Adamello: field work

Late June, it was once again time to leave Switzerland. I was off to the Southern Alps in Italy. Just 50 km from touristy Lake Garda, there's a lovely alpine hut called Rifugio Tita Secchi. (www.rifugiotitasecchi.it) This hut, located at a lake below an enourmous mountain, was to be my home for about three weeks during my field work.

Lago della Vacca and Cornone di Blumone

La Vacca on the Passo della Vacca

The first 1.5 weeks, I enjoyed the company of about 40 other geology students. They were doing a BSc mapping course. Hence, my job was to assist them with creating a geological map of the are between the lake (Lago della Vacca) and the mountain (Cornone di Blumone). We had fabulous weather and saw plenty (varieties) of tonalites;).

skeletal grown hornblende Xstal in tonalite

folded comb layering

The remaining 1.5 weeks, I spent with another MSc student and later on my own. The goal was to observe field relations in my field area (south-west of the hut) and mainly to collect a smart choice of rocks. My field are covers 6km^2 in the Val Cadino and Val Fredda. The area wasn't as high-alpine as the hut. Grass, abundant alpine flowers and marmots dominated... The weather went from beautiful to changing with the odd rain and hail in between.

Val Fredda with flank of Mt.Frerone, Passo di Val Fredda, Mt. Cadino and Mt. Mattoni (from left to right, which is NW to SE)

at the top of Mt. Cadino

typical mingling phenomena in Val Fredda

helicopter flying down samples (and lots of other stuff from hut) - what a feeling to watch this!

the reason why working in the steep slopes was bit tricky everyonce in a while

flower

Turk's cap lily (I think)

spider

Luckily, I wasn't short of company because there were usually some guests at the alpine hut or I got invited by the guys working at the dam. If not, I was warmly welcomed by the family and staff of the rifugio Tita Secchi. Great people (showing a lot of patience with my poor Italian;))! Ahh and the Italian cuisine... gotta love it! Real pasta, real coffee...

One weekend, my boyfriend-at-that-time came all the way from Switzerland and I took a Sunday off to do some hiking in this most beautiful area. So, we went off to climb some mountains: Mt. Frerone and Cornone di Blumone! What a feeling to be ontop of Blumone, finally after living at its slope for days after days!

on top of Mt. Frerone, the moutain in the background on the right is Cornone the Blumone

view over Lago della Vacca from the top of Cornone di Blumone

Another weekend, Blumone Maraton was THE event! The hut was crowded with lots of party-loving Italians. Entertaining times drinking genepì and grappa... Watching the runners suffer the next morning in the fog and rain...

At the end of my stay, the professor and a phD student from Geneva came. Together, we spent a day in the field. Pretty helpful actually, because there were enough phenomena I didn't quite understand on my own. When they left, the took my rocks with them. Some of them were flown down by helicopter whereas the majority made it down to the parking lot on my back. It's quite funny how you can observe yourself getting faster and faster on the same track...;)

All in all, it was great field work and I'm now just hoping that the chemistry will tell me something interesting;) We'll see...