Friday, October 30, 2009

An interesting find

I found myself driving up the road past my mother's house and I spotted an unique outcrop at a local swimming hole. Even though I had driven and run past this outcrop many, many times, I just noticed it for the first time as a geologist. It is possible it was exposed from hillside runoff during a flood event that occurred in 2006. Take a look.




As you can see, the exposed rock to the left of the picture is tilting back into the hillside while the rock to the right is still positioned horizontal. The distance between the two exposed outcrop is a matter of a meter or two. Here's a closer look:




Unfortunately, the outcrop itself is pretty inaccessible. Recent rain events have flooded the river to the point where crossing it will be risky and the top of the ridge is private property used for hunting. This is definitely on my list of outcrops to check out.

2 comments:

Roy said...

Well Tony I have to say that this is probably a structure+mophology outcrop here. My initial idea is that there was a vertical fracture in the bedrock which, through many years of freeze/thaw and frost heave, and eventually the outcrop as a whole lost it's ability to retain this block. At this point, gravity took over and is slowly moving the block downslope.

grimey said...

That could be possible. There's only one way to find out. Next up is some Google Earth work.