The one and only Poleta Folds
The great experiment. Take eleven students with diverse backgrounds, interests, skill levels, and personalities. Add two well-intentioned professors and a technician. Re-assign professors to roles of alarm clocks, full-time drivers, cattle herders, logistics planners, search & rescue, psychologists, life coaches, personal trainers, cleaning service, etc. Surround with world-class geology. Add projects over 1.5 years in development. Add cutting edge technological field equipment and skills. Isolate for thirty straight days (with only a single day off). Carefully balance students at the fine line between burnout and maximum productivity. Stir and challenge vigorously. What comes out included some of the best teaching experiences I have had, but also included moments which could have easily passed for a trashy reality TV show. The students learned quite a lot, and so did I.
The last 1.5 years involved research into all the other UC field camps,
collecting statistics on the 100 or so field camps run nationally every
summer, multiple scouting
trips to examine possible field sites and facilities, designing many of
the projects from scratch, planning logistics, estimating expenses,
writing multiple competitive grant proposals for field supplies
(trailers and iPads don't grow on trees...), field testing
5 different digital mapping systems before working out the kinks and
settling on the one you used, justifying all aspects of the course to
University administration in painful detail (honestly easier for you to
transfer in your field camp from another school
than for us to run it ourselves for some reason!), and then 30 days of
logistically intense, physically and mentally draining fieldwork with a
diverse group of students (particularly in terms of academic
preparedness, independence, interests, and personality).
Balancing group morale and varying degrees of preparedness, with
pushing maximum learning and productivity was certainly the greatest
challenge I felt like I faced in trying to be sure people got the most
out of this field camp. This necessitated moving deadlines
and switching around project days on-the-fly. From a 4:45am wakeup it was a sleep depriving endurance run with 3-4 hours of driving, a full day of chasing after students in the field, then returning to camp to handle logistics, lectures, questions, grading, and then ultimately making it to bed around 10:00pm to start it all over again. In terms of professor contact hours, this course was the equivalent of
teaching at least eight 4-unit courses...
The first half we were based out of UC's Crooked Creek Research Station at 10000 ft in the White Mountains. The thin air was a new experience for many of the students and it took days for them to acclimatize. We started our summer field with the tried and true Poleta Folds mapping area in the Deep Springs. This is a classic site due to its combination of colorful, distinct, and laterally continuous stratigraphy, complex folds and faults the repeat the same 150 m of rock over a large area, and remarkably good outcrop coverage that allow features to be mapped unambiguously. The recent acquisition of high resolution airborne lidar data only adds to the appeal by allowing tailor-made accurate basemaps to be generated. We ran into no fewer than six other schools mapping Poleta at the same time as us! My best find was a student's smart phone which I managed to return. The students had mixed feelings about this field area. Apparently it was a considerable step-up in difficulty from their prerequisite class field areas which overwhelmed, but they also seemed to appreciate the wide open expanse and freedom this area afforded. For my part I enjoyed mapping with the benefit of a digital tablet (cheating!) and then comparing to the map I made as an undergraduate. Not to toot my own horn but I was surprised and frankly rather impressed by some of the intricate mapping I was able to do by the end of my sophmore year. There were of course intricacies I missed and these were the most satisfying to resolve.
The long days and early starts (to make the most of the cool morning hours) certainly weighed down student morale so we did our best to splice in trips to the bristlecones or snow to give temporary respite.
View from the classroom
Leisure was in short supply but Andrey and I did manage to get in a few wheezy high altitude runs around Crooked Creek and a half day jaunt up White Mountain Peak (14252ft), while the students were at camp working on their Poleta reports. It was good to get some exercise!
Finishing the Poleta report was a good palate cleanser for the students, which we followed with some shorter projects. While Andrey and I sat bound to grade in Crooked Creek station, the students had their first digital project mapping a one-mile square radius around the station. This task they generally seemed to enjoy, especially the cool temperatures and various metamorphic rocks encountered. They then photo-interpreted a new area of Poleta Folds based on their existing knowledge of the stratigraphy and structure and then spent a single day mapping as much of a one-mile by two-mile swath as they could. This they were able to do remarkably well given the efficiency of the tablets.
We also had a memorable "show-and-tell" day visiting the Eureka Dunes to see what are probably the most spectacular dune field in California. It was already roasting hot by mid-morning but we all enjoyed a climb to the top of a prominent dune and jumping off to make the distinctive "boom" sound on impact. Fast racing lizards, dune plants like little forests, and a mysterious teapot were all interesting distractions from the excellent geology. The second half of the day we made the 4WD journey to Papoose Flat Pluton, the world famous forcibly intruded pluton. We had a perfect lunch spot overlooking the flat which provided a good vantage for explaining the geology. I completely lost the attenuated Poleta Folds outcrop- turns out I don't remember every outcrop from 10 years ago!
It was hard to gauge the students' response to completing the first half of summer field. They seemed drained and unsure of what to think of the second half. The last day's cleanup at Crooked Creek was remarkably efficient. Soon we departed the cool mountain air and were on the road to SNARL for the second half of field camp.
