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Sharing Science in the Local Community: What Ideas Do You Have?
How often do you wish you had a blank slate? The term can have many meanings and contexts, but most often it means the chance to start over, or to start a project free of restrictions. That in essence...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: At the Portal...
At the portal of hell? For the miners who once worked these tunnels, it was...I miss the tabloids sometimes. Sure, there's the Onion, which gets mistaken for real news sometimes. But there was nothing...
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An Invasion of Ents? No, Just the Biggest Living Things on the Planet
Giant Ent toes. Or Imperial Walkers. Run for your lives!There are things in Yosemite National Park other than Yosemite Valley. One of the gems (out of a great many) is the Mariposa Grove, a forest of...
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Is This the Best View from a Tunnel Anywhere? And Other Slightly Unfamiliar...
I did something a little different this last weekend for Mother's Day. I found there was a single campsite available in Yosemite Valley on Sunday night, so we headed there for a little explore. I also...
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Tis-sa-ack (Half Dome) From Some Different Angles
Tis-sa-ack (Half Dome) from Glacier Point. For the origin of the name Tis-sa-ack, check my post at http://geotripper.blogspot.com/2014/11/if-these-cliffs-could-talk-tis-sa-ack.htmlTis-sa-ack is, along...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: Exploring the...
One of the movies I most love to hate is "The Core". There are plenty of ridiculous parts, there are several earnest geologist characters, there are the many gory deaths while the heroes save planet...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: Into the...
The sediments of the Great Valley Group form the parallel ridges trending diagonally across the photograph.California has a lot of potential for geological mayhem, with the San Andreas and many other...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: The Sea Floor...
Welcome to one of the strangest places on the planet! It's the size of West Virginia, but flatter than the Mississippi River Valley. It was once America's Serengeti, but 95% of the original landscape...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: In the...
An Egret and Tule Elk at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge near Los BanosThe Great Valley began as a shallow sea (a forearc basin) between the Mesozoic subduction zone and the Ancestral Sierra...
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Hitting the Trail for a Few Days
After a flurry of posts this week, I got kind of close to finishing my series on the most dangerous plate boundary, but school is out, and I've got a brief window of opportunity. The open road calls,...
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The World's Rarest Fish is Where? The Most Restricted Vertebrate Habitat on...
There is a lonely nondescript mountain of limestone in the barren desert east of Death Valley National Park. There is a hole at the base of the slope, the entrance to a cavern. Lurking within are...
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An "Island" of Endemic Species: Not Hawaii, not the Galapagos, but Ash...
Desert surrounds Ash Meadows, an unlikely oasis in western NevadaThe formations are described as two coiled rattlesnakes, although to the geologist, this is a trick of erosion. The barren limestone...
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How Strange Has the Weather Been? This was the Death Valley Region only a...
Zabriskie Point in late May. It's usually over 100 degrees and sunny this time of year.The weather was a bit...off last week as we hit the road to the southwest. We meant to drive over Tioga Pass, and...
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Weather a Bit Less Strange? Death Valley in the Last Two Days: Hot!
There is, of course, hardly such a thing as "average" weather, just like there is no "average" precipitation. I'm pretty sure that the number of days in a given year that actually match the average...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: The "Dr. Who"...
The Whitney Crest of the High Sierra. Mt. Whitney is just out of sight to the right.I was torn over the title for this addition to the "Driving Through" blog series. I thought of taking the zombie...
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Short Course: Geology of the Central Sierra Nevada, June 12-14: And What a...
Have you ever had the desire to learn about the geology of the Sierra Nevada in a spectacular mountain setting. Baker Station near Sonora Pass just north of the Yosemite National Park is the home base...
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Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: A Gentle...
As we leave the Great Valley behind on our journey through the most dangerous plate boundary in the world, we finally enter the world of the Sierra Nevada. Many may think of Yosemite Valley or Lake...
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A Geologist (also named Hayes) Sits Through "San Andreas", the Movie
What the heck is this? These are fault slickensides (scraping marks from fault motions) at Hoover Dam. Where the movie says there are no faults.I love sitting through geology-based movies, so I can sit...
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Headed into the Back of Beyond (Again)
I had hoped to finish our blog journey through the most dangerous plate boundary, but there was just too little time between real-world trips. The next journey is taking me and nearly two dozen...
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Home From the Back of Beyond: Some Images of Strange and Wonderful Places
Thunderstorm near Bandelier National MonumentNo, it's not a volcanic eruption, but with the light show that followed that evening, it might as well have been. We were in the high desert of New Mexico...
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