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6 July 2012
Friday fold: scenes from the trail to Bertha Lake
Given that I’m leaving tomorrow for the Canadian Rockies, I’ve been inspired to look through some of my photos from last summer, and to realize how few of them I’ve blogged so far. So let me show you some folded things today that Lily and I saw the afternoon we arrived at Waterton Lakes National Park in southernmost Alberta: Here’s a fold on the side of a mountain on the …
5 July 2012
Floe Lake hike
Last summer, my wife and I spent some time in the Canadian Rockies. One of the things we did was to take a three-day backpacking trip to Floe Lake, in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia. We picked a rough couple of days for hiking – We got a lot of Canadian Rockies precipitation out there: we got rained on, hailed on, and snowed on during those three days. Here’s our …
4 July 2012
Plane views: Powder River Basin and Black Hills
Happy fourth of July! Here’s two scenes that are emblematic of America, as seen from my airplane window last March flying from Reno to Minneapolis. Here’s the scene in the central Powder River Basin of eastern Wyoming: If you zoom in, you’ll see what caught my eye – regular rectangular excavations into the surface. These are strip mining operations for coal laid down in the Paleogene period of geologic time. …
3 July 2012
Granite dikes that have been folded and boudinaged
It seems like a good morning to return to Ontario, and to the Archean shear zones exposed at the Quetico/Wabigoon subprovince boundary of the Superior Craton. Readers will hopefully recall that I spent several days absorbing structural goodness from these rocks on a field trip before the Minneapolis GSA meeting last fall. The trip was led by Basil Tikoff, Bob Bauer, Dyanna Czeck, and Peter Hudleston. Our final Canadian stop …
2 July 2012
Where I’ll be next week
I’m headed off Saturday to the Canadian Rockies for two weeks. My colleague Pete Berquist and I are leading a regional field geology course up there. It’s a new gig for both of us, and I’m sure the trip will be quite a learning experience. As I was preparing for the trip today, I drew this cartoon to clarify in my mind the distinguishing characteristics of the three main physiographic …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.