And here it is. Sands that were laid down in the Pliocene as the sea retreated from the Murray Valley. Sadly I could not find any fossils here. #pliocene #fossils #fieldgeology Oh well, many miles to go I must press on.

Field pic and matching sketch of a large normal fault cutting the Del Carmen formation, within Boquillos Canyon in Big Bend National Park, west Texas. There is so much good geology in BBNP. These faults are associated with the Rio Grande Rift and control much of the topography of the park and the surrounding region.
#geology #FieldGeology #faults #GetOutside #BigBend

For #WaterfallWednesday here are some cascades at 'The Pots' in Rutherford County, North Carolina. Potholes are rounded holes that form in bedrock from water currents tumbling sediments in a positive feedback system. The pothole catches sediments, deepens, then catches and tumbles more sediments. Field geologist testing his arboreal primate ancestry for scale.
#geology #FieldGeology #GetOutside

Panorama looking east towards Little Tom Mackay Lake in upper British Columbia, Canada. This is from summer of 2022 and is one of the coolest places I have hiked. There is complex fold-thrust belt structures, glacial melt lakes, and beautiful fields of lush heather. Johns Peak is the mountain poking above the horizon.
#geology #FieldGeology #BC #mapping #photography #hiking

A very excited field geologist (me!) standing on a talus pile of ravelled sandstone below a west-dipping back thrust fault within the Rockcastle Conglomerate Fm, Roane County, Tennessee, off SR001(US70). This is at the transition between the Valley and Ridge and the Cumberland Plateau, near the structural front, or the point of western most deformation of the Alleghanian orogeny, the major collisional event that smashed and crashed and formed Pangea
#geology #fieldgeology #fault #Appalachians

Anticline in the Pennsylvanian aged Rockcastle Conglomerate Fm. along SR001(US70) in Roane County, Tennessee. Pic is facing North(ish)
#geology #fieldgeology #folds #getoutside

Here's a drone shot of my old mapping crew (I am the one looking down at the drone monitor) on top of Devils Lookout above the Nantahala Gorge in western North Carolina.
#geology #FieldGeology #drone #GetOutside

Misty morning in subalpine terrain of upper British Columbia, Canada, near the transition between glaciated high country and lower elevation old growth forest. The second shot is looking the other direction up the valley towards Bruce Glacier. What a sweet spot to hike!! #geology #FieldGeology #mapping #BC
#Glacier

Woah, bro, check out those waves!! Surf's up!! This is folded sandstone of the Walden Creek Group in Blount County, Tennessee.
#geology #FieldGeology #folds #GetOutside

Three views of a meta-sandstone outcrop perfectly cut to lead to dip-slope, planar failure into the roadway. This is on SR115, or US129, in Blount County, Tennessee, infamously known as the Tail of the Dragon
#geology #FieldGeology #rockslide #GetOutside

Found some nice fault-related folding in the Jonesboro Limestone off of SR115 in Blount County, Tennessee. You can see the fault going diagonally down to the right across the picture. I am pointing to the folds in the footwall of the fault. This is along the Tail of the Dragon, one of the curviest roads in the southeast US.
#FieldGeology #geology #folds #fault #GetOutside

Simultaneously called out by this video game and disappointed there's not a sassy reply about how It's Called Fieldwork U Condescending [SPOILERY INSULT]. I felt seen tho 😅 #exocolonist #fieldgeology

Filtered field photos? I was working in Knoxville, Tennessee in these folded sandstones. The highway corridor was tight and it was cloudy, so my field pics weren't great, so I threw some Polish filters on there to bring out the internal geometry of the rocks
#geology #fieldgeology #folds

Drone shot looking over one of my mapping areas in upper BC. Note the red-orange gossanous blob in the center of the shot. These rocks were deposited in a back arc rift containing volcanic massive sulfides, which all experienced about 100% shortening during later collision. Much much later, the surface was wiped clean by glaciers, providing the excellent amount of exposure seen today
#geology #fieldgeology #BC #drone #mapping

I found a folder on my phone called 'Megablocks' that I forgot I made a while back. Apparently it is full of pictures of very large boulders I have seen in western North Carolina while mapping. Awesome. None of this is bedrock!
#geology #geomorphology #fieldgeology #boulders

Super clean strike slip faults from my summer mapping project in upper BC
#faults #geology #fieldgeology #getoutside

Misty morning in a textbook glacial valley, Banff National Park, British Columbia, Canada.
#glaciers #geology #fieldgeology #BC

I went to this outcrop of titled shale (actually pretty slaty with a good crenulation fabric) on TN SR115 and met this 91 Y.O. man who told me the story of watching it fail and then seeing this man drive into the rock slide. I thought, "I have seen that video on YouTube!" This is a classic outcrop and a wild video (luckily the driver and dog were fine) #geology #rockslide #fieldgeology
https://youtu.be/gBmE92n5mEI

Where'd the rest of that fold go?? Popped right out of the outcrop!
#geology #fieldgeology #fold #getoutside

Did some time travelling today. While working on a slope stability project in east Tennessee, I found this paleo debris flow deposit, now a meta conglomerate. The cycle continues. Note how not all the clasts are rounded quartz, but there are also large, angular lithic fragments. There was also scouring into the underlying fine grained sandstone. I don't know the specific history, but this isn't a great place to be when these rocks were deposited.
#geology #fieldgeology #landslide #getoutside