When my husband Jackie and I were working in Alaska back in late July through mid-September, we spent time both in Anchorage and in the little town of Nome. While we were in Alaska, we learned a fair amount about the famous Iditarod sled dog race. This is probably because the Iditarod starts in Anchorage and ends in Nome. We traveled to Nome by airplane, not sled dog, but we did make a point of visiting the start and finish points of the Iditarod.
Here I am at the Iditarod’s starting point in Anchorage:
Start of the Iditarod. I'm not sure that I'm at the exact starting point, but we were close and there was a sled dog statue. Note how Anchorage is warm and sunny in late July.
And here I am at the Iditarod’s ending point in Nome:
Finish of the Iditarod. Note how the weather in Nome (also in late July) is a bit colder and more dreary than in Anchorage.
Sunrise over peridotite mountains in downtown Muscat, the capital of Oman.
I have the honor of hosting Accretionary Wedge #50 here at Georneys. The topic I chose for the September (Deadline: October 10th) Wedge is:
Share a fun moment from geology field camp or a geology field trip. You can share a story, a picture, a song, a slogan, a page from your field notebook– anything you like!
I have many fond memories from Dartmouth’s geology field camp (called “The Stretch”) in the Western USA and also from various geologic field trips I’ve taken over the years. However, for Accretionary Wedge #50 I’ve decided to share a moment from some fieldwork I did in the Sultanate of Oman for my PhD thesis research.
I participated in two ~1 month long fieldwork seasons in Oman: January 2009 and January 2010. For the first field season one of my PhD supervisors came along to help me with mapping and collecting samples. For the second field season neither of my two PhD supervisors were available to help me with my fieldwork, so I had to recruit another helper. I ended up bringing along my husband Jackie, who was my fiance at the time. Jackie was already working full-time as an industry geologist, but fortunately he had accumulated significant vacation time from several months that he spent at sea and in the field. So, Jackie cashed in 3 1/2 weeks worth of hard-earned vacation time… and then spent his vacation helping me do more geology work!
Jackie and I worked hard during the field season. We worked long days, eating a quick campfire breakfast of oatmeal with tea or coffee and then heading off to the day’s sampling location. We would map and sample until a couple of hours before dark and then head back to camp. Even though January is the middle of winter for Oman, the days were often sunny and hot. Temperatures in the 90s were not uncommon, and we had to be careful to keep our heads covered and stay hydrated. We usually drink plain water when hiking, but working in Oman is so hot that we frequently mixed Gatorade powder into our water bottles as the electrolytes seemed to help prevent dehydration. We usually arrived back at camp a little before sunset. Some nights we arrived at a new campsite and had to pitch our tent and set-up the rest of the camp. Other nights we returned to a campsite and just had to help make dinner. Most nights we joined up with a group of scientific colleagues who were working in similar field areas. A few nights we camped on our own and made a small makeshift meal, generally out of canned supplies that were perhaps supplemented by a few local ingredients from a nearby town. No fresh food stays fresh for very long in 90+ degree temperatures. We ate plenty of canned hummus and tahini, that’s for sure!
My PhD fieldwork in Oman mostly went smoothly, but there were some challenging days. During my first field season in 2009, we experienced a rare torrential downpour, and our hotel in Oman’s capital city of Muscat flooded. We had to dart around our rooms picking our bags and other gear and putting them on top of beds and sofas as the floors turned into rivers. I remember walking down the hotel stairs to inform the hotel management about the flood and feeling as if I were climbing down a waterfall. There was no need for me to inform the management– they were already rushing around with mops and buckets and trying to placate several disgruntled guests. During the 2009 field season we also had problems with goats invading one of our campsites. One of my scientific colleagues gave a half-rotted apple to one adorable goat that wandered into our camp, and within a few minutes all of the goat’s friends arrived– more than a dozen friends! The goats started eating through the cardboard boxes that contained our vegetables and fruit, eating the cardboard along with the food!
A rare Muscat rainstorm. This storm was in 2010, but we experienced a similar storm during the flooding event of 2009.A small goat invasion.
