Coastal adventures

Well, things are finally coming together. On Saturday night, Andrew and I camped out at the lighthouse at Cabo Virgenes, which offers guidance to ships about to take the Strait of Magellan to the Pacific Ocean. Heading north from the straight, there is a roughly 60 km long continuous stretch of 50 – 20 m high cliffs that are entirely composed of glacial sediment. This is quite possibly one of the main shining jewels of my dissertation. Previous researchers have mapped the limits of multiple glaciations on the surface, using topographic maps and photos taken by planes and satellites to distinguish landforms (like moraines) that suggest the oldest glaciers extended to the ocean, and younger ones maybe not so far. However, here at the coast, the cliffs offer a slice into the earth, exposing the layers of sediment lain down through time. I hope to sort out which layer belongs to which glaciation, and maybe even say something about where along the glacier the sediment was being deposited. Was it at the edge? Was it at the base? Were there lakes? Landslides off the glacier face? I’ll let you know in a few years!

Me, walking along the coast (photo credit to Andrew LaCroix). These cliffs go on for 50 kilometres (that's 31 miles for you Americans :) Totally exciting.

Our hike went well. We were very lucky to have a nearly cloudless sky, warm temperatures, and very little wind. We hiked quickly, enjoying some exercise of both the physical and mental variety. I made a lot of exciting observations that made it difficult to turn around at our set return time. It’s always easy to say “well, we’ll just go around this next corner!” Luckily, the threat of rising tides is quite effective in influencing such decisions.

Andrew, earning his keep.

I have exciting news. My supervisor, John, and my committee member, Rene, are now back in Rio Gallegos from their field work in the Andes, along with our Argentine colleagues Hugo and Bettina. Hugo has some contacts here in town, and has managed to secure the rental of two ATVs, a trailer for them, and the use of a hut by the lighthouse at Cabo Virgenes that is owned by the local university. Tomorrow we will check out of our hotel and drive back to the coast, where we will spend Thursday and Friday ripping up the coast on four wheels! That 60 km stretch of cliffs doesn’t stand a chance. I will report back after our adventure, hopefully with lots of photos and stories of good weather and even better science.

Until then, amigos!

Moonrise over the Cierra de los Frailes volcanoes, seen driving back to Rio Gallegos after our trek.

Plans

John Lennon said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to think he came up with that while trying to conduct a season of geologic field work.

I don’t want to imply that all of my surprises have been negative. All of my flights south went very smoothly. We successfully imported Rene’s rock drill at the very last minute, just when we thought it was going to get sent back to Canada. Our hotel room is on the top floor of our hotel, has a nice little bonus kitchenette, and (cue sound of angels singing) full bars of pretty strong wifi in the room. That’s new! I’ve been able to Skype phone Grandma and video chat Dave whenever I feel like it, while simultaneously downloading papers and seeding my favorite TV shows. I found some fresh road cut exposures of glacial sediment on roads that I thought would just have the same stuff I saw last year. These are good things that I did not plan for.

Might not look like much, but it's a road cut exposure that I haven't seen before! Note the little station wagon.

However, I have also gotten a few sharp smacks in the face from the gods of planning, or whoever might control whether or not what you think is going to happen happens. For example, although I thought I was getting a minivan, I ended up with a pretty bare-bones Chevy station wagon from the car rental company in Rio Gallegos. While some of the problems can be shrugged off (what, no cup holders? Who doesn’t love a lap full of coffee cups?), others are just plain disruptive to my carefully laid out plans. Basically, the clearance of this vehicle may be lower than that of a baby who just reached the crawling stage. Gravel roads pitted with pot holes that took me 2.5 hours to drive in a pickup truck last year now take Andrew 4 hours to crawl down (while miraculously maintaining a sunny disposition despite my side-seat driving). Rutted, sandy roads that were passable last year are now a pipe dream. I am finding that I cannot access places that I thought I would be able to, or that due to longer transit times, I do not have as much time to do my work as planned. On top of that, roads that this brave little Chevy might be able to wander down, that seem to go to new and exciting locations for geologizing are gated off, with large warning signs to not trespass. I have to admit, it can be a challenge to gracefully accept that my day is not going to be what I planned it to be. Discussions with Andrew, emails with friends, and phone calls to Dave have helped me feel better about the situation. A part of doing field work in remote areas is learning how to execute your plans, and learning to bend them to the weather and other hurdles thrown your way. Sometimes it’s necessary to reassess and try a different angle. Sometimes your field goals do not pan out, and it’s important to know that does not equal failure, as long as you tried.

