Final Field Day

FILLMORE, UTAH – [Guest Bloggers Tricia Hall and Will Cary]

We arrived at the field site at 9:30am with the sun already beating down on the lava fields, which are the convenient color of black. Dr. Pollock, Whitney, and Kevin parted with the rest of the group to accumulate more xenolith samples for Kevin’s project. Their group was able to stay close to the cinder cone. This was not the case for the unfortunate followers of Matt Peppers, who had to make long treks across the lava flows.

Team Hot Water (Matt Peppers and followers) started by locating Chubman, the loveable fissure, and set out to track it north. We worked as rapidly as possible in the hope of retiring early from the heat of the day. As we followed the noble Chubman, we found several anastomosing gaping fissures. Some shows some displacement, which was measured by receiving third degree burns from the hot basalt.

Will and Matt measuring the width of the fissure.

Will and Tricia measuring vertical displacement of the fissure, which may indicate a relation with the local fault..

A quick break for lunch under an intense sun left us short of water. We then tried to follow the fissure system to the mapped fault. We ran into an area where basalt debris made it nearly impossible to follow the system farther. We made our way to the fault scarp nearby and measured jointing to help determine the nature of the faulting. After the tracking was done, we quickly measured a monocline along the west margin of the black flow before heading back, our water bottles empty.

Team Hot Water measured these joints along the fault scarp west of the fissure system.

Team Sandstone (Kevin and followers) travelled around Miter crater attempting to find samples not previously collected.  Kevin began the day with 18 samples and ended with 28 samples, which mean copious amounts of lab work for the young chap. STOP…Hammer time was revamped in an hour-long effort by Kevin Silver to dislodge the xenolith, affectionately named Neopolitan, from the resilient host rock. He did not succeed and resorted to smashing the xenolith with both a hammer and a mallet to analyze the pieces in the lab.

Team Utah wraps up field work for the season.