Spring 2012 Geology Club Field Trip to Southeastern Idaho
Dave Liddell led a Geology Club field trip to examine volcanic cinder cones and lava tubes in southeastern Idaho. The trip included a stop at the Lava Hot Springs hot pools.
Fall 2011 Graduate Student Orientation Field Trip
Carol Dehler, Bob Oaks, Joel Pederson and Tammy Rittenour accompanied a group of graduate students on a hike up High Creek Canyon near Richmond. The group saw lots of Cambrian sandstone and collected trilobites from the world famous Spence Shale. Bob can still hike almost anyone into the ground!
Fall 2010 GEO 2500 Field Trip
Susanne Janecke led the Fall GEO 2500 Geology field trip to southwest Montana.
The group visited shatter cones resulting from a 900 Ma meteor impact, two mid Tertiary supradetachment basins, folded Mississippian rocks in the Tendoy thrust sheet, Archean basement folded into the core of the Armstead anticline, a ghost town, clay gouge along the Muddy-Grasshopper detachment fault and much more.
Fall 2010 Graduate Student Orientation Field Trip
Carol Dehler, Susanne Janecke, Dave Liddell, Joel Pederson and Tammy Rittenour accompanied a group of graduate students on a field trip that examined several geology stops in Logan Canyon and hiked to karst features in the Tony Grove Lake area.
GEO 2500, Fall 2009
Tony Lowry led a Fall 2009 trip through the Snake River Plain, Hebgen Lake and Yellowstone/Grand Teton National Parks. Students learned about active processes with emphasis on the now, including the impressive landslide and fault scarp features from the Hebgen Lake earthquake on its semicentenary; Yellowstone extrusives from eruptions large and small, and discussions of magmatic, biological and hazard implications of Yellowstone's geothermal features. University of Utah geophysics graduate student Jamie Farrell co-captained the trip and brought along lidar dems and other Yellowstone Volcano Observatory geophysical images that helped bring home just how restless our friendly neighborhood volcano really is...
GEO 2500--Spring 2009--Lee's Ferry, Arizona
Joel led this trip to the famous location along the Colorado River at the end of Glen Canyon and the start of Grand Canyon. We spent time poking at the Permo-Triassic boundary exposed at the base of the spectacular Vermillion Cliffs, but mostly learned about research recently done at USU on the Pleistocene and Holocene record of river incision and terrace deposition.
Anadarko Graduate fieldtrip--Spring Break 2009--Death Valley
Carol and Joel co-lead this fieldtrip of 20 or so grad students (and a few undergrads) to the blooming desert of Death Valley. We stayed under the palm trees at China Ranch and explored the Neoproterozoic sedimentary sequence in the greater southern Death Valley region, and also stayed at Furnace Creek and experienced all the classic geomorphic and neotectonic features of the National Park. This field trip was sponsored by a generous donation from the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
Spring 2008 GEO6800 Field Trip to Southern California
Susanne Janecke led a GEO 6800 Field trip to southern California.
The group visited the forearc basin in San Diego, deformed basin fill within and between the San Andreas, San Jacinto fault and Elsinore fault zones in the Mecca Hills and Anza Borrego State Park.
We worked on what is probably the most laterally extensive and thickest fault-related pseudotachylyte in the world.
A park service ranger taught us how to educate school children using nifty props and the green screen in her studio. The anticline behind our group photo was dragged over by a huge subaqueous rock avalanche (sturzstrom) roughly 20 m above us.
GEO 2500, Fall 2008
Dave Liddell led a trip to the San Rafael Swell - Moab area in eastern Utah. Highlights included camping at the Cleveland Lloyd dinosaur quarry south of Price and taking a tour of the area led by former USU alum Mike Leschin. The group also visited the famous Buckhorn Wash pictograph panel in the "Swell", Upheaval Dome in Canyonlands Nat Park, the Moab fault in Arches Nat Park, and Corona Arch in the Colorado River canyon west of Moab
GEO 2500, FALL 2005
Carol Dehler led a trip on a loop through the Uinta Mountains, starting along the Mirror Lake highway, to the Sheep Creek Geological Area, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Then we made a quick stop at Fossil Butte National Monument on the way home!