Important lesson: if there is a lock, you can always hop the fence!

To end on a positive note, I should share that the penguins at the mouth of the Strait of Magellan seem to be strong and happy this year. Their babies are all grown up, and many of them seem to have left the colony earlier than they did in 2012. The choiques, a small ostrich-type bird, also seem to have larger and healthier babies than last year. This February seems to be warmer and less windy than the last, and everyone from the animals to the people seem happier here at the tip of South America. This Saturday night, Andrew and I will camp at Cabo Virgenes and make a day hike on Sunday up the coast to try and see some new exposures. Cross your fingers that we are not caught by the 9 metre tide!

Walking like penguins at Cabo Virgenes, at the north-eastern coast of the Strait of Magellan

Back at the Antipode!

Hello from Rio Gallegos! Andrew and I arrived in this wind-blown city at the tip of the continent of South America on Valentine’s Day, after spending 24 beautifully hot and sweaty hours in the capitol city of Buenos Aires. Our first few days were spent doing logistical things like getting our rental car,  buying picks and shovels, and reviewing satellite imagery. We really amused the employees of a paint shop by requesting empty paint pails (they are a good size and strength for shipping rock samples), which they had to have someone go fetch from the trash. This morning, John and Rene set off to the southern Andes to do some work with their Argentine colleagues Jorge, Bettina and Hugo. For the next two weeks, Andrew and I will wander these wild plains, working to unlock their secrets about the glacial history of the past million years. We’ll also drink some cheap and delicious Argentine malbec, eat empanadas, and amuse the local population with our crappy Spanish and foreign mannerisms. And I promise that I will try my best to hold back from petting all the sweet and hopeful looking faces of the stray dogs that seem to own these streets.

Me and Hugo Corbella enjoying the view of Buenos Aires from his 19th floor flat.

Dr. Rene Barendregt (Renato de Las Pampas), Master Andrew La Croix (Andre La Cruz), and Dr. John Clague (Juan de Patagonia) in front of our home away from home in Rio Gallegos.

Exploring some sediment exposures south of the city during our first day of field work. 

Home, let me come home! Last week at el fin del mundo.

The month or so since I last made a blog post has been a great lesson not only in the glacial deposits of southern Patagonia, but also in the Spanish language, as well as in the importance of fostering relationships with local geologists and land owners. I have had a wide spectrum of experiences, from being told by one estancia manager that foreigners are not allowed on his land (not failing to inform me that my Spanish is “terrible”…spelled the same in both languages!), to having the keys to a locked gate entrusted to me for days at a time after sharing some yerba mate with a gaucho in the whipping Patagonian winds. I have learned the value of hand gestures, of not being afraid to embarrass myself, and most importantly of a big smile. I now have some very useful vocabulary in my Spanish vernacular toolbox. “Cables de puente,” or booster cables, is a handy one to know if you ever find yourself on the side of the road, vainly trying to turn the engine one more time. When someone asks how long you have been travelling, “dos mesas” (“two tables”) will draw confused looks, while “dos meses” seems to get the point across much better. Before I return next year, I am going to have to spend a lot of quality time with my Rosetta Stone program, and maybe pester my Spanish savvy friends to practice with me.

My first encounter with the Spanish language was in kindergarten, when my mom signed me up for an immersion program offered by my elementary school. I have a distinct memory of feeling very frustrated as my teacher tried to coax out the Spanish words for the anatomy of a flower from a group of five year olds…petal, pistil, stamen, etc. In retrospect, it’s pretty ridiculous to expect a kindergartener to even know those words in English! Regardless, I am sure that class is responsible for my firm knowledge of how to count to 10 and recite the colors of the rainbow in Spanish. My next official Spanish experience was in 7^th grade, when I took Spanish 1, followed by Spanish 2 in 8^th grade. My text book was written in the 1980s, and I remember making fun of the fashion of the people in the photos I had to use to identify how to say shirts and pants. I’ll never wear high waisted pleated pantalones with a turtleneck camisa, never! At the same time, my close friend Sarah Berry had a family friend from Mexico who we begged relentlessly to translate words that often made her either blush or walk away from us with a roll of the eyes. In high school, I decided that I wanted to be different and take German as my foreign language requirement, figuring that I’d never need to speak Spanish anyway. This is America, everyone speaks Spanish, I want to be unique! Fast forward ten years, and here I am, standing next to an oil derrick in Argentine Tierra del Fuego, trying to explain to a suspicious Antrim Energy employee why Derek and I are on their property wielding a shovel and pick. “Soy una geologa de Canada, estudiar los acantilados con materiales glaciares…donde esta un camino publica?” A quick trip to Google Translate will probably illustrate to you how very much I wish I had continued my career in español. And that was one of my better constructed sentences. Usually I throw out a colourful mix of verbs, sometimes conjugated, often not, with some of the sorry number of nouns I have committed to memory.  I was very lucky that day to have the employee shake his finger at me and then offer to lead me in his truck to the coastal cliffs, rather than to the local police station.

