Pre-yellowstone catchup

Hey everyone! My life has been basically unchanged. There is really not much free time out here, just enough time to complete your look at things in the field and to get assignments done.

Well, I guess thats not true. I went white water rafting last weekend. It was quite the adventure. The river has been super high, and we went down a section that normally takes two and a half hours in one. Got entirely soaked.

Everyone but me got demolished here

Afterwards we went to a Mexican restaurant that had by far the best salsa that I have ever had. The only thing that could have made it better was maybe a little kick (It had absolutely NO spicyness). That was pretty much the end of the day. It takes several hours to do anything in this state so there are very limited bursts of activity.

This week we have actually yet to be rained out (Might change tomorrow) . We completed the beaver creek project for the first to days:

Beaver creek!

And did sheep mountain today now that the road is dry enough to travel. We got stuck trying to get there before. Here’s us trying to push a van out of some mud!

This was a failed attempt

After this we have one more day in the field then we go to yellowstone. I cant wait! The homework stops and the enjoyment starts in yellowstone. I should be able to update more once were out there, depending upon the internet access. Looking back it has been a fun four weeks, definitely one of the best spent summers I’ve ever had. But its been hard, and I’m getting antsy to be back in Ames. But till then I’ll just have to enjoy it!

The frontier formation can die in a fire.

Howdy there everyone off in internet land! Today we were supposed to travel to sheep mountain, but much to all of our displeasure it looks like it is supposed to be raining all day. Not only does this mean that we wouldn’t want to hike, we could not even drive there due to how out of the way it is. So we get a lecture in the morning, and then nobody knows what after that.

An now for why the frontier can die in a fire. We just finished a three day project yesterday on the frontier formation. We spent two full days in the field mapping, in GREAT detail, two outcrops of the frontier. We then had to correlate these wonderful notes we have taken now to the relative raw sewage of notes that we took on the first two days and try to correlate the beds. As if that wasn’t enough we also had to correlate them to wireline logs. These logs are something we have never seen before and we got little explanation about them. We got all day yesterday to do this, and that was barely enough time. From 7 in the morning to 9 at night everyone in the camp was working diligently on this project. 14 hours of geology straight is a little rough however.  This seemed to be another sink or swim exercise, which is leading me to believe that all projects will be. Luckily after we all finished our projects there was plenty of celebration to be had, and everyone had a very fun night. If it stays this fun I think I can press onward through the days!

Working...

Field camp update

Its been quite the while since this blog o mine has been updated, over a week now… This of course has been due to the huge amount of projects and homework that are being forced into an amount of time that is 4 days shorter then the usual. Its been quite hard, I’m starting to feel run down. Only 4 weeks left though and everyone who has done it before says that it will ease up after this week.

The good things are mostly just being able to see really interesting rock formations, but after seeing them you have to stay there for over 7 hours at a time mapping them and gathering data on them. It gets old pretty quick but there is no stopping.

The most recent assignment was to create a geological  map this:

Anticlinetastic!

using this:

Brunton compass, pencil, aerial photograph!

Out in the field we were given seven hours to complete the whole map without getting any help from any professors TAs or other students. This assignment is something that many students had only done once before. The previous day. With the help of professors, while in groups of three. Every formation, fault, fold, and strike and dip of the formations present on the photo had to be mapped and turned in at the end of the seven hours. It was pretty intense. This has been basically every day of work out here, except on other days the TAs and professors will help you, which rules.

Other than that there are a few stories to be told. On Thursday I almost got bitten by a rattlesnake! We were just finishing up a mapping project of the Alkali fold (no pictures forgot my camera that day) and were walking back. I was in a group of three people in the middle of them. As I was walking down the trail we were following I was looking slightly ahead at the ground scanning for anything slightly in front of me that could be dangerous. By chance I look down at my foot only to see a young rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike literally 2 inches away from my leg. Some of you may be wondering “Jordan you fool, surely you should have been warned by the rattle!” Turns out young rattlesnakes don’t have functional rattles. Not taking the time to wonder why I hadn’t heard it I immediately hop away from it right as it strikes. If I hadn’t seen it or hesitated for a fraction of a second it for sure would have got me. Afterwards I also learned that the worst snake bites come from the young ones because instead of rationing out their venom when biting they just empty out all they have. Pretty scary, but good to know I can doge a rattlesnake.

Out here Saturdays are half days where we got back to camp at noon to then do odd jobs around camp for about an hour. After that were free for the night and the next day to do what ever we please. So me and some friends decided to take a 2 day camping trip, and climb up pyramid peak. I’m not too sure about the details of the peak. All I know is that 8200 feet is near the top and we started out at 4000 feet. It was SUPER HARD. Started off from the road.

View of the bighorn mountains surrounding the road

The group (minus me) about half way to base camp. The peak is in the background.

Setting up base camp at 5200 ft

We set up base camp then me and Kevin (shirtless one) set off to climb to the top!

