Some snapshots of the fine fall 1998 field trip to Las Cruces Country (II)

Photos courtesy of Fred Gamble:

Pipes: Jack Cunningham (retired WNMU professor) playing the bagpipes.

Day1quary: Day 1, Stop 1 Foot log stop1, Quarry at Derry Hills. Exposure of argillaceous limestone in lower part of the Pennsylvanian Bar Be Formation.

Day1stp3: Day 1, Stop 1, Footlog stop 3, Exposure of pebble and cobble conglomerates in the uppermost part of the Pennsylvanian Bar B Formation.

Day3stp1: Day 3, Stop 1, Jim Witcher discussing geothermal activity in the East Rincon Hills area at outcrop of Camp Rice Formation. This outcrop records the shallow dynamics of a fossil geothermal system.

Opals: Day 3, Stop2, Distinctive opal bed in the Camp Rice Formation. The opal bed contains silicified stems, tubers, roots and grasses. This bed is believed to be a distal remnant of the siliceous sinter complex fed by hot springs discharging from the East Rincon Hills fault zone.

Day3stp3: Day3, Stop 3, Participants looking for barite and psilomene crystals in a quarry most recently mined for road aggregate. This mineralization is in the Hayner Ranch Formation.

Mack: Field trip chairman, Greg Mack, had many duties, including discouraging participants from straying too close to an active beehive on the cliff face near stop 1 of the third day of the field conference.