Jackie and I had a few challenging days during the 2010 field season, too. One morning we were packing up our tent when suddenly Jackie jumped away from the tent and screamed. I asked him what was wrong, and he replied, “There’s a spider under the tent fly.” I rolled my eyes and asked, “Is that all?” Then I looked under the tent fly and started screaming myself. Underneath the tent fly was an enormouscamel spider. Now, I knew that camel spiders are relatively harmless: they aren’t poisonous, and accounts of them attacking people are mostly urban legends. In fact, they aren’t even spiders; they are solifugae. There is actually a variety of poisonous spiders, scorpions, and snakes in Oman, so camel spiders are really the least of your worries when camping in the Oman Mountains. However, camel spiders are very large and can run very fast, and for some reason this makes me– and I guess also Jackie– petrified of them. Eventually, we managed to gently coax the camel spider away from our tent with a stick. After carefully checking the rest of our tent for other critters, we packed up camp and started driving to our next sampling location.
Jackie and I at the start of the 2010 field season. Already, we look sunburned! That's Muscat in the background. Notice the old fort in the far distance.
Towards the end of the 2010 field season, we had a couple of very difficult days. One morning, I woke up and felt horribly ill. I think I must have caught some sort of flu. I don’t think it was food poisoning because I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink that was out of the ordinary, and no one else in our group fell ill from the food that we shared. Whatever I had, I was very, very sick. I immediately vomited up any food or water. All day, I could only keep a few sips of Sprite down. I left a certain public bathroom in a certain little Omani village in a terrible state. One day, I must go back and do something nice for the village– maybe donate a sparkling new public bathroom. By the end of the day of vomiting, I was becoming dangerously dehydrated. Jackie ended up driving me to a rural hospital, where a kind doctor treated me for free. The doctor did ask if perhaps I were pregnant with another child and experiencing morning sickness (note: Jackie and I have no children; I guess he thought Jackie and I were old enough to have a couple of kids), but once we assured him that I was not pregnant, he diagnosed me with flu, rehydrated me, and gave me some medicine to take back to camp. After a day or two I felt much better, just a little bit weak. However, I can’t say that I’d like to repeat the combination of having flu and camping in hot weather anytime in the near future! Poor Jackie ended up catching my “death flu”, as we called it, a few days later. However, I didn’t feel too sorry for him because he had “death flu” in the nice air conditioned hotel room with a proper bathroom in Muscat.
However, there were also plenty of wonderful field moments during the 2010 field season to make up for the challenging times. I wanted to share one moment in particular: a camel sunrise. As Jackie and I were driving out of camp early one morning along a dirt road, we stopped to observe four camels in the distance. As we stood by our Land Cruiser, the four camels slowly walked towards us and came over to say hello. We pet all of the camels, and a juvenile camel was particularly affectionate. After awhile, the camels continued on their way, stopping now and then to nibble on Acacia trees as they shuffled along. I have a vivid memory of the few minutes we spent watching the camels– the early morning light was beautiful, and for that moment all the world seemed to contain were the two of us, our Land Cruiser, the camels, and the mountains. In a busy, often crowded world, I’ve learned to treasure such moments. It was one of those moments that makes you remember why you became a geologist. It was one of those moments that makes you remember why you keep going into the field– floods, goats, camel spiders, “death flu”, and all.
Approaching camels.Closer......And Closer......And Closer!The affectionate juvenile camel.Cuddling with a camel.Petting one of the adult camels.Shuffling away. The adult camels had their legs tied together with ropes to keep them from wandering too far.Every day I'm shuffling.
For last week’s Monday Geology Picture I shared a picture that I took of Niagara Falls in 2005. The glacially-carved falls have been attracting tourists for many, many years. This week, I am sharing some black and white photographs of Niagara Falls that were taken in 1928! These pictures were sent to me by Ann of the blog Ann’s Musings on Geology and Other Things. Ann informs me that these are family photographs of hers that she scanned. Thanks so much for sharing these wonderful photographs with me, Ann… and for letting me share them here on Georneys!
Niagara Falls circa 1928 #2.Niagara Falls circa 1928 #3.Niagara Falls circa 1928 #4.Niagara Falls circa 1928 #5.Niagara Falls circa 1928 #6.Niagara Falls circa 1928 #7.Niagara Falls circa 1928 #8.
A slice of meteorite displaying a Widmanstätten pattern (silvery patches) in between oxidized or rusted sections (reddish brown patches). Photo courtesy of Lockwood Dewitt.
def. Widmanstätten Pattern:
An interweaving pattern of the extraterrestrial minerals kamacite (a low nickel content iron-nickel alloy, similar to the terrestrial mineral ferrite) and taenite (a high nickel content iron-nickel alloy, similar to the terrestrial mineral austenite) that appears in some iron-nickel meteorites when a cut section of the meteorite is etched with weak acid.
Widmanstätten patterns appear during acid etching because kamacite is more easily dissolved by weak acid than taenite. Widmanstätten patterns are believed to form in a few different ways (depending on the pressure and temperature conditions experienced; I won’t go into too much detail on this) as iron-nickel material separates into the high-nickel and low-nickel minerals as it cools. Whatever the formation pathway, Widmanstätten patterns can only form when there is very slow cooling in an environment such as the core of a planet. Therefore, Widmanstätten patterns are only found in meteorites, not in any naturally forming rocks on Earth’s surface. In fact, Widmanstätten patterns require such slow cooling that they cannot even be reproduced by scientists in a laboratory.
Widmanstätten patterns are named after Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten, an Austrian scientist who discovered the patterns in 1808 when he was flame heating a meteorite. Count Widmanstätten never published his discovery, but he orally communicated it to his scientific colleagues, and the pattern was named after him. Some scientists believe that the patterns should also be called Thomson patterns because a scientist named G. Thomson had previously, independently discovered the patterns when he was trying to use acid to clean some rust off of a meteorite. Thomson published his discovery in French in 1804. However, Thomson’s discovery was not widely spread throughout the scientific community because the Napoleonic wars interrupted Thomson’s communication with his scientific colleagues (Thomson was English) as he was living in Naples, Italy at the time. Thomson also died at an early age in 1806 before Widmanstätten made his own discovery of the patterns.
I, for one, always forget how to spell and pronounce “Widmanstätten.” Perhaps I’ll remember better after this post. Regardless, I’m happy to know that, due to some scientists trying to right some misfortunes and twists of history, I can always google “Thomson patterns” to find out the more popular name of “those pretty meteorite pattern thingies.”
Below are a few more pictures of Widmanstätten patterns. If anyone else has additional pictures of Widmanstätten patterns, I’d love to add them to this post. Just email them to georneys blog (AT) gmail.
Another view of the Widmanstätten pattern on Lockwood's meteorite. Picture courtesy of Lockwood DeWitt.Widmanstätten pattern on the Cape York meteorite at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Picture courtesy of Patrick Donohue.
***Thanks to several of my twitter followers for suggesting this week’s word. Thanks to Lockwood DeWitt and Patrick Donohue for providing pictures.***
Salmon Lake #1. The sign for the Salmon Lake Campground.
On one of our last days in Nome, Alaska, my husband and I had the opportunity to drive up the road to a little place called Salmon Lake. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management operates a summer campground on the shore of Salmon Lake. We drove up to Salmon Lake to check out the beautiful scenery (especially the gorgeous, snow-capped Kigluaik Mountains) and also to take a look at some regional geology. We were fortunate enough to have a beautiful, sunny September day for our drive. I thought I would share some pictures that we took along the drive. Enjoy!
First, here’s a map showing the location of Nome:
And here’s a map showing the route from Nome (A) to Salmon Lake (B):
On our drive, we actually continued past Salmon Lake for a few miles before turning around and heading back to Nome.
Second, here’s an informational blurb on Salmon Lake from the BLM website:
The Nome Field Station maintains Salmon Lake Campground, 40 miles north of Nome on the Nome-Kougarok Road. The campground offers 6 campsites with fire pits and picnic tables, a natural boat launch at Salmon Lake, and an outhouse. The campground opens in late June after the Nome-Kougarok Road is free of snow and remains open until mid October, depending on snow and road conditions. The Salmon Lake area offers outstanding recreational opportunities. It’s the spawning grounds for the northernmost run of sockeye salmon in the United States.
