Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: The Good

I had the privilege of accompanying Sonoma State's Burgess Shale geology class field trip as a student/chauffeur. Chauffeur/student? Ok, mostly chauffeur. Awesome hikes were had to awesome locations, and it was hard to pare down my favourite images to commemorate the experience. Let's try these:

These funny mop head plants had an even funnier name, but I can't remember it now! Something like "dancing hippies" or "hippie hair" or something. Someone who knows feel free to remind me.

I was lucky enough to find a Marella fossil at the Walcott Quarry, which as legend has it, was discovered due to the finding of a Marella fossil on the slopes below. Moment of joy!

After the near-grueling Burgess Shale hike, the next day we trooped up to the Mt Stephen shale, where a plethora of trilobites and anomalocarid shrimp mandibles can be found. Or even trilonomalocarids if you're really lucky...

Some sort of inside joke provided the troops with knickerbocken for the visit, they were enthusiastically donned for all the excursions and consequently returned in less than tip-top shape (or at least smell).

The Athabasca Glacier was also a remarkable experience, by the end of the day it was glorious and sunny, but throughout the walk up to the ice steps we went through rain and snow and near white-out conditions, all while avoiding millwells, which are thrilling but deadly.

No comments: