A funny coincidence transpired a couple of weeks ago. I posted about "Amygdules!" and so did Andrew. We were both so excited by these cool primary igneous structures that we added an exclamation point to our post titles. Over the weekend, I found some more. These are in Dark Hollow, in Shenandoah National Park, above the falls. Pretty sweet, eh?



I hereby give them two exclamation points. Let's see if anyone else can come up with two-exclamation-point-worthy examples of amygdules...

Labels: basalt, blogs, blue ridge, falls, igneous, primary structures, proterozoic, shenandoah

Our third Rockies training hike took place Saturday. Six of us hiked White Oak Canyon, in Shenandoah National Park. It was about an eight mile loop, with six big waterfalls on it. There were a lot of plungepools where other hikers were swimming.

There wasn't an astounding amount of geology on the trail: it was mostly Catoctin Formation, with a few outcrops of underlying Grenvillian granitoids. A few nice amygdules; no columns.

The waterfalls sure were purty, though. Here's Jason at the uppermost falls (86 feet tall):


Me departing from one of the lower falls:

Photo by Chris McMahon

I got home tired and sore from this hike -- it was a good time, but I slept well last night as a result!

Labels: blue ridge, falls, geomorphology, national parks, proterozoic, shenandoah, virginia

At the end of the northeastern GSA meeting yesterday, we loaded our NOVA crew up in the van and drove up to see Niagara Falls itslef. Here's the students (Laura, Victoria, Spencer, and Jason) at the American Falls. There were huge masses of ice built up down in the Gorge as the mist froze: quite a scene. The place was practically empty though -- very few visitors. Good to get up here and check it out. The flow you see here is 25% of the Niagara River's actual discharge. 75% gets diverted into electricity-generating projects on both the US and the Canadian sides of the river. (The buildings you see in the background are in Canada.)

We have another half-dozen talks to go to this morning, but then we hit the road back to NOVA. I just looked out the window -- and there's a couple inches of fresh snow on the ground!

Labels: falls, nova, water resources