Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Fidalgo Island







The first weekend of May was stunning. And well before there was any good reason to expect it would be, the NWGS scheduled its big symposium. Saturday was spent listening to geology talks in Kane Hall, while the rest of Seattle watched the boat parade in the Montlake Cut and the UW eights blow away Cornell and Dartmouth in the Windermere Cup.

Sunday, at least for a smaller group of us, was spent exploring old rocks on Fidalgo Island. Rocks deposited in the deep ocean during the Jurassic and somehow transported to Anacortes in the years since. Besides some difficult problems in regional tectonics and structural geology, the biggest challenge was finding parking for five minivans on a sunny Sunday at touristy stops like Deception Pass, Rosario Beach, and Mount Erie.


For me, it was a great refresher in bedrock geology and a nice contrast to the beach geomorphology I spend my day job (and apparently, a fair amount of my spare time) doing.  I know many of these places pretty well - I just don't pay much attention to the petrology.








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