20 March 2020

Friday fold: more folds from lower Titus Canyon

Posted by Callan Bentley

We are living in surreal times. It hardly seems possible, but a week ago this evening, I drove down the Las Vegas strip with my students, ogling at the glitz and spectacle and crowds. Now, a mere 7 days later, Vegas has been shuttered, and it’s been shuttered for days. We traveled freely through California and now a week later, everyone in the state is ordered to stay home. What a week it’s been! Ever since I arrived home, my family and I have been in self-imposed self-isolation. It seems our Death Valley trip was the last face-to-face academic thing that happened at the College prior to the unprecedented transition to 100% online instruction for the remainder of the semester.

So let’s take comfort in the routine of the good old Friday fold, and look back to pre-lockdown days in the field.

Eight days ago, I drove through Titus Canyon with my students, which manifested in last week’s Friday fold, and also gives us some smaller scale structures this week. There aren’t a lot of places to pull over in Titus Canyon, so these are all “drive-by” photos (and hence they all lack a proper sense of scale; mea culpa), but I think you’ll enjoy them as a glimpse into the highly deformed strata of the overturned Corkscrew Syncline in lower Titus Canyon:

Looking up through the skylight:

Some kink folding:

And these recumbent isoclinal folds really took the cake; at first glance they just look like bedding, but there are fold hinges near the center of both of these photos:

Example # 1:

Example # 2:

Hope you and your loved ones are safe. Please stay home. Please wash your hands.

I’m not sure if we can get “normal” back at this point, but we can prevent spreading this plague to the most vulnerable members of our civilization with simple, straightforward measures. I know those simple, straightforward measures contort our lives into almost-unrecognizable shapes as we seek fulfillment of our employment duties, our educational goals, and our social desires, all mediated through electronic communications. But the priority needs to be safety and health. All else is secondary.

Be well, friends.