SFA students at Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Canada! A beautiful place to end Field Camp. Left to right: Aaron, Sarah, Marcy, Justin, Chris and Cody.

Texas

First day of Field Camp '05! At Boquillas Canyon, Big Bend National Park.
KNELLING, L-R: Cody, Rachel, Beverly, Gary and Brett. STANDING: Justin, Sarah, Todd, Bobbie, Aaron, Micah, Eric, Pierre, Domnique, Chris, Manetta and Dr. Nielson. Not shown: Dr. Barker and TA Marcy.


Looking at Grenville Age metamorphic rocks near Van Horn, Texas. (Photo by Manetta.)


New Mexico

There's a hacky sack in this picture somewhere.


Migmatitic folds in gneiss near Bullard Peak, NM. (Photo by Manetta.)


A ladybug convention! They congregate by the thousands on tree trunks on the tops of hills in New Mexico in the late Spring. I'm guessing some of them are not ladies.


Arizona

Nielson and Barker show their lumberjack heritage at Petrified Forest National Monument.


At the spectacular Grand Canyon.


Todd is proud of his drawing of the canyon.


Dr. Barker enjoys one of his favorite views.


Justin, Pierre, Aaron and Rachel hang out in a hole in a rock.


Jacob Lake, a dissolution sinkhole in Kaibab limestone on the north side of the Grand Canyon.


Utah

Part of the group in Zion National Park.


Dominque does his dinosaur impression -- next to the impression of a therapod dinosaur footprint in that block of sandstone.

Parowan Gap in the early morning light...


...And at sunset.


Mt. Tuk North in the La Sal Mountains was much snowier than usual in the Summer of '05...


...But that didn't stop our students from enjoying their hikes through the spruce and aspen forests on their last mapping project.


We stopped to look at the Moab Fault near the entrance to Arches National Park...


... And admired the view at "Park Avenue".


The profs got up early one morning for sunrise at Delicate Arch -- here framing Dr. Nielson.



Wyoming, Montana and Canada!
Enroute to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists convention in Calgary

The Grand Teton Mountains in Wyoming.


Rachel enjoys Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo by Manetta.)


Devil's Tower. Didn't see any spaceships.


Some cold Texans -- at the top of the pass in Glacier National Park, Montana. This is late June?! Who left the freezer door open?


Chief Mountain -- a famous thrust block in northern Montana.


A closer view of Chief Mountain. Very old Precambrian rock has been thrust over much younger Cretaceous strata.


Onward into Canada!


The AAPG convention always includes a student field trip. This time it was to see thrust faulting in one of the world class examples of the style: the Canadian Rockies. Experts on the subject lectured and then took us to spectacular exposures of folds and faults...


...Such as Mt. Kidd.


...And these folds at Elk Pass behind Aaron.


We also found small beauties like these little white flowers growing in a rocky crevice near an alpine lake.


At the AAPG convention in Calgary, SFA won the Student Chapter of the Year award!
(Photo by AAPG photographer.)


After the convention, we stopped at Banff National Park to look at a variety of glacial features, including beautiful Lake Louise. It was created when a melting glacier left a wall of rocky morainal deposits across the valley it once occupied. The '05 Summer Field Camp was the experience of a lifetime for a lucky group of SFA students.


Hey, Alumni -- have more pictures of your SFA field camp? Let us know!

Photos by C. A. Barker unless otherwise noted.
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