Now I am back in Punta Arenas, debatably the farthest south city in Chile. The town of Puerto Williams, Chile lies across the Beagle Channel from Ushuaia, Argentina, but being a small navy base with a population of 2000, I prefer to give the prize to this picturesque little town. Sadly, about two weeks ago, the river that runs through town overbanked and flooded much of downtown. The city is still in the recovery process, digging out debris from under bridges and washing building walls and sidewalks of mud. It’s sad to see one of my favorite little towns all beaten and bruised, but nice to see how quickly it’s rebounding. Being the geology geeks we are, Derek and I wandered around yesterday, marvelling at the thick amounts of sediment that accumulated in that one event, taking photos of crossbedding and indicators of flow direction. Today, Derek and I get on a plane and fly to Santiago, where we will spend an evening before catching our redeye flight to Toronto on Friday evening. We are very much looking forward to temperatures of 30^oC and no wind. I am saying farewell to the antipode, a bare and windy place that has managed to capture my heart, and intrigued me with its subtle hints of the great glaciations that passed through. Saturday at 10am I will back in sweet, sweet Vancouver...a place where I can feast on dark leafy greens, ride my bicycle, drink top notch coffee, and walk hand in hand with my wonderful, patient boyfriend.


Some assorted photos from the last month:

No SPCA in these here parts! A street dog in Rio Gallegos, Argentina, enjoying a tasty treat.

Taking notes on a particularly lovely day of field work in the Pali Aike volcanic field

Rene Barendregt and pinguino, at Cabo Virgenes

Me and pinguino :)

The Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the few advancing glaciers in the world, at Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina

Derek and an erratic, west of El Calafate, Argentina

Some seriously sexy Quaternary stratigraphy outside of Rio Grande, Argentina (Derek for scale). Yes, those are giant crossbeds with bedrock ripups in them. I can't contain my excitement, either!

Glacier watching, at the Martial Glacier outside of Ushuaia, Argentina

Week 4.5 - Cliffs and more cliffs

Well, you know you’re well into your field season when the days start to pass in a blur, and you ask people things like “is it still February?”

Nick and I have had a great time exploring the plains of Patagonia. We share an office back at SFU, and have spent quite a bit of time together both in the field and doing lab work, so I tend to think of him as my partner in crime. Or at least, my partner in paleomagnetism. I worry, though, that his hypochondriacal delusions may cause this partnership to be cut short. Since arriving here, he’s mentioned to me that he thinks he has celiac disease, a tape worm, a dislocated knee cap, chronic fatigue syndrome, Parkinsons disease, meningitis, the common cold, and more. And, he's not always kidding. As far as I can tell, he’s the picture of health, but you never know…maybe he has it all. As long as it doesn’t affect my work!

The proto-Dr. Roberts, peeing on one of my sections.

The past week or so has been highly productive, and full of a great variety of geology. Nick and I spent a few days wandering the gravel roads along the coast south of Rio Gallegos, searching for access to some cliffs that looked easy to get to on Google Earth. From the comfort of my laptop, nice wide gravel roads provide a perfect transect through outwash gravels, into the moraines of the oldest glacial deposits (those of the Great Patagonian Glaciation) and straight down South into the next oldest deposits known as the Cabo Virgenes drift. In actuality, the roads do exist, and in fantastic condition. However, they are riddled with signs that read “danger” and “restricted access,” which can only be ignored for so long until you reach a big metal gate with a fat ol’ lock on it. This is oil and ranching country, and they do not operate under a “come one, come all” mentality. Some days, we would drive for hours, passing through unlocked gates and reaching beautiful road cuts and sea cliff exposures of glacial sediments. Other days, we would drive and drive, only to get turned around by a locked gate and a double fence. I thought that it was ridiculous that the big estancias are so strict about access to their land…I mean, who cares if someone wanders around and sees how many sheep you have? But, apparently the presence of trucks startles sheep, and can cause young to be separated from their mothers while scrambling to escape big scary vehicles stirring up giant dust clouds as they drive across the desert. Another problem is sheep poaching…in such a remote area, without gates, people can easily shoot themselves as much meat as they desire. One estancia that we visited gave us careful driving instructions to reach the outcrop we wanted to view, warning us which roads had been booby trapped with boards with nails in order to bring down poachers. Now, I am more respectful of gates and private property signs.

