29 May 2025 Harpole Mesa, La Sal Mountains, Utah

All is well at the SEOE Geology Field Camp of the McCausland College of Arts & Sciences of the University of South Carolina. We are past the midpoint, and feelings around camp — for good and for sad — are that we are in or entering the home stretch. We are posted up above Castle Valley on the edge of the La Sal mountains just outside of Moab for the next four nights. Usually we camp in Salt Valley northwest of town, but after losing multiple tailgate tents to dust devils, and dealing with weeks of sand-and silt-covered sleeping bags over the years, threatening forecasts of upper 90s temperatures this week finally pushed us to the respite of the higher elevations of the La Sals. We’ve found a lovely home amongst the piñon pines and Utah junipers of Harpole Mesa with stunning views down into Castle Valley, past Castleton Tower (of The Eiger Sanction and other fame), the Priest and Nuns, and the Rectory (of Blaze of Glory and Camp4 Collective slackline fame) and into the Colorado River canyon. Temperatures on the mesa were 12 degrees cooler than the canyons when we arrived at camp yesterday, so to say that we are grateful is an understatement. The return to Harpole Mesa is especially meaningful for me, for it is where I camped while falling in love with the canyonlands as a teaching assistant for the University of Arizona, more than 25 years ago. I even recognize some of the campfire rings from decades ago and think I found where we used to set up our cook tent.

The view from Camp Seven of SEOE Geology Field Camp, 2025 edition.

Today the students are getting their first day off since an afternoon off in Bishop more than a week ago. Mouths agape as we drove across the San Rafael Swell and down into the sculpted desert region from the sagebrush and forests of central Utah, they seem to have taken to the landscape with aplomb, and are exploring on their own today amidst taking care of some domestic tasks in town. With exposures approaching 100%, this region is ideal for studying many aspects of sedimentary and structural geology — indeed, a student commented during our drive yesterday how photos of similar structures they have seen dozens of times in class just aren’t at all the same as experiencing the geology in person. I couldn’t agree more, and am so grateful that various administrations, colleagues and supporters — thank you! — also seem to understand. This is where geology is believable. This is where geology is learned, especially at the early stages of one’s career.

Forelimb of the San Rafael Swell, arguably the iconic Colorado Plateau monocline, with ‘Garnet’ — one of our people-movers and water haulers — for scale.

Before arriving in the Colorado Plateau but since departing the eastern Sierra Nevada of California a week ago, field camp traversed the Great Basin of Nevada and western Utah, and through the Sevier belt in central Utah. We mapped sedimentary rocks in a Neogene sedimentary basin of the basin & range geologic province, and part of a hinterland fold belt on Antelope Mountain west of Ely, Nevada. We then traveled over and back across the Utah state line to reach the stunning metamorphic geology — staurolites! garnets! mylonites! intensely sheared marbles! mineral lineations! — of the northern Snake Range, where students deftly put together two of the critical phases of Cordilleran evolution. We reticently departed our stunning camp alongside Hendry’s Creek in the Snake Range for the similarly beautiful alpine meadow of upper Oak Creek Canyon in the Canyon Range, where we constructed a cross-section of one of the folded thrusts and synorogenic conglomerates of the Sevier belt that are themselves another key piece to the pedagogically perfect puzzle that is the North American Cordillera.

A typical morning meeting at Geology Field Camp 2025, this time in the Horse Camp Basin map project of central Nevada.

Geology Field Campers ascend Hendry’s Creek canyon in search of staurolite-garnet paraschists of the lower plate of the Snake Range metamorphic core complex of eastern Nevada. With depth estimates determined from these metamorphic index minerals, students are estimating the amount of crystal shortening and thickening that occurred during formation of the Cordilleran orogen. Such activities expand beyond conventional field camp skills development.

McCausland College Geology Field Camp students atop the Schell Creek Range detachment in the northern Snake Range, Nevada. This is a world class example of a low-angle mylonitic normal fault that accommodates extensional collapse of the ‘Nevadaplano’ hinterland of the North American Cordilleran orogen.

Field camp students map the folded Canyon Range thrust of the thin-skinned Sevier fold-thrust belt of central Utah.

Until our arrival here in the Canyonlands, the weather has been absolutely ideal — rarely above 80, no humidity since leaving California, only brief bouts of wind, and just a few sprinkles. Sleeping weather has been particularly wonderful, especially hearing of the heat and humidity back home. We’ve continued the field camp tradition of eating well, with highlights including peamash-potato-chorizo tacos, shredded-chicken hominy soup with pan de chapa, farro with sausage, butternut squash and harissa sour cream, and of course: sonoran hot dogs.

Peamash potato chorizo tacos in the Canyon Range, Utah.

Sonoran hot dogs in the Horse Camp Basin, Nevada.

We’ll spend the next three days taking advantage of exceptional outcrops to improve student unit description and basin interpretation skills, to explore yet another deformational environment of the Cordillera, and to further hone mapping skills before we head east into the Colorado Rockies to put a bow on this transect of one of Earth’s classic orogens. Onward.