After a lazy Sunday (Flavio and I enjoyed the beautiful weather juggling and playing devils sticks in a park at the lakeside and afterwards even went swimming in the lake of Zurich because we were so hot!) including an orchestra rehearsal (oh and on Friday I attended a phD exam speech about limnogeology which was very interesting – that guy had a close look at subaquatic land slides in the lake of Zurich and another Swiss lake).
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Lake of Zurich on that lazy Sunday...Well right, after that Sunday, I had to be at the coach parking ground at 7.30am again. This time we (all the 2nd semester student of our institute – about 40 students – and some other from university of Zurich who study geography) left for a field trip.
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Monday, 06-18-07
First our bus driver (a most kind and humorous person!) had to take the bus with all of us to a place where they fixed something so we could hit the road a little later. On this first day we looked at Molasse (the fluviatile sediments produced by erosion of the Alps) and even more sedimentary rocks. The second stop was amazing! One could see structures like ripples from waves and flows, cross layering…
That's the mentioned cross layering ( just right to the hammer). 'Cross layering' (Kreuzschichtung) is when these small kind of dunes show opposing direction which indicates a 180° change of the flow-direction.
It’s been very impressive because it simply looked like a photo out of a scholar text book! And usually reality isn’t as simply as shown in the textbooks, I think.
On this picture you see the Flaserschichtung - I've got no clue what's the correct expression in English and since it took me quite a while to understand that thing im German I'm not gonna try to give you an explanation in English...;)
Later we also looked at an outrop which showed the sediments of a region with low and high tide, neap and spring tide. After this eventful and terribly hot day we were all happy to arrive at our ‘hotel’ up in the mountains (Gantrisch-Gurnigel – Berner Oberland) and enjoy dinner. After dinner we did some theory to repeat to seen stuff.
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First our bus driver (a most kind and humorous person!) had to take the bus with all of us to a place where they fixed something so we could hit the road a little later. On this first day we looked at Molasse (the fluviatile sediments produced by erosion of the Alps) and even more sedimentary rocks. The second stop was amazing! One could see structures like ripples from waves and flows, cross layering…
That's the mentioned cross layering ( just right to the hammer). 'Cross layering' (Kreuzschichtung) is when these small kind of dunes show opposing direction which indicates a 180° change of the flow-direction.It’s been very impressive because it simply looked like a photo out of a scholar text book! And usually reality isn’t as simply as shown in the textbooks, I think.
On this picture you see the Flaserschichtung - I've got no clue what's the correct expression in English and since it took me quite a while to understand that thing im German I'm not gonna try to give you an explanation in English...;)Later we also looked at an outrop which showed the sediments of a region with low and high tide, neap and spring tide. After this eventful and terribly hot day we were all happy to arrive at our ‘hotel’ up in the mountains (Gantrisch-Gurnigel – Berner Oberland) and enjoy dinner. After dinner we did some theory to repeat to seen stuff.
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Tuesday, 06-19-07
Excerpt out of my journal:
It’s been quite a busy day. We’ve been outdoors hiking looking at all kind of rocks (mostly different limestones). After the whole programme at about 5pm Mark, Luca and I decided to hike Gantrisch (mountain). From the parking lodge to the top it took us 1.25 hours (normal folks spend 2.25 hours tramping...). Luckily the view up there was simply stunning and gorgeous! Downhill we took a shortcut and ran the last part of the track and therefore made the whole way in half an hour. Dinner, chatting…
Excerpt out of my journal:
It’s been quite a busy day. We’ve been outdoors hiking looking at all kind of rocks (mostly different limestones). After the whole programme at about 5pm Mark, Luca and I decided to hike Gantrisch (mountain). From the parking lodge to the top it took us 1.25 hours (normal folks spend 2.25 hours tramping...). Luckily the view up there was simply stunning and gorgeous! Downhill we took a shortcut and ran the last part of the track and therefore made the whole way in half an hour. Dinner, chatting…
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Wednesday, 06-20-07
After we had looked at the Préalpes on Tuesday our topic on Wednesday was Flysch. Flysch is connected with a tectonical meaning, in this case the subduction. We first looked at big auflusch of turbidites. A turbidite is a specific formation which comes into being by a mud flow. Imagine you’ve got a subaquatic hill and on its sides sediments lagernab. At one point the whole thing starts sliding down. When the whole thing starts to slow down and sediment again you’ve got the biggest particles on the bottom and the tiny ones on the top (graded bedding). At this place we also saw traces of bioturbation, signs of ancient flows...
In the afternoon we mapped from distance. We ‘simply’ had to sketch the mountain chain at the other side of the valley and then include the different geological units in our sketch. We were supposed to see the boundaries between the different units but also had a map (geological one) which helped us to do the whole drawing. Nonetheless my attempt looked more like an artistic opus than a scientific work…;)
My !most beautiful! lol: sketch...
