So we finally arrived on US soil. We are settling in really well. We all arrived on Saturday the 22 August. The next Monday and Tuesday were college orientation. On Wednesday 26th August we went on a field trip to Billings, which is across the continental divide in East Montana. There was approximately 10 undergrads and 5 postgrads and the two soft rock professors, Marc Hendrix and Jim Staub.
We were split into groups with a postgrad taking point. On day one we spent a few hours in the morning looking at different clasts on a gravel bar. We took a 100 rock samples putting them into different groups of ultra mafic, quarztzite, felsic, volcanics etc.
In the afternoon of day one we went looking at the Eagle formation, which is a cliff forming sandstone that surrounds the Billings area. For the next four days we spent our time examining the Eagle Formation in greater detail. The reason why we were partaking in this field trip was due to a PHD student called Jorn Hauer who was studying this area for his thesis. Marc felt it would be a great opportunity for us to be introduced to the geology of Montana as Jorn was presenting his findings to the Montana Geology Society on the 30th August.
We are all taking four modules this semester: Structural Geology, Architecture of Sedimentary Deposits, Hydrogeology and Geochemistry. For all these modules bar geochemistry there is an opportunity for us to partake in field trips.
For structural geology we have gone on two field trips. The first being a day trip to the Blackfoot thrust and the second being a weekend trip to the Sun River Canyon where we looked at various structural features. In class we have drawn individual cross sections of these areas, with the intention of overlaying these cross sections to give us an overall understanding of the area.
We have field trips coming up for architecture of Sedimentary deposits and hydrogeology.
We have been in UM for a month now and have been welcomed by both faculty and students alike who have taken great interest in us being here. We have also taken part in extra curricular activities including the Geology Club with Noelle being the webmaster and various outdoor activities such as white water rafting and hiking.
We will keep you posted on upcoming fieldtrips and other events. Don't forget to check our photo album!
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Oh We forgot to mention our close encounter of the bear kind!! Well, ok we didn't actually see the bear but it goes like this. We set up our tents on the structural field trip, came back 5 hours later and there was some bear footprints by our tents. Fresh ones!
ReplyDeleteYeah, yeah, fair enough, it doesn't really qualify as a scary close encounter but I'll tell ya it was too close for my liking! Didn't sleep a wink that night:)