San Juan Islands

In a previous series of posts I mentioned that for the Rodeo Holidays we went to Mt. Baker after being at the San Juan Islands. We did not spend long on the San Juan, but we did get a flavor for the area. The day started with a stop at Deception Pass State Park. The park encompasses both sides of the channel that forms between Fidalgo Island and Widbey Island and the Iconic bridge that joins the two island.

Deception Pass connects the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Skagit Bay, and during the change in tides, the difference in response rate between the Bay and the Strait cause a visible current through the pass, sometimes resulting in standing waves and whirlpools. We came through just as the tide was turning so we were able to see the current, but not the large standing waves.

From Anacortes (just north of Deception Pass), we took the ferry to the San Juan Islands. The San Juan Islands consist of an archipelago that represents a submerged mountain range that connects Vancouver Island with the mainland. The Islands are largely composed of Paleozoic aged sedimentary rocks which have been folded into a broad east/southeast plunging syncline. The sedimentary rocks have been intruded and metamorphosed by Mesozoic aged igneous activity. During the Pleistocene, the mountains were heavily glaciated so many of the straits and channels have fjord like characteristics.

Within the Paleozoic aged sedimentary rocks are lenses of Devonian aged limestone. These limestone deposits are accessible on San Juan Island near Roche Harbor and at Lime Kiln Point on San Juan Island. In fact Roche Harbor was a company town dedicated to the production of Lime, and much of the historic town infrastructure has been retained by the resort that now owns the town.

Lime was produced from the Limestone at Roche Harbor and (what is now) Lime Kiln State Park beginning in 18608. Some of the old lime furnaces are still standing, including this one at Lime Kiln State Park (built in 1918).

1918 Vintage Lime Furnace

According to the informational sign located at the site, typically two loads of lime were produced each day by dropping softball sized chunks of limestone in a hole at the top at the top of the furnace.

Limestone chunks into a hole at top

3 1/2 loads cords of wood per load were into the sides to keep the furnace temperature near 1100 degrees C.

Wood added on the side

The heat removed the CO2 leaving behind powdered lime (CaO) that fell through a screen in the furnace. The lime was scraped from the furnace into barrels (100 per load) and shipped by sea to Roche Harbor where it was then sent to Seattle and beyond.

Finished Lime out here

Lime production continued from the San Juan's until 1923. Although the limestone was high quality for producing lime, the fact that lime explodes on contact with water meant shipping lime from the San Juans was hazardous, eventually lower quality limestone deposits inland that could be shipped by rail became more economical and the lime business in the San Juans ended.

Fort Rock

On the way home from Crater Lake, we drove through Southern Oregon. My primary purpose was to stop at Fort Rock State Natural Area.

Fort Rock is a volcanic tuff ring that stands about 200 feet above the surrounding paleolake bed. It is a near circular ring of lapilli tuff that is the result of a Surtseyan eruption 50-100 ka. Most of the larger clasts in the tuff are welded glasses and pumice

But in some places small basalt bombs are included too

Subsequent weathering by wave action created an opening on the south side of the ring, so you can hike inside the ~1 mile wide crater. Where the waves interacted with the structure, along the outside and along the cut, there is a visible bench. At other tuff rings in the area, these benches show evidence of human habitation 9-10 ka

Bench on edge of Opening

After Fort Rock, we cruised through the desert high plains of the Christmas Valley and into Burns, where we turned north to home. We were all ready to be home, so we didn't stop to geologize along the way, just a reason to go back and explore again.

More Summer Trips

Ok, so its been a while since I have been able to sit down finish posting about our trips last summer. After our trip to Sumpter/John Day, we spent a week at the coast. Most of our time at the coast was spent playing in tide pools and seeing non-geology things, but I did take one picture of some barchan dunes on the beach below the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse.

On the trip back to the east side of the state, we took the scenic detour through the desert high plains. This allowed us a stop at Crater Lake, which Sam had been wanting to go see ever since we moved to Oregon.

Stanton at the Rim near the North Entrance

We got to the park about 1 hour to late to take the boat ride (next time Sam) so we did the obligatory drive around the lake. Sam's favorite stops was at Pinnacles, where the steam from fumaroles welded together the overlying pumice and ash into an erosion resistant hoodoo.

On the way back from Pinnacles, we stopped at the new trail in the park, a 2.5 mile out and back to Plaikni Falls. It was a nice little trail through the woods, and the falls at the end were a nice surprise (ok I knew there was a waterfall, but it was more impressive that I had anticipated). Sam, however was tired, so by the time we got to the falls she had transformed into a bit of a sullen teenager.

Plaikni Falls

I think overall, Sam was a little disappointed in the lake. (I found out later that, being who she is, what she really had wanted to do was go swimming in the Lake. She didn't expect only one access to the lake that was 2-3 miles down a steep trail to a non-existent beach that would have been hypothermia inducing cold at that rate!)

