All roads lead to Denver

My faithful field assistant Tracy flew back to Santa Cruz from DIA on Wednesday morning (the 25th), so we hightailed it back across I-70, and again camped out at the Governor's mansion. I had intended to take off quickly for the midwest, but found out that a major convergence of CC geo/annual hut trip (aka WIFNAC) folks were all going to be in town late in the week, so I stuck around for a couple of days of computer/planning time and and catch up time with many old friends. Deborah Roth (who I haven't seen since my college graduation) and Nate and Chrissy Williams were all in town, and Ben had friends arriving, so I've logged some quality summer fun, including disc golf, an incredible happy hour thunderstorm (who needs TV when there's lightning?), and a few good hours of lounging and catching up on everyone's lives; new jobs, getting married, residency stress, making exciting new wordworking puzzles or just the same old.
So, fun and games are done, I've put the internet and phone to good use calling USDA soil centers and will be taking off tomorrow morning for the Midwest. The best image for this next leg is probably an old Family Circus cartoon, where Billy maps the most convoluted route possible to his neighbor's house. I'll be doing that in a car between Nebraska, Iowa, southern Minnesota and South Dakota. For folks in Minneapolis, I think I'll be there in a week and a half??

Utah, again

We just couldn't get enough of the great state of Utah. After Denver basin sampling, we took off for the Book Cliffs region of Utah (just off I-70) to try to find a sea level datum for my project (and before any of you point out that Utah is not actually at sea level, ala "katie, you're going east, not west," I mean sea level during the Cretaceous). We didn't find too many samples, but we DID see some great great rocks via some "road" side geology (roads that mostly mean driving up dry washes), and a few other entertaining sights. We also got a lot more rain, and thunderstorms, which made for beautiful sunrises.
The watchman for the Neslen Formation
My favorite sedimentary structure, Hummocky Cross Stratification
Mudcracks and raindrops...
Our swimming hole, called the Green River

A little press!

Christina Pince, a science reporting intern for KUNC, the public radio station in Fort Collins, Colorado, joined us for a day in the Denver Basin. She was interested in all manner of stories regarding the work going on in the basin, and in the end, she is airing a story on the climate/paleoclimate work being done on the basin, which is the primary involvement I have with the project and the Denver Museum folks.

In case you're curious, it will be airing on KUNC during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on Friday (the 27th). Christina told us at 6:35 AM, 8:35 AM, and 3:44 PM, but the website says 5:35AM, 7:35AM and 3:44PM Mountain Time on their "this week at KUNC" blurb, so I'm not sure.

Also, I don't think it is a part of the national broadcast; I think it will be part of the local radio segment of the programs, so you'll have to go to the station website, and connect to the listen live link , or search KUNC's archive later to hear it.

Denver Basin

We spent the 14th through the 17th working on rocks from the Denver basin; two small outcrop sections and one session of sampling from a core they drilled through the basin a few years back. The outcrops were out near a ranch on the plains east of the Front Range. Bijou creek cuts an escarpment down into the landscape, so as you look out across the area, you can barely tell any topography exists, but as you get closer to the edge, near the house on the ranch, the ground falls away in front of you revealing a funny escarpment exposing a 10 meter thick paleosol and a pretty little slot canyon through Paleocene-aged rocks (~65 to 55 million years ago) and down into the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (aka the KT boundary @ 65 Millions years ago). For those of you who don't remember this point in earth history, the KT boundary marks a large meteorite impact and the death of the dinosaurs.
So, it was a change of pace, as we were focused on a single, thin outcrop, so we dug a big trench through the escarpment in a couple of places and took samples. All the while, it was castration time on the ranch, so every few minutes while we were digging we'd hear the most anguishing cries from off in the distance. Either that, or it was the cries of love-sick cows, as they moved one of the bulls during lunch time.
We took our first day off of the trip after two days on the escarpment, when some of our collaborators were at work on some unrelated sections. On the 17th, we headed to the giant Denver Federal Center, to work on the preserved core that is stored at the US Geological Survey, in a warehouse that looks remarkably like the scene from one of the Indiana Jones movies .

Now, if you thought sampling pits made boring photos, core shots are even worse.
But, sampling is a lot faster when you don't have to dig a pit, and we got to take a tour of the National Ice Core Laboratory (basically in the same building), which is where they store and study the ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. Ice cores are extremely useful for paleoclimate studies; the gas bubbles trapped in the ice record past atmospheric CO2 concentrations, oxygen isotopes in the gas are used to get at past temperatures, and you can date them pretty well by counting the layers.
The only problem is that the record currently only covers the last 800,000 years. So, we walked through the freezers, some dressed more warmly than others, into temperatures around -30 fahrenheit (eyelash and booger-freezing temps, if that helps). It was good, because we enjoyed the 100 degree temperatures outside for a good 10 minutes after that!
We also enjoyed a free trip through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and saw the big Titanic exhibit (according to our entrance tickets, Tracy and I were both first class male passengers that survived the sinking), and a great IMAX film about the role the bayou wetlands play as a hurricane barrier and how their disappearance played a major role in the massive damage Katrina inflicted on New Orleans. Great music too.

Sample Happy in Utah

I've got a little catch-up to do. We finished up in Utah; after about 10 days of getting up at 5:00 and staying out for about 10 hours each day, digging lots of pits and collecting a ton of samples (almost 70 from Utah alone! My rubbermaid bin is nearly full), we headed to Denver for the next leg.

It was a little sad leaving our little valley in Utah; we were used to the sights. The two guys always leaning against the back of their pickup chatting on our way back to camp, the crazy bearded guy riding down the canyon road everyday, and friendly people everywhere.

The drive from central Utah to Denver is, of course, a geologist's heaven. Interstate 70 is pretty amazing, and this is the first time I've done that drive with another geologist in the car and the "roadside geology of Utah" book. The San Rafael Swell (shades of my sed/strat class in college), the Morrison formation and tons of dinosaur localities and then Glenwood Canyon and views of the Great Unconformity heading into Denver. Tracy had never been on I-70 through Colorado before and had her face pressed to the window, oohing and aahing the whole time.

We're now living the high life in Denver, and sampling the Denver basin, which is east of I-25, between Denver and Colorado Springs. We're staying at the Governor's Mansion in Denver (aka, Ben Hamilton's house), and coordinating the sampling effort with folks from the Denver Natural History Museum and some of my previous collaborators from other projects, so it is fun to be in the field with a group again. We've also been able to sleep in a little, and it isn't so hot, so we finish the day feeling tired, but not quite so trashed as in Utah.

Tracy and I had fun digging a big trench in THE paleosol in the Denver Basin yesterday, and more of the same today. Tomorrow we'll take a day off, and then Tuesday sample the big core they dug a year or so ago in the basin and maybe check out the Museum. Likely we'll head back to the west for one last week before Tracy heads home and I head to the Midwest. Hope all is well with all of you!

Pictures:
early morning on the outcrop
Apparently Ephraim is a scandinvaian hotspot. Every store is an Anderson's, Olsen's, Jensen's or Larson's.
How did they know we needed a backhoe? The forest service left this for us in our campsite in UT one day.
Rare photographic evidence that I'm actually on this trip. Beautiful Navajo cross-bedded sandstone in the bottom right of the picture.
The San Raphael Swell, looking east.
Nutella and Brownies give small women the strength to dig deep pits.

Sweet, sweet soils

Fossil soils that is. (Paul and Tracy at the top of Axhandle Canyon)

Quick recap: spent the 27th through the 2nd in Nevada, drove to Utah on the 3rd, scouted sections on the 4th (and saw fireworks in Moroni) and 5th, and started measuring and collecting today. So far, it is even hotter here in Utah than it was in Nevada. We've been swimming in a nearby reservoir at the end of everyday; we get up at ~5:00 AM, to get as much time when it is still cool. Our brains are a bit heat-addled by 3 as temperatures have been in the hundreds (yesterday was 110 I think), so we try to finish up by then when possible.

The sections here are great, though most of my pictures are strange shots of pits we dig with a small whiteboard with the locality number on them. Beware of asking to see field photos. BUT, there are some beautiful canyons. So far Axhandle Canyon (aka Axle Rose Canyon, and he sings us out of the canyon) is our favorite. A few of our very own arches....

Ok, time for some geeky geology photos:
Paul and hammer displaying cool conglomerates that are erosionally overlain by limestone, where the front edge of an alluvial fan is interfingering with a lake. fossil soils forming a cliff in Axhandle Canyon. We will be taking souveniers for the mass spec tomorrow.
An arch framing, yes, more fossil soil.
Sheep! Ok, so they're not rocks, but Tracy and I were entertained this morning.
And, a sweet, sweet soil. Just imagine the LARGE number of photos like this at the end of the trip. Slideshow anyone?

Nevada

View of Ruby mountains (center) on road out of field site)
Just a quick update post. After the workshop, Paul and I drove to Salt Lake City (the 27th), picked up Tracy (field assistant), and drove to Nevada. This was the first of the change in plans, due to changes in plans of folks we were supposed to meet in Utah. So, we spent the last few days checking out some rocks near Elko, and I now have the first self-collected rock samples of my Ph.D. Yay!

We're off to Ely - Nevada that is, not Minnesota. I don't even know if they are pronounced the same. There are some good potential rocks there, and that gives me time to try to track down contact info for people who can grant me access to the rocks I want in Utah. Apparently, one canyon I want to get into is blocked by some persnickety ranchers. I need to call them and hope that Tracy and I can work some magic and get in there.

Anyway, things are going well, we haven't melted or set the sage brush on fire with our rig, we've seen lots of suicidal jack rabbits (a dirt road with ~15 flattened bunnies in a 4 mile stretch??), cows and the beautiful Ruby mountains.
1st Nevada home, Ruby Mountains in the the distance