Getting closer

We went up the hard side of the peak (not intentionally, though it was only way). The final push was about 1000ft up a 50% on loose rock. It sucked. We made it to an altitude of 8200 with about 150 feet left (50 of it being vertical rock face) at 8. We did not have enough daylight to finish it so we turned back and went back to base camp. Some pictures from the top:

Almost made it, still counts though due to the fact we were higher then the highest part we could see from the road... right?

The sun going down over the mountains. If you've been reading closely you'll notice the top of the mountains across the way are the same as the mountains from the road.

It was well worth doing. I was no worse for wear except for being really sore, some blisters, and a pinky smashed between two rocks (It’ll be fine, hurt though). Okay I gotta go eat dinner now, then more homework. I’m really going to try to update more frequently, but with how time consuming it is (it took me one and a half hours to write this), as well as the level of homework (HIGH) I don’t know if I can … Maybe after this week when we go to Yellowstone.

Coatman’s Tomb? Goose egg anticline? Clark’s fork?

So thanks to the full three days of rain that we got field camp has understandably gone a little off of the rails. This has been just fine with me though, as the unscheduled stops usually degrade into glorified rock and fossil hunts instead of REAL geology.  So for the past few days we’ve been trying to pass the time with any sort of trip that hasn’t been washed out from the rain. I’m going to throw those trips, and what was supposed to be the first trip into this post.

Coatman’s Tomb

Coatman’s tomb is a huge outcrop of limestone on that is visible from the shell creek falls. It got its name from one of the first settler’s that came out west. He requested that when he died that they take him to the top and build him a tomb. They didn’t.

Shell falls

Coatman's Tomb

Clark’s Fork

Clark’s fork may just be the most badass structural feature that I have ever seen, what with the almost 90 degree dip angle on the left side, and an almost 800 foot shear cliff going into the clouds. LOOK AT THAT THING, THAT THINGS HUGE.

Clark's fork

LOOK AT IT

A little feature I like to call Stegosaurus ridge; FOOTBALL.

Goose Egg Anticline (north side)

The goose egg anticline has all sorts of oil in it. In our first actual assignment related to a field trip we were to map out 500 feet of stratigraphy in seven hours. The catch? Its dipping at about 30 degrees and its full of hills with the slippery deathtrap Betonite. Got it done though, with only a minor sunburn to set me back. Was kinda pretty.

They look pretty, but step in them and they go right out from under you

This rock is what we geologists call a “swelling clay” which means that if it is dry it’s just like any other normal rock. If it gets wet though it turns into a sticky goo that will add 30 pounds of muck on to the bottom of your boots in an instant. And guess what? If you don’t get it off immediately it will re-harden into a rock that then you have to chisel off of your boots. Not a good time. I got through it though. Now to do it again tomorrow. Day and a half project starting tomorrow, body’s aching and skin is sun burnt, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Gotta go to bed now, Goodnight!

Trip over + Exercise Hill

Ahh, finally I’ve made it to field camp, and have some time to update the old blog.

The trip over was fairly eventful. We took three fifteen passenger vans, but only had 16 people to take, so space was plentiful. To stay in touch each van had a walkie talkie. The walkie talkies were used mostly to prank the other vans with terrible country music and to call out the driving mistakes of the TA leading us there (There were lots).

This is the first picture I took during the trip. wat.

Once we hit South Dakota billboards began to come thick and fast. Including one advertising a mythical “wall drug” store that was over 300 miles away. Not content to remind us once there was a billboard for this store every 5 miles or so for 300 miles. How could we not go? I didn’t get any pictures, but due to a nightmare that someone had during the trip I decided to buy a dream catcher:

It's a winner

Also bought a cowboy hat, which will be involved in a profile picture if this certain picture is ever uploaded to the internet.

After the wall drug stop we got to Rapid City SD and set up camp with plenty of daylight left. So we decided to go to Mt. Rushmore. Don’t drive to Mt. Rushmore in a huge van. That is all.

The next day we hit the road again and tried to stop at Devil’s tower, but due to rain we decided to pass it up. Still got a cloud obscured picture though:

FORBODE.

From then on it was a blur of sleep and radio country music until we arrived at camp! In another post I’ll take you all on a tour of camp, for now I’ll just talk about the first day at exercise hill.

Any normal thinking person would have never wanted to climb this several thousand hundred ._. foot tall “hill” but no one here is quite on the mark so it seemed like a perfect idea!

Here’s some action shots, and then I gotta go study

Chimney Rock from the top

People walking up the side

The Bighorn mountains. They're still taller.

Ok that’s it for now, gottastudygottastudygottastudy.

Almost time…

Well I leave Saturday at 6:30. So that leaves the rest of today and tomorrow for packing. I SHOULD have everything I need, must now double check though. Also I found out that I will be one of the drivers during the camp! Hopefully I don’t crash… I’m not quite sure if I can drive a 15 passenger van yet. Oh well, I guess I’ll learn quickly. Other than that I’m pretty much set! Look for more updates, including the beginning of the trip, Saturday night when we will be camping in Rapid city SD.

Blog is now lookin pretty good…

Who knew that with only five minutes in MS paint a completely reasonable background can be made. Also ignore those bitmap artifacts up near the top >_>