Access denied! 

This weekend, Nick and I visited the area around Punta Delgada, Chile, along the coast of the Strait of Magellan. We were joined by Hugo and Hebe Corbella, two Argentinians from Buenos Aires who have worked extensively in southern Patagonia. Both are in their 70s, and incredibly sharp in both body and mind. Hugo is a volcanologist who has done a lot of work in the Pali Aike volcanic field, and was an incredible help for me. I told him that I wanted to see exposures of different glacial deposits, and he knew exactly which roads had the freshest cuts and exposures. More and more, I realize how lucky I am to have the help of local geologists. There seems to be a code of sorts, where geologists help one another out whenever they can, as everyone has experienced the difficulty of working in a country where they don’t know the language or the customs as well as they should. This attitude also builds professional relationships, a sharing of knowledge and an eventual sharing of names on published research. Some days we joined Hugo and Hebe in the field, and other days we took off on our own to the coast of the Strait, visiting cliff exposures along the Strait. We had fantastic weather, with clear-ish skies and light winds. The geology was breathtaking…nearly endless cliff exposures of sediment. Each day I left feeling like I only saw the tip of the iceberg.

I think I'll see if I can rent this place when it comes time to write my dissertation...

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my Argentinian friends is the importance of hot beverages while doing field work. As much as I have made fun of it, I have started to consider my afternoon Nescafe to be indispensable. We bring a thermos of hot water with us, tap a few teaspoons of dark brown crystals into our mugs, and instantly have something that resembles a proper cup of hot coffee right there on the beach. High class! It’s even better when Nick shares his little packets of Starbucks Via…that stuff is always decent, but after a few days of Nescafe, it tastes like the finest coffee in the world.

Not a bad spot to have some Nescafe!

Nick, me, and our hard-fought luminescence sample. 

Week Three

This week started out with a car crash and ended with a whole lotta cheese. Let’s start with the exciting stuff. Nick Roberts, fellow PhD student of John Clague’s and good friend/officemate/travel buddy of mine, was scheduled to fly into Rio Gallegos at about 2:40am this past Tuesday morning. As is my nature, I was confused about what time he arrived, and thought his plane touched down at 3:30am. I sweet-talked Justine into getting up in the middle of the night and driving out to the airport with me to get Nick…although unbeknownst to me, he had arrived 30 minutes earlier and taken a taxi to the hotel, assuming that I had decided to sleep rather than chauffer him around town. Justine and I drove out to the airport 30 minutes later, and after an unfortunate sequence of events, ended up getting side-swiped by an airline employee with a lead foot in the parking lot. I got out to talk to the dude, a very friendly yet fast-talking (and fast-driving) local who eventually realized that my Spanish skills don’t go much beyond “Good morning!” and “It’s windy today, yes?” We headed into the airport, where a stewardess who spoke about as much English as I do Spanish told me that we would have to meet the next day to go to the police station to make our declarations. The next day was filled with paperwork, made so much easier by Hugo Corbella, an Argentinian volcanologist who has been incredibly helpful to me in more ways than one. Dante, my rental car agent, seemed unsurprised and nonplussed by the event, stressing that I should just continue with my work and not worry about the accident. Our big diesel truck survived the collision with minor damage…no more than a loose bumper, while the other guy had much more destruction to worry about. The next day, John and Nick assessed the damage, applied a little duct tape magic, and we carried on with our daily routine of field work followed by dinner and vino tinto.

Nothing a little duct tape can't fix!

