Trip to Bangladesh

I'll be doing my best to document my trip to Bangladesh via this blog. We'll see how my internet access is.

Glad It's Over and Sad To Leave

I'll write a better wrap up post tomorrow or sometime soon. Everything is finished up. I am going to go relax.

Hope everyone is doing well! See you soon either around Campus or back at home!

I'll be in Ashland, Oregon for the next few days and will try to call everyone from there.

So close to getting out of here

We finished up the final mapping project today. I am exceptionally glad. I loved doing the geology field work part of it but the amount of time/ conditions they give you for making your maps is not sufficient. I got really stressed out and decided rather than bother to just stop and turn in what I had. It is going to kill my grade but I am pretty much over caring about that. I saw what other people turned in and even though I only finished mapping on one of the multiple maps we are supposed to put our notes onto, I know my geology was a little bit more in tune with what was actually going on.In many ways I think there could be pedagogical (spelling) improvements made to this camp.

I can't wait to get out of here. I am looking forward to Oregon.

More on the Geology of Glacier

Sorry for the poor grammar in the last post.

Now more on Glacier.

The structure that the Glaciers in the Park have carved amazing valleys out of is known as a thrust belt. This means basically that older rocks due to a compressional force find a plane of weakness and move up and over younger rocks which they sit beneath. The maximum extent of this movement has been estimated through illite crystallography to be around 100km. If you consider that one earthquake registering 8.0-9.0 (a world class earth quake) on the Richter scale general moves rocks only about 1 meter you start to realize that the amount of force it takes to build up mountains like that. The end result if you can imagine the world 60-65 million years ago would have been mountains about 5km higher than they are today's erosional level.

We didn't get to spend too much time talking about the Glaciers but evidence of them abounds the park. Unfortunately, according to NP research all the Glaciers will be gone by 2020.

Some of you may have heard of the channelized scablands in Washington state. It has been hypothesized, as early as 1903, that they were caused by a rapidly melting glacier. Today, we got to see some of the best evidence supporting the idea that glacial lakes, glacial melt water clogged up by a moraine (a huge pile of dirt deposited at the maximum extent of glaciation), breaching their confines caused the release of water needed to create the scablands. Research done on antidunes (they were 30 feet tall) and dunes created by the bursting of Paleo-lake Missoula suggest that a lake larger than lake Eire (spelling) emptied towards Washington in under 2 days. Additionally, it is entirely possible this has happened more than once.

Really really cool stuff huh.

Okay, I am going to go review some notes and hit the sack.

Dad and Mom, I got both of your letters. Thanks!

Glacier NP - Wow.

The trip up to Glacier was amazing. We only had 2 and a half hours of free time. But, me and a bout ten others took up Professor Ed's challenge to complete a 6 mile trek to Hidden Lake and go swimming. None of us had bathing suits but the reward, not to mention the stress relief, if you can believe it, of swimming in 40 degree water, was well worth it, a nice cold ginger ale.

The wild life up there is crazy. We saw a wolverine and a plethora of mountain goats and marmots.

Glacier's natural majesty is by far one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

What little geology we did was quite amazing as well. I took a piece of float rock from a 1.2 billion year old mudstone that has RAIN DROP imprints on it. How cool is that, evidence of rain from before any animals besides cyanobacteria existed.

This is my last night of freedom before the last major project starts. So, instead of sitting on the computer I am going to go play ping pong and volleyball.

Maybe, more tonight or tomorrow. Hope everyone is doing well!

Ps. Frannie I saw you posted on Facebook. Don't lose hope on Geology because of the blog. All the struggling and complaining I have done on here are WELL worth it.

Field (boot) Camp

Morale is running low the past few days. The strict rules and intense work of this camp, combined with today's mapping project in the pouring rain, we are talking nearly the entire year's rain in the last 2 days, has caused a bunch of people, including myself to get pretty edgy.

On the plus side, i (this computer won't capitalize i's) did see some amazing views today in the Sawtooth Range. i also got to see a wild coyote run within 25 feet of me.

i am pretty tired and fairly cranky tonight so i won't write much. i will be in Glacier NP tomorrow, which should be pretty exciting.

Some Background and the Weekend Review

I got an email from Uncle Tom suggesting I provide my readers with some info on the camp. The camp sits on a decent sized chunk of land (maybe 10 acres) in the South Boulder area of the Tobacco Root Mountains. The camp is composed of a main meeting hall, which served as an army mess hall pre 1950s. The 50 campers (2 got quit or were kicked out)left stay in 1960s "cabins" which are unheated and uncooled wooden shacks. The cabins each have 2 lights and variably sleep 8 people. The shower facilities are communal, but at least they have plenty of hot water. The 50 students represent 31 universities from across the nation. The age spread of the group is fairly large from about 20-31. Some of the students have graduated and some are already in graduate school. The nearest gas station is 25 minutes away and the nearest town, Whitehall, is 35-45 minutes further.

On Thursday, I wrote of a death march. Friday was exactly the same, only worse because in addition to hiking up and down all day we had to come back and finish our maps by 10pm. I didn't even finish my work so I had to speculate on the geology far more than I would have liked.

Saturday, we went to an abandoned silver mine and mapped the geology of the region. Afterwords, we combined our map data with a bunch of stream chemistry looking for point sources (seeps) of acid mine water. Later, we had a bbq and then went into town for "frontier days" which was marketed as a festival but ended up just being a bar with a live band.

Today, I went into Virginia City. The town used to be the territorial capital of Montana. Of course, the town was built just about over night when Gold was struck about 6-9 miles away in Alder Gulch. Without even knowing it, I ate lunch at a pizza place in what was once the capital of the Montana Territory. The town has been preserved exceptionally well by a private family and then sold to the state upon their death in the 80s or 90s. It is now a remarkable tourist trap but was well worth the time spent poking around. After getting back to Camp, I ended up playing volleyball and horseshoes to relax because for the first time in a million years I have no work to do.