Big Bay Dec 10-13

Here are a few quick pictures from fieldwork in one of the most remote areas along the Alpine Fault. A very scenic fixed-wing flight from Milford Sound landed us on the beach at low tide at Big Bay. We then hiked along the 3 mile long beach to McKenzie Creek and then bombed our way back and forth over the shallow creek. Eventually the creek turns a corner and enters a friendly bedrock gorge (dry shoes when done correctly). I had hoped to make it all the way up to the Alpine Fault on the first day but we had a couple delays and it was not to be. We did find a considerably better place to setup base camp on the one recently abandoned flood channel within a 2 km radius, which in the end was probably worth the longer commute. On my last visit to this area, this had been one of my most productive field areas. To my disappoint the last two years have been rough on this area (as well as everywhere else I visited along the Alpine Fault) and the superb outcrops (especially of the fault core) were much deteriorated. This greatly hampered my plans, but we did what we could with the time we had. We measured the orientations of fault-generated fractures, collected calcite veins from both sides of the fault, and took a detailed photo log section through the entire width of the fault zone. We only had one completely rainy day and the others were pretty decent. It was good to fit in this fieldwork at the very end of the season and much was accomplished, but as the general theme for my New Zealand field season, my expectations were much higher than reality.