And now for the pictures:
Salmon Lake #2. Fall colors, arctic tundra style.Salmon Lake #3.Salmon Lake #4.Salmon Lake #5. Those are the Kigluiak Mountains in the distance.Salmon Lake #6.Salmon Lake #7. The sign reads "No Road Maintenance Beyond This Point."Salmon Lake #8.Salmon Lake #9.Salmon Lake #10.Salmon Lake #11.Salmon Lake #12. My handsome co-driver. Salmon Lake #13.Salmon Lake #14.Salmon Lake #15.Salmon Lake #16.Salmon Lake #17.Salmon Lake #18.Salmon Lake #19.Salmon Lake #20.Salmon Lake #21.Salmon Lake #22.Salmon Lake #23.Salmon Lake #24.Salmon Lake #25.Salmon Lake #26.Salmon Lake #27.Salmon Lake #28.Salmon Lake #29.Salmon Lake #30.Salmon Lake #31.Salmon Lake #32.
I’ve only visited Niagara Falls once. I visited the American side of the falls for a few hours back in 2005 when I went with my mom, dad, and sister on a roadtrip from New Hampshire to Ohio. We drove to Ohio to pick up my parents’ new dog from a friend who had a litter of puppies. I didn’t have a very good camera back in 2005, so I only took a few pictures of the falls. I ran across the falls pictures when I was browsing my folders of pictures for a “Monday Geology Picture,” and I decided to share the above picture with you. I like the above picture because the falls almost look as if they’re falling from the sky… from the clouds, perhaps. Does anyone else have good pictures of Niagara or other famous waterfalls?
Today I thought I’d share a few more pictures from the two months that my husband Jackie and I recently spent working in Nome, Alaska. You can find more pictures of Nome in Part I and Part II. Enjoy!
A little dredge named the "Golden Wave"-- a converted pontoon boat.Checking out the famous (from the TV show "Bering Sea Gold") dredge named "The Christine Rose."Gas prices in Nome!Food prices in Nome are rather high. A box of granola bars is $6.29 and a box of oatmeal is $7.19. Food is so expensive because nearly all the food is brought in by airplane or boat since no roads lead to Nome from bigger towns or cities.Liquids are very expensive in Nome. A 12-pack of soda costs $15.99.I really hope this isn't Nome's only vet... or that it's bigger on the inside.Jackie trying on a polar bear fur hat at "The Russian Shop," as we call it.The really neat painted wooden camel that I acquired from "The Russian Shop." I have a collection of camel figurines. Feel free to donate any interesting camels to my collection! 🙂The Nugget Inn.Breakers Bar and the Anchor Tavern.Nome City Hall.One of Nome's churches.An abandoned building on main street. Looks as if there may have been a fire?One of Nome's restaurants.
Obsidian with vitreous luster. Photo courtesy of Maitri Erwin.
Introductory Note: At long last, the Geology Word of the Week has returned! For almost a year, the Geology Word of the Week post has been on hold. I briefly resurrected the weekly word back in April with the posts T is for Time and U is for Ulexite, but the revival was short-lived. I neglected the weekly word because this past year has been busy and full of important life events and changes: getting married, finishing up my PhD, moving overseas, and starting my first job, among other things! To keep Georneys interesting, I started the Monday Geology Picture weekly feature. I’ll still keep posting the Monday Geology Picture, but I also hope to resume my weekly words. As always, feel free to suggest words and provide information and pictures related to the weekly word. Note that I go through the alphabet in order for my words, so for next week you should suggest words that start with “W”. From now on, I’ll do my best to keep up with the weekly word, but I may skip a week or several weeks here and there depending on what else is going on in my life.
def. Vitreous:
Resembling glass. Most often used in geology to refer to a glassy (highly reflective and often transparent to translucent) luster.
Luster (or Lustre) is a term that is used to describe the way that light interacts with the surface of a mineral, rock, or other solid (such as glass or a manmade crystal). Luster is one of many physical properties (others are hardness, streak, cleavage, crystal shape, color, etc.) that geologists use to help them identify rocks and minerals. There are several terms used to describe luster, such as dull, metallic, waxy, pearly, and so on. Andrew Alden, the geology writer for About.com, has a great webpage (including an example gallery) all about luster here. Vitreous (also called glassy) luster is which resembles the luster of glass. Vitreous rocks and minerals are thus highly reflective and often translucent to transparent, like glass. Some vitreous rocks, such as obsidian, even are glass… natural glass!