Just Refreshing All Y'all

I've been busy lately school, swimming, and all sorts of extra stuff. Now my dad has been keeping you guys caught up on all our trips but I was going through some of my pictures and thought to myself, hey why don't I do a post on some of our trips. That way you guys can here his geological side to our trips and my fun creative side. :-) Also I will tell you some more fresh stuff.

Now one of our trips he might have only briefly mentioned was in August after summer swimming was done we went to Newport, Oregon. On our way there we stopped at Bonneville Lock and Dam. I have already been there but since we brought along our cousins it was a unique experience for them and I had a good time.

We also stopped at Silver Falls. Which is close to Albany. We went on a hike called 11 waterfall hike. Both my mom and I enjoyed it, mostly for the nature scenes. I do think my dad enjoyed it but he was looking at more geological structures.

On the left is a picture of my favorite waterfall. On the right is a picture of me in a cave with a "well" on the ceiling.

When we got to Newport everyone was anxious to go to the beach. We had rented a little two housed building right across the street from the beach so during our down time it was fun to go play in the sand. Not everyone went swimming since we were in the upper part of Oregon we got ocean currents from the Artic Sea so the water was very chilly.
Well we were in Newport we saw a light house that had 107 steps all the way up. At the top you could get a little button that said "I survived the climb!" my dad got both my brother and I a button.

After we stayed in Newport for awhile we went to Crater Lake. We didn't do much at Crater Lake because it had been a long week and everybody wanted to get home but we did get to see these cool geologic structures. I don't remember the exact name. I do remember however that inside these is just air they are hollow.

All together it was a great trip and I'm looking forward to going back to Crater Lake (like my dad "promised") and hiking up Wizard Island. In tell next time.... peace out! :-)

Mt Baker cont

In previous posts, I wrote about our Rodeo Holliday trip that ended with a day at Heather Meadows on the side of Mt. Baker. The last notable thing about the trip was we had a great conversation about how science is supposed to work. At an earlier stop, I had pointed out the sun cups on top of the snow field, and mentioned that the how and why suncups form is a question that hasn't been completely answered. While exploring a snowbank Sam noted that there were suncup like features under the snowbank as well.

As we walked down the trail we made theories about how the suncup features would form on the bottom of a snowbank, and if the theories were testable. My theory was that it was based on the crystal structure of ice, but when pressed by Sam how I would test it, I did not have much of an answer. Her theory was the rocks under the snowbank (in the streams) initially forced the meltwater up over the rock creating the curved shape. Her test was to se if there was a correlation between cup location and size and an underlying rock.

At the next snowbank she ducked under to test her hypothesis

and sure enough there was a rough correlation between boulder location/size and suncup size. She repeated her observations at the next (last) snowfield we encountered and her subjective test held true. In the end she felt pretty proud she had come up with a theory that made more sense (to her) than her dad's and she was able to prove to him that she was right!

Mt Baker

In my previous post, I mentioned that on a Rodeo Holiday we went up to Heather Meadows on the Mt. Baker Highway. While we were there, we ran into a High School Geology class and the instructor pointed out to me that even though we couldn't see any mountains, there was some notable geology under foot.

Basically the canyon that forms drains Bagley Lake is a fault. On the west side of the lake is the Chilliwack River Terrane an accreted island arc, and on the east side are Mt. Baker Andesites. The Bagley Lakes trail parallels this drainage and crosses over a small dam, where you can see the difference in rocks from one side to the other.


Sam Looking at Mt. Baker Andesites



Sam Looking at Chilliwack Terrrane

  According to the USGS website on the Chilliwack Terrain, it is mostly phyllites and Greenstones that are thrust over the younger Nooksack Terrane.


From: Terranes of the North Cascades: Chilliwack River Terrane

We saw a couple of nice metamorphic rocks on our hike. Admittedly the weather wasn't conducive to finding the best examples (and I am not great at identifying metamorphic rocks), but there were three areas that had distinctly different outcrops



Greenstone with quarts veins

 

Metaconglomerate

 

Not sure with this one, originally thought it was a different metaconglomerate, but then thought about a fault Breccia, didn't know if that made sense. Help?

Though I certainly saw the difference between the rocks, I was in "Look at the Mountain and Glacial Features mode" so I'm not sure if I would have put together the drainage was a contact between terranes. So thank you to the unnamed HS teacher I met. It certainly made more sense to look at rocks than mountains on that foggy day.

Return of Fall

I am taking my Physical Geology students on a field trip today so I turned on the weather channel to see what the weather was going to be like. A screenshot from their website shows the weather forecast for our area.

A bit of good news for me! As we are headed for that little gap in the rain shown by the arrow!

 But another section of the map caught my eye, that light blue swatch of snow along the Washington/Canada border. This is the area around Mt. Baker Ski area, and when Sam, Stanton, and I took a trip up there during our Rodeo Holiday in mid-September spring had just arrived.

It had been a gorgeous warm fall, and on the beginning of the Rodeo Holiday trip we had taken advantage of weather and went to the San Juan Islands.

 Because the weather was nice, and we were about as close as we would ever be, I thought we'd extend our trip a day and go up the Mt. Baker Highway. Mt. Shuksan is one of those oft photographed Mountains, and I wanted to see it for myself. However, by the time we got to Heather Meadows Visitor Center, this was the view that greeted us.

