Ah, the Tetons. Aren't they grand?
There isn't really a photo to accompany this one. Now that I've stated that, I realize that maybe I should've taken one. Regret gets me nowhere.
Our Mieralogy/Petrology group went out to the Ririe Reservoir dugway last Thursday to study some ash-flow units.
I wasn't really all that prepared for the trip -after some catch-up work in the lab, I just "showed up" at the scheduled departure time.
Well, to be brief, I had no eye protection, and I ended up having a wind-blown pumice fragment caught in my eye-lid. My eye was irritated, red, sore, and watering. I knew better than to rub it; silicate materials can scratch your cornea.
After working out insurance details with the accountants at the school, I made a visit to the local eye-doctor. He inverted my upper eye-lid, found the fragment, and removed it with a cotton swab.
I had been trained from my earliest days in Geology to always wear eye-protection in the field. I realize the importance of this rule now.
A few people in the class weren't able to come on the trip, and so I'm heading back to the site tomorrow afternoon to help supplement what they've missed. This time, I'll be taking my camera, a water bottle, and, of course, some eye-protection.
Now that I've gone and told the story, maybe I'll throw in a pretty picture -just for the sake of enjoying the blessing of good vision. OK, so maybe I'll throw in a picture of the culprit, just to make my peace; here it is -pumice.
After looking at that picture in detail, I realized that my rock hammer bears the reminder: wear eye protection. A good rule of thumb, not just for hammer use.
Here's a shot of the Snake River at the south fork.
Sedimentary structures near the south fork which are worth looking at
For another day-trip, we went out to the Ririe Reservoir dugway again. I managed to make it home without any significant ash fragments in my eye. These photos show more of the detail of the Kilgore tuff deposits. As seen in the photo above, these are very thick ash deposits.
We used Jacob's staffs to measure thickness of the different ash deposits.
So much pumice!
Another contact further up.
An "intraclast" (the brownish clast just below the pen). Clasts of the underlying bed are included in the subsequent depositional unit, in this case, a "rip up" clast.
These are the St. Anthony sand dunes near Rexburg. They are lateral dunes at the flank of a mountain. I was surprised at the immensity and hieght of some of the hills. There is a shallow interdune lake near the edge of the dunes. The whole thing seemed a little surreal -it's something I've never seen before.
The shallow lake was full of ripple marks.
You can see the Tetons off in the distance.