Here’s a few more pictures of rocks and minerals with vitreous luster:
More vitreous obsidian. Photo courtesy of Maitri Erwin.Even more vitreous obsidian (small black clast). Photo courtesy of Lockwood Dewitt.An entire flow of vitreous obsidian. Photo courtesy of Cian Dawson.Slickensided slate (say that three times fast!) with vitreous luster. Photo courtesy of Ron Schott.Limestone covered by vitreous sandstone, which has been melted by lightning. Cool, huh?! Photo courtesy of David Bressan.Quartz and tourmaline, both of which have vitreous luster. Photo courtesy of Patrick Donohue.
My husband Jackie and I in front of Nome's gigantic gold pan on the town square.
Here are some more pictures from the two months which my husband and I recently spent working in Nome, Alaska. Today I thought I’d share some pictures of the town square, which is called Anvil City Square. The town square is adorned with several items which honor the town’s gold mining history (a giant gold pan, gold dredge buckets, statues of the people who first discovered the gold, and information signs) and the famous Iditarod sled dog race (statues and information signs), which ends in Nome. You can find more pictures of Nome in Part I here. Enjoy!
Another view of the town square. The town square is edged with metal gold dredge buckets which have been turned into flower pots.Another view of the town square showing the giant gold pan and the statues of "The Three Lucky Swedes."Making friends with one of the lucky Swedes... I hear he's rich!Jackie and I checking out some of the Three Lucky Swedes' gold.A sign about the Three Lucky Swedes and their gold discovery in Nome. There are many such informational signs around Nome. I'm not sure who was responsible for putting them up, but they are much appreciated! Click to enlarge the picture if you want to try to read the sign.A closer view of the pictures of the Three Lucky Swedes on the information sign.They say that even the flower pots in Nome contain gold... perhaps that's because all the flower pots are old gold dredge buckets!
For those who don’t know, this is what a gold dredge looks like:
An abandoned gold dredge about a two hour drive outside of Nome. Note the buckets on the right side of the dredge.A closer view of some dredge buckets on the dredge in the above picture.
I’ll be writing more about some of Nome’s gold dredges in a later post, so stay tuned!
Posing with some Iditarod sled dogs.And Jackie and I thought we were clever and had thought up that slogan...
The glacial erratic in front of my parents' lakeside cabin.
New England is full of glacial erratics: rocks which were transported and dropped by glaciers and which have a different lithology from the rocks upon which they have been deposited. Often, erratic rocks have an angular shape because they were broken off of bedrock by glaciers and have not yet had time to be weathered and rounded by water, wind, and other erosional forces. Glacial erratics can range in size from very small pebbles to very large boulders, but usually it is the boulders which are noticed since these stand out in the landscape and are not easily transported away.
I remember becoming interested in geology as a child when I began noticing large boulders in the middle of fields and the forest around my native New Hampshire. I asked my science teacher about these boulders, and he told me they were called glacial erratics and taught me a little about ice ages. Most of the erratic boulders seen throughout New England today were deposited during the last ice age, which reached a maximum around ~22,000 years ago and which ended ~10,000 years ago.
My favorite glacial erratic, which is shown in this week’s geology picture, sits on a small island in front of my parents’ lakeside cabin on Franklin Pierce Lake in New Hampshire. My parents purchased the cabin about 5 1/2 years ago, and although I had long moved away from home when they bought the cabin, I quickly fell in love with it (and its erratic island!) and try to visit regularly. Every year, my husband and I spend at least a couple of weeks at the cabin. Back in May, the cabin served as a geologist lair when my fellow geoblogger Dana Hunter visited for a few days. If you are brave, you can swim or kayak to the little island from my parents’ cabin and jump off the erratic.
An erratic jump! This picture gives you a better sense of the scale of this enormous erratic boulder.
Does anyone else have a favorite glacial erratic to share?
Georneys 
