NOTE: Posted on behalf of Vicky Crystal and Alexandra Freeman, students in GY445. As senior geology majors, we have the option of taking the coveted Capstone Course for studies on the regional geology of one location within North America. This year, 11 seniors and two geology professors, Henry Fricke and Christine Siddoway, traveled to California …
Continue reading “Regional Studies in Geology Capstone Experience”
On Saturday, July 28th, five days into our 12-day field trip, with a only a week left of class, we were awoken by dance music blaring from the vans and the request of our professor to dress in an “intergalactic beach party” theme. Luckily most of us had remembered to bring what is …
Continue reading “Our Last Week of Geology of the Pikes Peak Region”
Wednesday, July 25th, we hiked into a little valley at the base of Mt. Arkansas and set up camp next to a family of pikas, by a trickling brook. On one side were dramatic, soaring peaks and on the other, only a little ways away, lay Climax Mine. It was a stark contrast …
Our field trip started Monday, July 23rd. We left CC around 10:00 AM and drove to Devil’s Head Lookout where we could observe topographical evidence of the Laramide Orogeny (the mountain-building event that helped shape the front range 40-70 million years ago). Devil’s Head Lookout (besides being a beautiful hike) has an amazing view of …
We had the morning after our 5-day field trip off to sleep in for the first time since class started, but we were right back at it in afternoon, with a little day trip to the Manitou are to practice our new knowledge of sedimentary rock formations. We learned how different formations give …
Monday morning we were still very full from the game of yum-yum I described in the last post. We packed up camp and had a class on extrusive igneous rock (a.k.a. VOLCANOES). We then stopped by an outcrop that had tons of different rock types: I only wrote down observations for seven but there were …
Class started Thursday and in the afternoon we had our first day trip – to Monument Creek, which runs next to CC, where we learned how to apply the scientific process in geology by observing and sketching a rock outcrop running across the riverbed. Discussing and analyzing as a group we found it to …
