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20 January 2021
Peering through
When hiking recently in my neighborhood, I saw this gleaming apparition appear in an eroded gully in a dirt road: Those multicolored stripes are varying compositions in a zone of ultramylonite: ductilely-sheared-out rock that formed in the deep equivalent of a “fault” in the Blue Ridge basement complex. We call it a “shear zone” most of the time, but a better descriptor would be “high strain zone.” These rocks are …
5 June 2020
Friday fold: Harbledown Island
Reader Christian Gronau writes with this Friday fold contribution: Greetings from Cortes Island, BC – at the opposite end of the Strait vis-a-vis Lopez Island. Your Mountain Beltway blog is always of interest, and I have been following it for several years by now. Thank you for putting the effort into this worthwhile website. Quite regularly your posts elicit “echoes” and make me go back to some of my own …
16 January 2017
Shear zones in Scottish gabbros
A quest to visit the “first shear zones” described in the scientific literature leads to an alternate location, and some GIGAmacro images of samples from the real, original spot.
25 November 2016
Friday fold: intrafolial folds in Eriboll mylonite
At the birthplace of the term “mylonite,” we can find Friday folds hidden in the foliation.
30 April 2013
Strained metaconglomerate in Klingle Valley, DC
Following on yesterday’s post about the kink bands within the strained metagraywacke of the Laurel Formation in DC, let’s take the opportunity today to go to Klingle Valley, site of a different facies within the Laurel Formation: a strained metaconglomerate. Though the exposure isn’t as great as the Purgatory Conglomerate, I think you’ll find plenty to hold your attention in these rocks. Close looks will reveal sericite-after-staurolite pseudomorphs (evidence of …
29 April 2013
Kink bands in highly strained Laurel Formation, Rock Creek Shear Zone, DC
Last week before GSW, I spent several pollen-choked hours in Rock Creek Park, GigaPanning some of the rocks of the Rock Creek Shear Zone. Here are some exposures in the bed of Broad Branch that show lovely kink banding. In at least one spot, you can see a conjugate pair, so these rocks were (1) sheared out in a ductile shear zone, producing the foliation, and then (2) compressed under …
8 November 2012
Neoacadian Inner Piedmont trip, part I: the Walker Top
Check out these lovely images (mouth-watering, even) of the protomylonitic and mylonitic Walker Top Granite of North Carolina’s Inner Piedmont. There’s also some views of the field trip participants and scenery.
