Travel Blog: SCI205- Prof. Kari Oakman

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Today my dog and I enjoyed a sunny day hiking up Table Mesa in Golden, Colorado. It seems nearly impossible to go anywhere in this state and not encounter igneous rocks considering a vast majority of it is granite. You can tell that Table Mesa is igneous due to the fine-grained texture of the rock fragments and the light coloring cliff faces.

Quarry at Table Mesa, Colorado, March 2019.

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I’m going to think of places I have been for this. Running water, deserts, and glaciers. I’ve seen some beautiful places to do with these. My favorite running water on Earth is in Scotland. The water is so special and singular, its what gives Scotch Whiskey its flavor. The peat is so thick in the soil that the running water is actually black! I think the coolest area specifically I’ve seen it was Loch Erboll in the far north-west of Scotland. It’s a brackish inlet and you can see a defined line where the peat-filled fresh water butts up against the salt water of The North Sea.

Loch Erboll, NW Scotland, June 2018.

My favorite desert is in Utah. Its amazing to drive through the great spires and canyons from Moab to Zion; seeing the different levels of the ancient sea carved into the stone for miles in every direction. To think that mammoth sea creatures slithered along the ground is amazing, but its even more mind boggling to think that at one point it was the sea floor, obscured entirely from the sun.

St. George, Utah, March 2019.

My favorite glacial areas are in the American Pacific North West. High in the cascades are some of the most beautiful ice fields I have ever seen. I was fortunate enough to experience a Native American religious ceremony at one and I have to say that the colors of blue and off green twisting across each other for what seemed like a mile was intense. My Favorite glacial event, however, is in Scotland. The Bens and Munroes (mountains and hills) are all relatively the same height, signifying at one point it was all that tall. Glaciers cut through the stone to form the glens and moors that humanity would settle.    

Cascade Mountain Range, Washington State, October 2019.

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The most amazing volcano I have ever been to is Crater Lake in Oregon. The area is amazing to see because there is no historical record of the eruption, the devastation was literally prehistoric. But, as you near the gaping maw the dense forest is suddenly gone, blown away millennia ago never to regrow. Then you see the incredible size of the crater, six miles across, and no one knows how deep, filled with millions of gallons of rain and glacial water supplying the surrounding area. I think one of the most amazing things about the eruption, however, is this: when the white man reached the area and began to settle it the native population was telling stories passed on from generation to generation by the survivors of the eruption all that time ago.

   

Crater Lake, Oregon, October 2018.

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The only convergent subductions zone I have ever been to is the Cascadia Subduction Zone. This is an area where the continental crust of North America is colliding with the oceanic in the Pacific Ocean paralleling Oregon and short segments of northern California and southern Washington State. I think the west coast of the United States from central California north is one of the most singular regions in the world. The only other place I’ve seen that has such sudden elevation gain from sea level is northern Italy and Milan (I was only there for eight minutes on the train). I think that the sheer climbing of the mountain ranges shows the violent collision of the plates, in both the Sierra and Cascade ranges. These ranges are so massive that they create such vast rain shadows that they are responsible for the Great Basin Desert. Its amazing to see them- but my favorite location is Big Sur just south of Monterey, California. The cliffs launch directly out of the sea with straight vertical walls, an area of the nation that could not be traveled efficiently until the New Deal of the 1930’s.

Devil’s Churn, Big Sur, California, March 2019.

Big Sur, California, October 2018.

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Yosemite National Park has perhaps the most wonderful and diverse geology I have ever seen. Never mind the fact that valley sits at the base of two mile high cliffs on either side, the park has one of the best roads for really grasping the vast difference in the rock that makes up the high Sierra range and the rock the lower levels are comprised of.

The cliffs offer incredible insight to the timeline and the changes of the area for millennia, from the glacier that crushed the earth down, to the water ways cutting their way into the valley. It also shows you first hand the vast power of nature with the wind-swept peak of Half Dome and the bare face of El Capitan.   

   

Half Dome, California, July 2017

Sierra Valley, California, July 2017.

High Sierra Panorama, July 2017.