Fold Friday: Sandy Hollow, MT
A fold-and-thrust belt in SW Montana, and famous site for geology field camps
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Welcome to another rendition of Fold Friday. This week is a brief trip down memory lane to the summer of my senior year as an undergrad, when I completed my field camp course in Montana.
For the non-geology majors (which I assume is the vast majority of readers), a field camp course is a typical requirement for geology students. Most field camps are completed over 4-8 weeks in the summer and involve significant time spent getting hands-on experience mapping geologic outcrops and stratigraphy, laboratory work running sample analyses, and writing detailed geologic reports. The purpose of these courses is to provide students with tangible skills that relate to geology careers and expose them to the tools and landscapes they will become familiar with as professionals.
My field camp involved three weeks of geology-focused work and three weeks of geophysics-based work. The three geology weeks involved two weeks of mapping and report writing and one week of laboratory analysis. The geophysics-focused time was spent using various equipment and techniques to map the subsurface of different regions to map water tables and bedrock topography.
One of the most memorable weeks for me was a week of the geology portion spent mapping in the desert and mountains of southwest Montana, between Butte and Dillon at a place termed Sandy Hollow.
Sandy Hollow is a nationally famous geologic site, where field camps from around the United States travel for world-class geologic mapping. Outcrops here are well exposed, noticeably different from layer to layer, and provide complex but not extreme tectonics perfect for students learning to map. Frankly, most of the mapping can be done from a satellite image...
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