Westport
The last week: my geology fieldtrip to Westport and surrounding rocks. An entire course and assessment fitted into 7 days, with travel either end!
Saturday: looking at the river terraces and the Alpine Fault. There is a wall built there about 20 years ago by a VUW professor to measure movement across the Fault; its only problem is that the wall is about 30 cm deep in the ground and 20 m long. No movement has yet been observed...
Sunday: zig-zagging up the whole of Westport Quarry, from limestone in the base of the pit (all broken from blasting so we couldn't approach the face) up through mudstone and sandstone and more mudstone to big beach sand dunes at the top. So many fossils in the base of the mudstone - shells {bivalves, brachiopods, gastropods}, barnacles, leaves, corals...it seems to have been a big sinkhole off-coast, similar to today where the West Coast rivers dig holes offshore and deposit all kinds of material into them.
Monday: dodging BIG waves on 14 Mile Beach early on, in pouring rain as the tide went out. Measuring a big fold in beds of sandstone and blue-green siltstone. Then looking at a rock-shelf of the Charleston Gneiss up at Charleston. Also a stop at Punakaiki on the way past, although the blowholes were unfortunately not that active. The nikaus looked happy for all the rain though.
Tuesday: Down at another beach, along next to Cape Foulwind. Measuring the same stratigraphic sequence as seen in the quarry half a kilometre away, and noting all the differences - such as 10 m of mudstone in the quarry, but a whopping 120 m of the same mudstone mysteriously at the beach. Perfect weather!
Wednesday: Up to the Denniston Plateau in sun and a pleasant absence of wind. Quick stop at the Incline to look at the place where the coal tracks had been, then off to measure the folding of another fold below coal seams. The data wasn't nearly so good here as at 14 Mile Beach, so I was rather glad this structural assessment was on 14 Mile.
Thursday: Visited the Cape Foulwind seal colony. I think it's rather nicer than Kaikoura; also the seals were very active as the pups were a few months old, so they were playing in the kelp and bouncing around. And a massive writeup of all the data that needed to be handed in that night. The writeups each evening were the time-consuming part, and cut sleep time down to 7 hours or less. Bit tiring by the end of the week. But we went and celebrated the end of the trip Thursday evening anyway. Geologists like to party :)
Saturday: looking at the river terraces and the Alpine Fault. There is a wall built there about 20 years ago by a VUW professor to measure movement across the Fault; its only problem is that the wall is about 30 cm deep in the ground and 20 m long. No movement has yet been observed...
Sunday: zig-zagging up the whole of Westport Quarry, from limestone in the base of the pit (all broken from blasting so we couldn't approach the face) up through mudstone and sandstone and more mudstone to big beach sand dunes at the top. So many fossils in the base of the mudstone - shells {bivalves, brachiopods, gastropods}, barnacles, leaves, corals...it seems to have been a big sinkhole off-coast, similar to today where the West Coast rivers dig holes offshore and deposit all kinds of material into them.
Monday: dodging BIG waves on 14 Mile Beach early on, in pouring rain as the tide went out. Measuring a big fold in beds of sandstone and blue-green siltstone. Then looking at a rock-shelf of the Charleston Gneiss up at Charleston. Also a stop at Punakaiki on the way past, although the blowholes were unfortunately not that active. The nikaus looked happy for all the rain though.
Tuesday: Down at another beach, along next to Cape Foulwind. Measuring the same stratigraphic sequence as seen in the quarry half a kilometre away, and noting all the differences - such as 10 m of mudstone in the quarry, but a whopping 120 m of the same mudstone mysteriously at the beach. Perfect weather!
Wednesday: Up to the Denniston Plateau in sun and a pleasant absence of wind. Quick stop at the Incline to look at the place where the coal tracks had been, then off to measure the folding of another fold below coal seams. The data wasn't nearly so good here as at 14 Mile Beach, so I was rather glad this structural assessment was on 14 Mile.
Thursday: Visited the Cape Foulwind seal colony. I think it's rather nicer than Kaikoura; also the seals were very active as the pups were a few months old, so they were playing in the kelp and bouncing around. And a massive writeup of all the data that needed to be handed in that night. The writeups each evening were the time-consuming part, and cut sleep time down to 7 hours or less. Bit tiring by the end of the week. But we went and celebrated the end of the trip Thursday evening anyway. Geologists like to party :)