Middle: Tallest peak in TX: El Capitan
Bottom: Carlsbad Cavern entrance.
| Geology 660 was one of the most memorable six weeks of my life. The course is designed to be the climax of our undergraduate careers and let us put everything we have learned together to solve real problems and answer questions that sometimes even the Professors don't know the answers to. The trip started off from Austin, TX at 7:00am May 21, 1998. We left in 6 Suburbans packed with 26 students, 3 TA's, and 2 profs. The TA's and the profs changes throughout the trip, but we were the constants. We started off across west Texas, stopping in Ft. Stockton for a quick hydro review, then continued on to Carlsbad, NM. There we looked at the Guadalupe Mts and Carlsbad Caverns. |
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Top: Mckinley "Death March" 3rd
day of camp: 2000ft vert. Ascent, 103F. Middle: Tallest peak in TX: El Capitan Bottom: Carlsbad Cavern entrance. |
| Driving off through the Sacramento Mts, we reached Alamogordo where we looked at White Sands, and logged some sections. After this, our next stop was Ghost Ranch, a small religious retreat near Abiquiu Dam, north of Santa Fe. This is where the huge cross-bedded sandstones and gypsum loafs are, cool. Next was Durango. This is a great town. We stayed in the dorm rooms of Ft. Lewis College and ate their crapeteria food, it was convenient though. There were many projects in Durango, including logs, sketches, mapping, fence diagrams, and many glacial scour and till features, it is a very interesting place. Durango also played host to our first day off, this was a night I will never forget. |
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Top: U-shaped valley scoured by a glacier. |
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| Bottom: Entrada Frm. At Ghost Ranch, NM. The thin, resistant beds close to the camera are huge cross beds, 35m high after truncation! |