We had actually intended to go all the way to Artist point, but the road to Artist Point did not open this year because the snow never melted. There were record snowfalls (over 900 inches) and when they went to plow the road in July there was still over 50 feet of snow over portions of the road. With all that snow, summer never really arrived. We saw one willow bush that was still in bud.

Because of the snow we went on two short hikes near the visitor center. One, The Fire and Ice trail, which has placards which presumably highlight geologic features of glaciers and volcanoes, only the placards had not been put in yet for the season. We did see lots of neat basalt columns.

  

The columns were tilted in many places 

  

so you could see the tops too. 

and a nice cirque/tarn at the end far of the trail.

Despite the lack of view and winter like weather, I had a good time looking at the rocks. In fact a HS geology class was up there at the same time we were, and the instructor told me about some geology to look for which I'll summarize in a future post. 



Arches

For Spring Break I went to Utah, but I didn't just go anywhere, I went to Arches National Park for two nights and Goblin State Park for one night.

At Arches, we went on three hikes. The first hike was to Devil's Garden where we we saw several arches. One of the first two arches was called Tunnel Arch, but we didn't get a picture of that one. The second was Pine Tree Arch. We took a picture that made it look like I was holding it up, but acutally the arches was three or four times my height.

After Pine Tree Arch, we went to another part of Devil's Garden where we saw three Arches. The first was called Landscape Arch, it is the biggest Arch in the World! On the trail there was a sign that talked about a day when a piece of the arch fell and someone got a picture of it!

Then my Dad and I hiked up to Partition Arch and Navajo Arch. From Partition Arch you could look through a window to Landscape arch, but my favorite arch was Navajo.

On the way to Navajo Arch there were some wind pockets in the wall that you could hide in

Unusual Outcrop

So on our trip to Arches over spring break, we were passing through Spanish Fork Canyon on Highway 6 when I saw this unusual outcrop appear along the road, but only on the north side of the highway.

It was cold and raining so Sam did not want to get out to give scale, but the whole expose is about 3meters. I got a closer look and it is a Anthropocene age sedimentary rock that is clearly well cemented. But whas was interesting was the series of lenses (ranging from 20cm to about 80cm in thickness. Based on their "hatch" pattern they are clearly limestone, but on closer inspection, they do not appear to be any different from the surrounding material. Also intneresting is the highly localized fault that apppears in the leftcenter of the outcrop of the picture. The one lens is clearly offset, but there is no fault scarp and the faul does not appear to extend to the lens at the bottom of the outcrop. 

Sedimentary structures are not my strong point, but this was one of many interesting outcrops we saw on the trip.

-philip

Sam Says

I haven't blogged for awhile, because I've had yearbook after school and Saturday I had softball try-outs, I don't know how I did yet, but everyone says I did really good. This weekend I have a swim meet in Spokane. But most importantly for spring break (18-27) I'm going to Utah and if the national parks are open we are going to go look at some of the arches and one other thing my dad mentioned but I don't remember what it is. Well I'm there I will be sure to take lots of pictures and blog about it, and I'm sure my dad will too.

Devils Tower

My Dad asked me to write what my most interesting experience in geology was. It was when we stilled lived in Montana, we went to Devils Tower. I thought of it as a big rock that was not a mountain. I liked camping there and waking up to see the sunrise. We took a walk around the base and we saw a huge Pine Snake!

Sam

Washington DC

Last week was THE RODEO in our town, as the kids had a week off of school so had decided to go somewhere else. So somewhere back in the spring we decided to go out to Washington DC to see family, see the sights. One of the things I wanted to make sure and do was get outo and see the Billy Goat Trail, which Callan from Mountain Beltway is constantly blogging about. We were even lucky enough that Callan took a break from field sampling to come up and give us a guided tour.

Even the non-geologists in our group really appreciated having such an exellent guide explaining the geology of the area. As much as enjoy the fact that Sam likes doing all this geologizing with me, I think her true scientific future lies in herpetology, as she spent most of the hike looking for frogs. Here she is looking for frogs in one of the potholes.

and later on Callan pointed out a lizard, which she quickly caught.



 We ended the hike at the Great Falls of the Potomac, which due to the water levels being low were mostly rock.

In addition to the BGT, we went to a number of monuments and museums. One of the museums we visited was the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History.

On our hike of the BGT, Stanton had asked Callan a question about the shining (mica) minerals in the rock. The conversation led to shiny things and the Hope diamond, which is on display at the Smithsonian

Callan remarked that in the room with the Hope Diamond, he was actually more impressed with the big piece of copper that everyone ignores. Stephanie sort of snickered and assured me that she would be looking at the diamond, but when we got to that room, even she agreed that the piece of Native Copper from the White Pine Mine (Michigan's Upper Peninsula) was really quite impressive.

I actually liked the nice piece of gneiss,

but everyone did agree that the Hope Diamond may not have been the highlight of the room.

Philip