learned a lot.

On Thursday morning we said goodbye to the first half instructors and TAs.  It was Dr. Wilson’s last morning of field camp, and it was very sad to see her go.  She has been an incredible teacher and role model over my past year at OSU and she has made a huge impact on so many others throughout her amazing career.  We will miss her greatly and wish her nothing but the best!  We also began a new mapping exercise.  The first day at the new area was a little overwhelming, but we began to feel better the second day of mapping after we felt more comfortable with the structures we were observing.  I think we all got a lot better at time management since we finished our assignments before the 9:00pm deadline on Saturday night instead of rushing until the last minute.

Today a group of us went up to Mt. Nebo for a climb.  I almost didn’t go because I really wanted to catch up on sleep, but I am glad I went.  It was an unforgettable experience.  Climbing up to 11,929 feet in elevation was not easy!  I really enjoyed the challenge and was so happy when we finally got to the summit!  It is a moment I will never forget!  My body is sore already though and we now need to prepare ourselves for our final field trip tomorrow to Snake Range.  I can’t believe we only have 17 more days left of field camp!  We have all improved exponentially at field geology and are so close to the finish line, I can almost taste it!…oh wait, that’s just sweat.  It’s only uphill from here!

What’s that smell? Hydrocarbons!

This week was a crazy one! From mapping solo, core lab, a midterm, and south cross section there was hardly time to be stressed!

Our first solo mapping area, was an interesting one.  The challenge of the area was not in the elevation changes but in the structures observed. We also made our very first stratigraphic column. Learning to measure true thickness of a unit with a Jacob’s staff and our trusty Brunton’s gave new reinforcement to the ability to observe bedding thicknesses. After an office day of finishing our cross-sections and office maps, we got ready for a trip to Salt Lake City.

In Salt Lake, we were graciously shown around the core facility. What a grand tour we had! From observing ancient spider tracks, to seeing the preparation of fossils was awesome! The facility houses over half a million feet of core all donated by companies to be studied by geologists that come from all over the world. We studied core from a Wolverine well ( I know, I know, Michigan still sucks) showing the reservoir Navajo sandstone. This discovery of hydrocarbons was one of the largest in recent times. Looking at the very porous, permeable sandstone, you could see the oil inside. The aroma of hydrocarbons was not one you could ignore even after all these years. When first described, the building had to be evacuated and ventilated from the fumes. We were shown the lab where they prepare the excavated fossils. They use a tiny little drill and make very slow progress to ensure the safety of the bone. The whole process was really intriguing and made me realized I’m very interested in the paleontology field!

We finished the week with a cross-section. Students from University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh joined us on the mapping. Because it was over such an expansive distance, it was only a strip map which was different from what we have had been doing. The strip map maps just the contacts along the cross section line to be able to interpret the subsurface strata and the deformation. Well data from the very same core we described was provided to help us along.

On Sunday, there was a retirement party for Dr. Wilson to celebrate her career as a exceptional professor and mentor. Hot dogs and hamburgers on the Wasatch plateau for a wonderful party! The party let us have some fun before the first midterm ending the first half of field camp. It’s going by so quick that it doesn’t seem that it could be halfway over already.

Off to study the evidence of Lake Bonneville, the Wasatch Fault, and Little Cottonwood Canyon!

Mapping and igneous this week!

 

 

Week two of field camp is when things start to click and you start getting used to the daily routine.  We have been given a little taste of mapping on our own and had our first mapping assignment due.  This week we spent three days mapping a formation.  We divided the formation into several members based on lithologies and mapped the contacts of each member, as well as distinct marker beds within the formation.  We had to define each contact and write complete lithological descriptions of each individual member of the formation.  It was amazing being out in the field on our own with only a mapping partner.  We are starting to feel like geologists more and more every day.  We are getting more comfortable using all of the tools and skills we have learned, and are enjoying interpreting structure.  This exercise really helped us see the relationship between different attitudes of beds and topography.  I really think this will benefit us greatly, especially when we start to get into more complicated areas to map.

After the three days of being out in the field mapping, we spent an evening feverishly working to finish our assignments.  We had to complete our final map with contacts, attitudes, and map symbols in ink.  Writing in pen on our maps makes it more stressful because you know you can’t just erase it once it’s done.  We also had to complete cross sections that show the unit boundaries and our marker beds below the surface of the Earth.  On a separate sheet of paper, we had to complete an explanation that included complete descriptions of each member along with legends for our map and cross section.  It took a lot longer than I think a lot of us anticipated, but we all finished just in time.