After all that drawing we looked some Rauwacke (Zelldolomit) which isn’t a dolomite and seems to be a mysterious kind of rock. The known facts are that it’s a Ascherungshorziont in the alpine region for stratigraphies from the Trias. Hence it usually does have mechanic qualities different from the ones of the layer above and beneath it. It’s cellular and in its ’holes’ there usually was gypsum, anhydrite or salt. And then there’s a lot of stuff people guess but don’t have clear evidence of.
Right, that's that mysterious Rauhwacke - you also see me reducing a rock to smaller pieces...
That night some friends and I ended up talking to and with two of the professors for hours about alpine geology in general, the local problems in geology… It also started storming and raining that night which I thought to be relieving after all that heat the past few days.
After we had looked at the Préalpes on Tuesday our topic on Wednesday was Flysch. Flysch is connected with a tectonical meaning, in this case the subduction. We first looked at big auflusch of turbidites. A turbidite is a specific formation which comes into being by a mud flow. Imagine you’ve got a subaquatic hill and on its sides sediments lagernab. At one point the whole thing starts sliding down. When the whole thing starts to slow down and sediment again you’ve got the biggest particles on the bottom and the tiny ones on the top (graded bedding). At this place we also saw traces of bioturbation, signs of ancient flows...
In the afternoon we mapped from distance. We ‘simply’ had to sketch the mountain chain at the other side of the valley and then include the different geological units in our sketch. We were supposed to see the boundaries between the different units but also had a map (geological one) which helped us to do the whole drawing. Nonetheless my attempt looked more like an artistic opus than a scientific work…;)
My !most beautiful! lol: sketch...After all that drawing we looked some Rauwacke (Zelldolomit) which isn’t a dolomite and seems to be a mysterious kind of rock. The known facts are that it’s a Ascherungshorziont in the alpine region for stratigraphies from the Trias. Hence it usually does have mechanic qualities different from the ones of the layer above and beneath it. It’s cellular and in its ’holes’ there usually was gypsum, anhydrite or salt. And then there’s a lot of stuff people guess but don’t have clear evidence of.
Right, that's that mysterious Rauhwacke - you also see me reducing a rock to smaller pieces...That night some friends and I ended up talking to and with two of the professors for hours about alpine geology in general, the local problems in geology… It also started storming and raining that night which I thought to be relieving after all that heat the past few days.
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Thursday, 06-21-07
Rainy, foggy and stormy day! Thus we had to skip our first stop which would have been another drawing exercise… Nevertheless we stopped to looked at some Wildflysch which is called Mélange nowadays, had lunch, walked thru the Aare gorge…
On this photo you get a slight impression what it means to look at outrcrops sometimes. We certainly proofed not to be nice-weather-geologists during this week. At this point we were quite lucky this year because nobody went swimming (as it had been the case the past two years!;))
In the afternoon we visited a local hyrdroelectric power station. We drove 2.7 km thru the mountain and visited their location. I felt weird down there because we were 200 meters below earth’s surface but the room we were in looked like a normal room in a normal house – painted walls, a doors, no windows of course but that’s been about the only difference! After having looked at all the machines in there we had a look at the Kristallkluft they found when building the Stollen. Impressive I tell you. Hopefully I’m gonna get a picture to show you!
And here you go: This remaining of the whole spaces (originally 9 meters long and maybe max 2 meters wide - they blew up the biggest part when building the 'underground gallery') is filled with well-formed crystalls - you can find all kind of minerals. The one big things you mainly see here is quartz.
There was a big quartz xtal exhibited there and of course as a 'geologist' you also have to check out details and investigate the whole thing by looking at it with a lens. There usually are small bubbles which are very important when determining the conditions when the xtal's forming. We did some calculations on that (pressure, temperature, phase diagram, chemical equilibrium...) and then could say when this whole xtal body formed, how deep below earth surface, how high the pressure was back then, how high the temperature gradient must have been in this region back then...
Driving to our new home on the Susten, having dinner, chatting, sleeping…
.Rainy, foggy and stormy day! Thus we had to skip our first stop which would have been another drawing exercise… Nevertheless we stopped to looked at some Wildflysch which is called Mélange nowadays, had lunch, walked thru the Aare gorge…
On this photo you get a slight impression what it means to look at outrcrops sometimes. We certainly proofed not to be nice-weather-geologists during this week. At this point we were quite lucky this year because nobody went swimming (as it had been the case the past two years!;))In the afternoon we visited a local hyrdroelectric power station. We drove 2.7 km thru the mountain and visited their location. I felt weird down there because we were 200 meters below earth’s surface but the room we were in looked like a normal room in a normal house – painted walls, a doors, no windows of course but that’s been about the only difference! After having looked at all the machines in there we had a look at the Kristallkluft they found when building the Stollen. Impressive I tell you. Hopefully I’m gonna get a picture to show you!