 

The next day, John, Olav, Rachel and Justine piled into a car and headed back to Punta Arenas, Chile to catch a plane back to Santiago and onward back to Canada. Wave One has left the continent, and Wave Two is in full swing. Nick and I have spent the past few days wandering the Atlantic coast south of Rio Gallegos, and checking out road-cuts to the West of the city with Hugo. We’ve also nearly killed a bottle of Glenlevit scotch that Nick bought at the duty free shop, but that is another story. Last night, we went out for dinner with Michelle Valvano, the daughter of Bettina Ercolano, a fantastic local geologist who I’ve spent quite a bit of time with in the field. Michelle studied abroad in Ireland, and we had a great time talking and hanging out with her. We had a Pizza Fugazza, a type of pizza that is common in these here parts, with an olive oil base and cheese and white onion as the topping. Argentinians are not shy about their cheese, which is AOK with me. Now, Nick and I are preparing for another week of field work together. We’ll most likely spend the next few days exploring the Atlantic coast south of Rio Gallegos, and then take a few days to look at glacial sediments along the coast of the Strait of Magellan near the “town” of Posession, Chile. While I had a great time with Wave One, it is great to transition into field work with just one other person…particularly with Nick, who I have spent a lot of time with both in the field, in the office, and in the laboratory over the past year or so. It sure helps that he brought his iPod adaptor for me…there’s nothing like blasting some Nine Inch Nails while zipping across the Patagonian plains. 

Me, 3/4 of Nick, and a bunch of penguins!

Of ham and volcanoes...

An Oreo is an Oreo wherever you are, right?

Yesterday, while doing what my dad calls “mowing down” on some tasty little sugary crackers (advertised as Grandma’s recipe…so you know it’s good!) that we had started to refer to as “crack cookies,” I absentmindedly started reading the ingredient list, and stopped mid-chew on the second ingredient. “Grasa de bovino.” Beef fat! Oh, what a sad day, when a vegetarian learns that something they love is chock full of cow parts. As I wandered the cookie aisle at the grocery store this afternoon, I stopped to read the ingredient list on each package of cookie in the aisle, and discovered that literally every single type of cookie (except for one type of almond cookie, which is my new best friend) was made with either beef or chicken fat. Even the Oreos!

Part of the adventure that is travelling in a different country is experiencing new cuisine. Argentina is best known for their asados, or grills, where my omnivorous friends can enjoy virtually endless supplies of chorizo (sausage), lomo (steak), and cordero (lamb). Here in southern Patagonia, the calafate berry grows on a shrub, and while a little bitter on its own, makes a lovely jam that is unique to this region. These are some examples of well-known Argentinian foods. However, in my experience, people here love ham, cheese, and anything carbohydrate. Oh, the omnipresent jamón! What’s for breakfast?  Bread and ham! For lunch? How about a ham sandwich? What’s that in your lasagna? Why, a slice of deli ham, of course! Being a vegetarian in an incredibly meat-loving society, I have adjusted to having self-imposed limited options when eating out. Luckily, Argentinians also love their cheese and bread, so I have been able to stuff myself with as much pizza, pasta, and rolls as my heart desires. I have also found myself eating quite a bit more “accidental meat” than I’m used to. For a scientist, I’m pretty unobservant, and apparently even more so when it comes to my food. I recently happily dug into my tortilla, a frittata-type dish of egg with veggies and/or meat mixed in, and got a nice mouthful of…you guessed it…ham! I suppose I have to get my protein somewhere, but if I keep this up, I’m going to have to give in and let Dave cook up that steak he’s been wanting to make for me after all!

Ham bread!

As for the field work, everything has been going extremely well. Part of the week was spent along the Atlantic coast north of Cabo Virgenes, on land owned by a giant sheep ranch, Estancia Condor. The other part of the week was spent farther inland, near Estancia Bella Vista, which is not only famed for the giant sea-run trout that swim in the Rio Gallegos, but also for the volcanos that erupted lava in the form of flows and scoria cones all across the landscape. While trekking across the terrain, I can’t help but compare the views to those around Las Vegas, Nevada, where I spent the four years prior to moving to Vancouver. Both regions have experienced volcanism in their geologic past, and exhibit expansive valleys dotted with dry lakes in an arid climate. I find it to be an interesting exercise in geomorphology, to consider that two landscapes can look so similar, but have such drastically different processes that shaped them. It is difficult to believe, while standing on these dry desert plains, that glaciers once marched by, with giant meltwater channels extending from their mouths to the sea. Isn’t it a beautiful thought…that our landscapes are ever changing? 

Rosario Mar, at the southern border between Argentina and Chile. There is a flock of flamingoes in the center of the lake.

Sampling basalt from the rim of the Rosario mar. Left to right: Justine Cullen, Hugo Corbella, John Clague (after illegally crossing into Chile). In the distance is Olav Lian, the law-abiding member of our crew, still in Argentina.