The next day after turning in all of our assignments, we packed up and headed out on another three day field trip.  We really enjoy field trips, but this one in particular was more enjoyable.  We finally were able to study igneous rocks!  We went to the Marysvale volcanic district, Fillmore, and Ice Springs Volcanic field.  We studied the stratigraphy of the Marysvale region and saw how the tectonic environments changed over time.  We saw some calc-alkaline eruptions from when there was subduction going on and we saw some bimodal eruptions with basalt and rhyolite that occurred when extension was happening.  My favorite part of the field trip was identifying and interpreting the destructive lahars and pyroclastic flows.  It was amazing to see these events preserved in history.

Overall, field camp has been awesome so far.  We have the best teachers in the world and we are learning a lot each and every day.  We are continuously building and using the new knowledge we gain and it is so rewarding when things start to make sense.  I have a feeling that field camp is going to change a lot of things in our lives for the better.

 

Gneiss Times at Capitol Reef and Salina Canyon
Even though we didn’t see any gneiss, we had a nice time!After taking some time to adjust to life in Ephraim, it was time to start field camp for real. Over our two years in SES we had heard so much about field camp we couldn’t help but be nervous. We wasted no time and jumped right in.  We started out the week by mapping out a marker bed.  Learning new techniques to measure attitudes and bearings was really interesting. After gathering our data, we used a computer program to make a more widespread interpretation of the attitude of the marker bed.

 

We ended the week with our first field trip.  We mapped an unconformity at Salina Canyon on the way to Capital Reef National Park.  After seeing so many examples in classroom settings, the angular unconformity was cool to see in real geologic setting.

Next, we had the opportunity to explore Capitol Reef National park with Dr. Wilson as our tour guide showing us all of the beautiful structure that can be seen in the park.  So many beautiful, picture perfect cross bedding examples in the famous Navajo Sandstone that we previously saw in Arches!  The ability to correlate strata across the state was amazing to see! Learning about the different types of rocks that tend to be cliff or slope formers helped being to able to identify and observe an outcrop.

 

On the last day of our weekend trip, we hiked up a slot canyon and saw intricate examples of deformation banding found in the sandstone.  The deformation banding can give clues to the type of stress the Rock is under or if it contains an oil deposit.  We also learned from one of the guests on the field trip how this type of structure is used in the oil and gas industry.  For lunch, we drove up the Burr Trail Switchbacks for a beautiful view of all the different formations in the area. Every new thing we learn or new park becomes one of my favorites!

 

Now for an exciting week of mapping!

The Start of Field Camp Brandi Lenz & Taylor Hollis

We packed all our gear, said good bye to our homes, friends, and family and left Columbus, Ohio behind for the majority of our summer.  The first day was spent cramped into a van driving all the way to Hays, Kansas.  The drive was brutally long, but thankfully we are all good friends and had tons of laughs along the way.  We drove through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and more than half of Kansas.  We crossed the Mississippi River and drove for hours through flat farmland.  Getting to the motel late that night came at just the right time.  We were all tired and ready to crash.

The second day we drove all the way to Moab, Utah.  We drove through the rest of Kansas (which looks the same as the first half) and Colorado.  The Rockies were absolutely amazing!!  I have never enjoyed a long drive as much as I did that day.  When we got to our campsite in Moab and saw the beautiful land that we were going to be camping at, I nearly lost my breath.  There are no words to describe how the stars looked at night there.  I had the best sleep that night.  Every time I would wake up in the middle of the night, I would open my eyes to all the stars above me and just stare at them until I peacefully fell back asleep again.  I didn’t think the world could get anymore beautiful than that…until the next day.

The third day we spent the entire time at Arches National Park.  You know all those pictures you see of Arches online?  Well it is 10 times better in person!!  It was magical!  It almost didn’t feel real!  Our first stop was Delicate Arch.  The hike up was more difficult than I thought it would be.  It was probably because we were not used to the altitude changes yet…and the heat.  Delicate Arch was majestic!!  Our second stop was Double Arch where we were able to relax at and eat lunch.  The third stop was Devil’s Garden Trail where our groups split up.  My group did the difficult hike to Double O Arch.  There were moments where I was not sure I was going to make it.  The trail was not marked well and I was scared we would get lost, but we made it!!  It was an amazing hike.  The views were out of this world!  I loved every minute of it!  While we were there we learned how the arches formed.  Salt was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years go when it was under an ocean.  Over the next few millions of years sediments were deposited on top and form a thick compressed rock bed.  Since the salt was under a lot of pressure, it became unstable and began shifting and moving upwards as domes.  Faults then made the surface more unstable and caused vertical cracks in the rock beds.  Erosion and chemical weathering over time created the amazing structures that we see today.

The fourth day we spent some time in Moab just shopping and then drove to Dead Horse Point.  The views there were incredible!  Afterwards, we made our way to Ephraim, Utah where our new life truly will begin.  We unpacked and went grocery shopping.  So far everything has been going well.  We are so excited and anxious to officially start Field Camp tomorrow!  Wish us luck!

2016 Structural Geology Field Trip – Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, & W. Virginia
WE SURVIVED! .. and we had FUN! Our first field experience was to take place in the Blue Ridge Province in early April.  You would expect it to be perfect camping weather…WRONG!  Mother nature really wanted us to struggle during our first taste of field work, but we didn’t let it beat us!  We all brought tons of layers of clothes, warm sleeping bags, hand & toe warmers, and even packed our heavy duty winter gear.  Hats and gloves were our heroes of the trip.  Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to make accurate measurements or take notes.

The first day was spent driving to Kingsport, Tennessee.   It was a long, beautiful drive and allowed us time to connect and bond with our classmates.  We had lots of laughs, but in the back of our minds we were all dreading the cold.  Thankfully, the first night in Kingsport we got to sleep indoors.  We soaked up the warmth as much as we could!

The second day, we spent most of our time at a road-cut on the west shoulder of I-181 near Kingsport to examine folds and slaty cleavage of the Sevier Shale that was part of the Appalachian foreland fold-thrust belt.  I was a little nervous, because this was where we would be taking most of our measurements of cleavage and bedding planes with our Brunton compasses.  I wasn’t sure I would be able to use it correctly and I worried that my measurements would be inaccurate.  We were all so lucky to have the greatest teachers with us.  Dr. Terry Wilson and Dr. Cristina Milan were so patient with some of us who were a little slow at getting the hang of the compasses, like me.  They took the time to show us how to use them and were always available to help.  Towards the end of the day, I felt very comfortable with taking measurements; and a week later when we would do our next Structural Geology lab in class, I was very pleased that all our measurements were close to the class measurements.  I call that success!

When we got to our campsite that evening in North Carolina, we had to hurry and get all of our tents up before the storm hit.  We could hear the wind, feel the cold, and see the dark clouds rolling in.  I was the one in charge of bringing the tent for our group, so I grabbed my tent and we picked out a good spot for the night.  We took the tent out of the bag and quickly realized that there are no poles!  I left ALL of the tent poles at home!!!  My heart sank!  I couldn’t believe it!  I was going to make my group freeze to death tonight!  Thankfully, there was an extra tent that we used.  Looking back though, it was pretty funny.  That night was brutally cold.  The low was 26 degrees Fahrenheit with wind gusts and freezing rain all night long.  The wind was relentless.  I did not sleep more than an hour or two that night because the wind was so loud.  You could hear it coming down the mountain and it sounded like it was just going to blow us apart.  The wind did blow another group’s tent apart while they were sleeping, but luckily ours stayed up and dry even if it was covered in a layer of ice when we got up.

The third day felt the longest.  Maybe because it was definitely the coldest.  I think we could all agree though that Linnville Falls was our favorite stop, mainly because the sun was actually out and we felt a little bit of warmth in our bodies again after that brutal night.  The Linville Falls fault frames the Grandfather Mountain window and is the largest window in the Blue Ridge.  The thrust sheet was moved tens of kilometers and mylonites were present with distinct crenelation cleavage and mineral lineation.  It was amazing to see all the things we learned in class and actually be able to identify and understand the processes that took place.  We felt like geologists!  We stopped a few more times that day, but it just kept getting colder and colder.  It got to the point that I couldn’t even take notes anymore because my fingers were so frozen.  We saw a lot of cool structures though!  The most beautiful though was probably the “Tweetsie Outcrop” of the Blowing Rock Gneiss intruded by felsic and mafic dikes and full of quartz veins and ductile shear zones.  When we finally got to our campsite that evening in Virginia, our bodies were almost defeated.  We had been in the cold all day and the reality of not being able to escape it for another night was sinking in.  The low was 21 degrees Fahrenheit, but it felts colder.  A lot of us went to bed early and tried to force ourselves to sleep so we wouldn’t have to feel the sting of the cold anymore.  I was finally able to sleep more than an hour or two that night, since the wind was calmer.  We woke up to frost inside our tent.  That morning was brutal.  We all couldn’t wait to pack up and get inside the heated vans.

The fourth day was a happier day.  We knew we were going home to our nice warm beds and controlled temperature environments, so I was in better spirits.  We had a few more stops and took more measurements of cleavage and bedding planes at another location before making our way back to Columbus.  We all survived!  And everyone got along!  I feel like we all became great friends!  I think we are going to have a blast at field camp this summer in Utah!  I couldn’t have asked for a better group!  Our Structural Geology Field Trip rocked!

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