GEO 2500, SPRING 2005
Joel Pederson led a trip to the Arizona Strip country of the St. George-western Grand Canyon region. The trip followed the Hurricane Cliffs (fault scarps!) down to Tuweep at the awesome rim of western Grand Canyon (Supai Group--see photos below). Even though it was April, it snowed! and we had to bail out of hiking down the side of the Vulcans Throne cinder cone to the river.
GEO 6800, Graduate Active Margins Seminar, SPRING 2005
John Shervais and Brad Ritts led a troupe of graduate students on the Active Margins Seminar, “Sierras to the Sea”, across north-central California. The photo below is of the crew on a Jurassic 'knocker', an eclogite block eroding out of a sea of serpentine on the Tiburon peninsula.
GEO 2500, SPRING 2004
The spring 2004 trip, consisting of 15 students and Brad Ritts, compared
Mesozoic stratigraphy, depositional environments and fossils between
Capitol Reef National Park and the San Rafael Swell. Along the way, we
enjoyed the spectacular scenery, geomorphology, structure and history of
these world-class soft rock playgrounds.
(see photo below:)
GEO 6800, Graduate Seminar, Spring Break 2004
Dave Liddell led a trip to Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico with stops
along the way at Marble Canyon and Organ Pipe Cactus National Park,
Arizona. We stayed at the SEDO science institute and explored the tidal
flats (incredible sed structures!), beaches, snorkeling to see strange
sealife, went into the desert to visit the Pinacate volcanic field, and
ate plenty of fish tacos.
(see photos below:)
GEO 2500, Fall 2003
Susanne Janecke, Grasshopper Basin Montana--In the fall of 2003 Susanne
Janecke led a group of students to SW Montana to look at paleovalleys,
thrust faults of the cordillera belt, and supradetachment basins of
Eocene to Oligocene age. We saw large extensional folds in the
Grasshopper basin, megabreccia blocks, an exposure of the basin-bounding
detachment fault with >1 m of clay gouge, and learned about the
evolution of supradetachment basins over time.
(see photos below:)
GEO 2500, Fall 2002
Pete Kolesar took us to Pavant Butte in the Black Rock Desert - site of
the most recent volcanic activity in Utah; Topaz Mountain, where topaz,
the official state gem of Utah, can be collected; Wheeler Amphitheater,
site of world-class trilobites; Notch Peak; and Crystal Peak, a volcanic
tuff at the northern end of the Wah Wah Mountains.
(see photos below:)
GEO 2500, Fall 2001
John Shervais led us to the Snake River Plain in southern Idaho, looking at differences in stratigraphy and volcanology between the eastern and western plains. We started at the INEEL site near Arco and looked at the Howe Point rhyolite, then on to Craters of the Moon to look at recent basaltic volcanoes. On the second day we went to Twin Falls area and looked at volcanic stratigraphy in the Snake River gorge there, complete with pillow lavas and basaltic glass deposits. Spent second night at Bruneau Dunes state park before viewing volcanic and sedimentary rocks of the western SRP around Mountain Home Idaho. Here we saw lake sediments of Pliocene Lake Idaho, pillow lava deltas from basalt that flowed into the lake, rhyolite vitrophyre, a basalt flow with plagioclase flotation cumulates, and the huge Crater Rings eruptive center.
GEO 2500, Spring 2001
The Spring field trip was huge. Joel Pederson took us to the Moab area to look at dinosaur tracks, the formation of arches and other geomorphic weirdness, Permian through Jurassic paleogeography, and the overall erosional history of the Colorado Plateau. Lots of hiking and rustic lodging (camping)--lots of fun. See photos below:
