A trip to remember geology

The first day I attended a graduate class, I was informed about a mandatory field trip the upcoming weekend. A little short notice, but okay, a trip tracing a geologic cross section of California to the Eastern Sierra's. Pretty cool, and some new and different geology compared to my old stomping grounds of North Carolina. The only catch was the following weekend was when Bhodi and I were moving out of 229 Pearl Street and into our new apartment in the Seabright community. We needed to sign the paperwork, pay the rent, and clean the cottage, not to mention move all of our belongings and a cat. Since the field trip was leaving 8 am Friday morning and gone until Sunday night, I put some time in cleaning the old place here and there. We made arrangements to move in a day early. So between my classes we moved several truck loads. The cottage had been furnished and we had been purchasing items to fill in this new and comparetively very large space. But more on the apartment later...

The field trip departed UCSC and then cut through the Coast Ranges and into the Great Central Valley, up through a narrow river channel (a little side note: there was the largest landslide I have ever seen that had totally demolished the road with no hope of recovery. The road was buried under 40 vertical feet of rubble for about a quarter of a mile. We were redirected across the river on temporary bridges and roads. Amazing...), and up into Yosemite via the Arch Rock entrance. We never entered the valley, but took a few shots from a distance and then climbed over Tioga Pass and down into the Mono Lake basin. We set up camp at Convict Lake campground, which was our base for the next two days as we set out looking at the local geology. Probably the most interesting part of the trip was being in the constant presence of a huge volcano. The whole mammoth mountain and mono lake complex is apart of the Long Valley Caldera, a volcano comparable to Yellowstone in its immensity, and during our visit we saw many signs of increased geothermal activity, despite the warnings given that there was no such gradient. Does this mean the volcano is about to blow? No, not really, but it could eventually, and that made it all the more exciting. Some of the signs we saw are related in the photos posted. Like the second one down: Dante's Tree.

A little geology terminology: a fumerole is a geothermal surface vent releasing water in the form of steam, as well as other volatiles and minerals. These are formed when ground water or underground aquifers come into contact with heated material (not necessarily magma, but hot surface rock surrounding it too). It then becomes excited and finds its way to the surface. Unfortunately for the tree, the easiest way was through its root system. When the fumerole was first discovered, the tree was still alive and it was the only fumerole in the small valley where it was located. When we visited, about 3 years after, the tree was dead and there was a good dozen other fumeroles in the valley. Besides the rising steam idenitifying them, they are easy to find from the baked ground (yes, its hot to the touch) and the sulfur crystals growing around the vent (falling out of solution). Pretty cool stuff, but you didn't want to breath in the fumes for too long, so we hung around for a bit then left to visit the hot springs (the next photo down). The hot springs used to be a favorite of locals and vistors. There were a few pools that were permanently roped off because of the heat, but the small stream that ran nearby also had a few hot vents in which people liked to swim around. However, that summer, two people had died from scalding, not from the pools, but from the vent in the stream. It is not that hot all the time, but occassionly it will 'burp' up a flow hotter than boiling. It had become unstable, and the springs were closed down. Sounds like some increased activity to me...

The next two shots down were taken from our campground at Convict Lake.

Other highlights were a visit to Mammoth Mountain, Devil's Postpile National Monument (first photo), and the Mono Craters (where I picked up and hauled back to the van a huge 40 lbs piece of obsidian - for knapping).

As we were visiting Mono Lake, a storm front was moving in over the Sierras, and we began to worry about making it over the pass. It had snowed on previous trips before, so we packed up and headed over through probably the last rain Tioga Pass saw this season. As such, I missed being in Santa Cruz for the first rain the town had seen since May. There is a tradition for a mass student streaking the night of the first rain in Santa Cruz, and apparently, the student body didn't let the tradition down. Hey, its Santa Cruz...

Since then, school has been going well. It has been a little hard getting back into the groove of academia, but its working out okay. When I post again about school I'll try to have a few shots of the lab I'm working in and some detail about my experiments. Till then!