And here you go: This remaining of the whole spaces (originally 9 meters long and maybe max 2 meters wide - they blew up the biggest part when building the 'underground gallery') is filled with well-formed crystalls - you can find all kind of minerals. The one big things you mainly see here is quartz.There was a big quartz xtal exhibited there and of course as a 'geologist' you also have to check out details and investigate the whole thing by looking at it with a lens. There usually are small bubbles which are very important when determining the conditions when the xtal's forming. We did some calculations on that (pressure, temperature, phase diagram, chemical equilibrium...) and then could say when this whole xtal body formed, how deep below earth surface, how high the pressure was back then, how high the temperature gradient must have been in this region back then...Driving to our new home on the Susten, having dinner, chatting, sleeping…
Friday, 06-22-07
In the morning our group looked at different stuff along the pass street. Unfortunately it was raining, cold, foggy – well, just nasty weather…We saw a dyke, eclogite, peridotite, amphibolite, garnet….
In the afternoon we studied rocks in a location called Sustli. We saw chlorite (retrograde metamorphosis), special small rifts and Xenolithes. And we also saw the Tour de Suisse (bike race) – not that it was the highlight of the day but I just wanted to mention it. The highlight of day was at the end. Since we stayed at Sustli for four hours we ended up having hiked uphill quite a lot whilst looking at rocks and then had to get down again. It started hailing (that’s not the highlight yet!). And there still was snow and guess what we did – yes, we glissaded down the slope on the snow fields. It was so much fun! I used to love to glissade on our hikes when I was a kid. Unfortunately the only slope I did some glissading on lately were rocky - which is fun as well but certainly not as much as on snow!!!
In the morning our group looked at different stuff along the pass street. Unfortunately it was raining, cold, foggy – well, just nasty weather…We saw a dyke, eclogite, peridotite, amphibolite, garnet….
In the afternoon we studied rocks in a location called Sustli. We saw chlorite (retrograde metamorphosis), special small rifts and Xenolithes. And we also saw the Tour de Suisse (bike race) – not that it was the highlight of the day but I just wanted to mention it. The highlight of day was at the end. Since we stayed at Sustli for four hours we ended up having hiked uphill quite a lot whilst looking at rocks and then had to get down again. It started hailing (that’s not the highlight yet!). And there still was snow and guess what we did – yes, we glissaded down the slope on the snow fields. It was so much fun! I used to love to glissade on our hikes when I was a kid. Unfortunately the only slope I did some glissading on lately were rocky - which is fun as well but certainly not as much as on snow!!!
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Saturday, 06-23-07
Last day of our fieldtrip. Our group was stationed at the Steingletscher (glacier) that morning. We looked at some rocks (yes, again – but they don’t look all the same!). These ones were quite hard to identify because first one had to hit them into pieces with the hammer (they were weathered on the outside) and second they all were metamorphic rocks and some even had seen retrograde metamorphosis. We also did some sketching again. This time we were supposed to see old moraine of the glacier and thus had to watch carefully (landscapes, vegetation…)
After our lunchtime finally the sun started shining and for the first time on the Susten we were able to see the surrounding mountains and glaciers. After some theory, summary and stuff like that, we hit the road and headed back to Zurich. It’s been an exciting and very interesting time and I’ve certainly learnt tons of stuff. Looking at all the things we talked about last year helps so much in understanding them better! Thus I’m now ready to study five weeks for our huge exams in summer/fall!;)
Last day of our fieldtrip. Our group was stationed at the Steingletscher (glacier) that morning. We looked at some rocks (yes, again – but they don’t look all the same!). These ones were quite hard to identify because first one had to hit them into pieces with the hammer (they were weathered on the outside) and second they all were metamorphic rocks and some even had seen retrograde metamorphosis. We also did some sketching again. This time we were supposed to see old moraine of the glacier and thus had to watch carefully (landscapes, vegetation…)
After our lunchtime finally the sun started shining and for the first time on the Susten we were able to see the surrounding mountains and glaciers. After some theory, summary and stuff like that, we hit the road and headed back to Zurich. It’s been an exciting and very interesting time and I’ve certainly learnt tons of stuff. Looking at all the things we talked about last year helps so much in understanding them better! Thus I’m now ready to study five weeks for our huge exams in summer/fall!;)
To finish this post not a common wisdom but an excerpt out of my fieldbook. Just so you get a picture of how such a thing can look like... Here you go;):
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