Geology of Eastern Canada and the Eastern United States

we're in for a treat uh i'd like to introduce our speaker tonight dr mike adler who worked for general electric from 1971 until he retired in 2002 at ge he headed a laboratory a laboratory of 150 people to develop power electronics control systems high density and high density electronic assemblies he was senior technical director of mechanical technology inc which is a mti not sure what that means uh from 2000 to 2005 and an adjunct professor at rpl in troy new york um mike did graduate from mit finally with a phd in electrical engineering in 1971 it was i think one of three or four phds that mike accumulated while he was at mit in solid state physics he is was involved in the development of new generation of power semiconductors and published over 100 papers and was elected the ieee that's the international electrical engineering group but he's a fellow of that for his work in power devices and he was elected president of that in 2003. now since uh retirement he we've been blessed with mike and his hobbies which includes skiing hiking climbing travel photography and astronomy and the key word and all of that is uh photography he's going to be discussing today an area with incredible vistas and views and i'm sure mike has turned those into spectacular imagery that you'll be looking at and and he'll be discussing in the last few years as a small side note he became interested in the science of astronomy he has now moved full-time to jackson and so he can really keep track of his rather advanced observatory that he does a lot of astrophotography and he's given a number of lectures both in new york and in jackson hole so we're delighted tonight to have mike adler and i encourage you to sit back and enjoy if you have questions as we go along like mike like brent said put them in the chat and we'll get to them at the end so without further ado i'm going to turn it over to mike to take us to canada okay john well thank you very much uh for that nice introduction um yeah it's the institute of electrical and electronic engineers by the way it happens to be the largest technical society in the world about 500 000 members whoa anyway i'm going to start sharing my screen and uh get on with the main event here um and we're going to okay come on okay there we go i gotta move myself off to the side so it doesn't block my view okay so uh this is a a picture of virginia and i at our on our 50th anniversary in uh island in newfoundland in the gros mourne park and i'll talk some more about that in in a bit uh so the talk is going to be about the geology of eastern canada in the united states although truth in advertising is going to be mostly about eastern canada but some of it is very much related and that i'm going to talk about that at the introduction of the talk then we're going to switch to um part of eastern canada with a very northern part uh called labrador it's actually part of the labrador newfoundland uh province and uh specifically a a trip that i took in 1973 by kayak to northern labrador where we did a few uh things like uh climb the highest peak in canada east of the rockies is for the first time as a first ascent and we're going to talk about uh geology of newfoundland the island part of the province and uh we were we made 18 trips there from the 77 to 2005. so it's going to be a combination of of geology as well as scenery and what have you and we're going to end with um a little bit a very little of a bit about san pierre-nicolan which actually belongs to france it's their a consolation prize for having lost the rest of north america but the brits don't have anything so uh the french still are holding on to some pierre okay so the whole story begins with the canadian shield uh the canadian shield is shown up here the part that's above ground is uh huge it includes it goes all the way up into greenland it's the largest archaean uh uh body in the world uh you know going back to two and a half billion years and some rock in it as long as far back as four billion years it's mostly metamorphic rock with nice and uh some intrusive rocks such as granite it's now a pentaplane which means mostly a plane but it once had mountains as high as forty thousand feet thirty nine thousand feet in addition to being above ground in in canada it forms the basement rocks of much of the united states uh shown uh here and you can see this cross section uh going from a l1 to a and you see where the grand canyon is it dips into the canadian shield uh for sure okay so uh the real story begins uh with a couple of uh continental um uh collisions uh and uh several cycles of plate tectonics uh first with the assembly of the supercontinent rodinia about a billion years ago uh with what's called the uh uh um the grenfell erogeny that essentially murder merged north america and south america then it uh we're talking about we jump ahead uh a couple of uh 500 000 500 million years and uh the continent breaks up and we form an ocean called the iapetus ocean which is allies between laurentia essentially north america amazonia essentially south america baltic and siberia europe and that uh that that sets the stage then then what happens is uh with the ayap isis ocean doesn't last very long uh and it starts closing and actually completely closes by about 435 million years and that's where things uh get very interesting um because it's that collision and and sets the stage for of the formation of the eastern united states and uh and well what is now the eastern united states in eastern canada and it's called uh the taconic erogeny so the next chart uh shows uh of this in a little more detail it's it's very interesting to note that this erogeny actually spans 10 000 kilometers from north all the way up uh uh to in the very northern area of the continent of the world all the way down to the tippy tip of the united states and the african plate and activity occurs on both sides of the uh of the atlantic we'll talk a little bit about that but the the taconic orogeny that we're going to focus on on our side of the atlantic uh begins in three phases one is the closure of the ocean you know hypothesis ocean and then a couple of events one's called the acadian orogeny about 400 a million years ago and then there's an appalachian orogeny at about 300 million years ago and what this does is it together they are responsible for the buckling and the thrusting of uh previously deposited sediments uh uh from the high upper just ocean and the the atlantic the appalachian mountains the present-day appalachian mountains are the eroded remnants of the of the of all of these events and those mountains well we'll talk some more about that um so this is the cartoons here kind of just show what's going on here we have the uh appalachian mountains first forming with the docking of uh uh of the acadian of of abalone and with the acadian orogeny squeezing uh when pangaea is is completely formed by the alleghenian or otherwise known as the appalachian orogeny then around two less than 200 million years ago the uh uh the atlantic opens back up and uh we get some very interesting things happening where parts of the european and african continents stick on north america and parts of north america stick on uh on europe and we'll talk some more about that but here's what here's what we now are left with um and and i'm in this particular case we're focusing mainly on eastern canada but we have the island of newfoundland up here and uh the gaspe peninsula and um down here and you and these various regions all have uh uh or very interesting parts of their origin this and i'll talk some more about that in a second though just to quickly summarize so there's several cycles of what they call wilson cycles which is basically several cycles of plate tectonics with rodinia forming breaking up bad genia forming fangia forming breaking up uh and then uh the atlantic forming so there are several uh cycles of continents uh colliding and opening uh back up um so now uh jumping ahead to the present and trying to uh and looking at both uh uh the eastern canada and the united states we see some common areas um this green area that's up here a thin green area that's up here and this the area down here called the blue ridge belt are basically the same rock and it's uh the same as what's known as the dunnage area pretty much the same as this rock as well and it's uh million year old sandstone shale and limestone coming from the bottom of the eyepatches ocean the gray area down here um and also the gray area up here near boston and then all the way up uh along here are are chunks of um uh essentially that stuck from europe and uh africa and are about a billion years or a thousand million uh years old the yellow area uh called the gander area uh it only exists well you can see it up here uh in newfoundland and then also in uh uh down through nova scotia but it extends all the way into new england and uh this this is largely it's a mix but mostly 400 million year old granite that occurred from the acadian orogeny and this rock forms the white and the green mountains uh in the united states it also um forms uh mountains in uh in newfoundland as well now the coastal plain of the united states which is down here is much younger rock uh and it's mostly sediments less than a a hundred million years ago and and frankly that's all about that's all we're going to talk about as far as the geology of the united states so we're now going to focus almost totally on uh eastern canada um one uh one well one more one more point about uh the united states um and i'm only going to make two points here on this chart on this map one is the appalachian mountains extend all the way from the long-range mountains in newfoundland down to the great smoky mountains uh in the united states second point is the name where did the name come from well it's attributed to a um uh i have to get get my name out of here a uh a spanish explorer named devaka uh in 17 15 28. uh he came across the town that was transliterated in other words it sounded like apalachian anyway that got eventually morphed into appellation the second thing i want to mention about this chart is that the adirondack mountains now they were once thought to be part of the appalachians but in fact they are not so this is an example of a chart that i'm showing which is not a part of the appalachian mountains the adirondacks are part of the laurentian mountains essentially a chunk of the canadian shield that is above ground in upstate new york and i that's close to uh our heart because uh we uh we lived there for uh something like 40 years but so just to set the record straight the adirondacks are not a part of the appalachians they're much older rock actually okay so now we're going to jump way north and uh we're going to talk about geology of labrador now labrador uh is all apart uh is uh part of the canadian shield and the last uh segment of the canadian shield as it's known was uh uh formed uh about 1.8 billion years ago uh and uh but so this is the um but this is their present-day map of the geology of the labrador peninsula now labrador is a part of the newfoundland province it's the newfoundland labrador province as it's called it's the easternmost canadian province uh probably the most remarkable part of it is that this coastal area is all nice it's of various ages but this area down here in purple that has letters u n on it you probably can't read that but that's uh that's rock that's uh over four billion years old some of the oldest rock in the world there's also mixes of other uh of intrusive rocks of various ages you can see in this red is intrusive rock um there's also some sedimentary uh rock uh metamorph sedimentary rock in here uh and uh some more intrusive rock down here so uh this is just another uh map of the same not quite as detailed but it highlights some of the features of uh that are relevant in the talk we've made two trips or i have made two trips virginia has made one trip but the the first trip was in 1973 where six of us kayaked from nain labrador all the way up to um the saglak fjord and then uh we hiked uh into this into this area um and this um so this this was a we're gonna talk quite a bit about this this was led by a good friend of mine unfortunately who's no passed away some years ago named chris gurza the second trip was one that virginia and i were on just two years later where we went all the way back up uh we met our friend steve luttrell who has this nice 40-foot sailboat we met him in maine and we sailed all the way up to cape tiddly and then back to nain so we didn't he sailed all the way from boston but we joined him on this uh the labrador section of the trip so i'm going to now talk about um we're going to talk some more about geology but we're going to talk about the um in the context of this kayak trip which was uh quite a remarkable undertaking the original actually go back to the previous chart the original intent of the kayak trip was to kayak up into this area get to the knockback fjord and then go across the peninsula to the angava bay side well we it didn't work out quite that way what happened was as soon as we got up here uh and this took us about this is 250 miles this red line is the track that we followed in our kayaks 250 miles over about nine days when we got up here and started looking at the water in the river the korok river we found out there wasn't enough water to get us across and it's probably just as well we never even tried because that trip has now been done fairly recently with modern kayaks and we would have never made it our clippers which i'll show you the boat is their fabric covered wooden frame kayaks would have never survived in that river uh even if we had able been able to get to the navigable part of it so what we did instead was we set our sights on climbing and uh but by the time we actually got up here and uh were and had done some hiking we were fair most of us were fairly exhausted uh we didn't quite have enough food for the hiking part of this and so we broke up into two groups one group um which i was in with chris gertza and another fellow and i we went up and we set our sights on climbing this peak that's now known as mount kalbik but at the time it wasn't named are our the other three also were trying to do it but they went uh on a a route further uh to the west because it was shorter but as it turned out it was uh it was shorter but it it it had the likelihood of being more difficult at the final end and now because we didn't have detailed maps uh at this time this is 1973. our that we had they were detailed in the sense that they were accurate but the contour interval was 500 feet and so we didn't have an awful lot of uh up to base on what route would actually work to climb this mountain now this mountain is a mile above the sea level in which we is where we started our climb from so we we went up in in and and tried to climb it on this yellow roof anyway uh i'll we'll talk some more about that in a bit this is uh where we left the open part of the ocean in saglak fjord and uh this is a view from a peak that we climbed just looking out to the open ocean uh from there um oh i'm sorry wrong direction so here's uh a little bit about the geology now um this is uh a picture of uh in saglic fjord this is um uh all uh this whole layer is a canadian shield where these rocks are uh ancient mostly uh uh three billion year or older uh nice but you can see also the effects of uh the last stage of the forming of the canadian shield uh these incredible bends and folds uh where you have um uh the uh stratified um younger rock folded over the older three billion and a year old uh nice underneath and this picture shows it in a little more detail of that one area by itself so obviously a lot of squeezing and scrunching occurred uh here so now uh a couple of pictures of uh of our kayaking uh this is uh these are clepper kayaks by the way if anyone is interested in one of these i still have mine it has a new uh outer skin on it so it's actually in pretty good shape but this is uh this is a steve and lizzie luttrell and on this picture here if i get my picture out of it uh yeah are the other couple of kayaks this area here these are like three thousand foot cliffs and uh so this is the kind of terrain that we were kayaking in once we got up uh towards the saglak in knockback fjord area one of the hairy parts of this is that we are on this open on the open ocean uh and in some cases without a place to pull in if the weather turned bad um so that's that was the that was the thing that was hanging over our heads fortunately our weather held very well and we didn't have any big storms while we were kayaking this rock this particular chunk of rock here is over 4 billion years old uh all layered nice as you can see some uh uh pretty uh three million year old a three billion year old nice here this shows uh us uh what it was like uh when we here's our three kayaks lined up we pulled ashore a couple of times every day um for uh various reasons uh including just taking a break uh we camped in tents and when we were on the shore we would camp needless to say close to the boats but when we started hiking uh we were on the uh on the tundra as shown here as well we supplemented some of our food we were able to catch fish quite a bit of it and uh um and this is arctic char and we did uh paddle among uh icebergs uh uh in various times so some more pictures again going back to 1973 this peak on the these are both peaks are over 4 000 feet above sea level this is called bishop's miter and this is called brave mountain over here we stopped at this uh moravian village it was um established uh by german uh germans um in 1771 but it was abandoned in 1995 and this is 1973 so there was no one living here we never saw a soul on this entire uh uh five plus week adventure by the way it was we were all alone the entire time needless to say in 1973 we did not have satellite telephones or radios or any way to contact anyone so we are totally all by ourselves um just another picture of hebron uh uh and uh our everybody in the group except me because i'm taking the picture so this is um this is the day so what we did was we um broke up into these two groups as i mentioned and uh we hiked three days to get to the general area of where this mountain is and this is the last day involving um you know something uh like um oh i don't know seven or eight miles but it basically we're following this ridge here up to the skyline and then along the skyline uh into this what's called the minaret ridge right here and this is the actual summit you can see it's surrounded by glaciers on all sides this uh all of this was pretty straightforward until you got to here and this is where the this is where the tricky part was this other this ridge on this side the western side of the ridge was was very difficult turned out to be very difficult and our friends which actually did approach it were not able to climb it it was uh quite technical so this picture of um from google earth showing that ridge that i was just showing you you can see the mountain is surrounded by glaciers on all sides this is a map of our route this has hundred foot contours we did not have this map on the trip ours were 500 foot contours um but we uh it was convenient to plot this route so our route was this red route and this is the last part of it that showed in that uh that that picture and this was the yellow route that our friends took to try to climb it from the west side unsuccessfully this climb has now been done from the west side in 1997 it was tech it was done um but it's it's treacherous and the weather up here can be treacherous uh as well and uh in 2003 a couple uh attempted to climb on this side the fellow injured himself the wife and uh went off for help and she died of exposure it's 300 miles over very rough and difficult terrain to get to any health she never got to any help she died and he did eventually as well so this is uh can be a very uh difficult and unfriendly uh area so this is the my picture of of the final uh area of the ascent uh this all goes pretty well it's pretty straightforward until you get to about here and then you're going up and down these uh minarets on what's called the minaret ridge um this uh i'm not going to read this but if you you can go onto the website um yeah actually there's if you go onto the website i i show a picture of this later on uh describes uh the route uh uh a bit and uh this just highlights the uh what we did to get there 300 250 miles of kayaking and 25 miles and then a final three miles along that uh uh ridge before we got to the technical part of the minaret ridge um so this is actually on the summit of uh my mount de reveal um and well mount calvic it has two names i'll describe that in a second but this is the western ridge that is um quite severe and difficult and that i described uh had uh has some tragedy associated with it and this uh left picture is a view from the summit looking towards the ocean which is off in the distance here um and this is uh a picture of me down here down climbing the minaret ridge so you can see it had its own uh challenges as well because we are basically staying right on the ridge line climbing up and down these various minarets to stay on the knife edge it was exposed on both sides we were we didn't have any climbing equipment uh so it was all done free form uh we just moved very carefully needless to say injury here would be very serious and so we we took our time unfortunately as you can see there was snow on the rocks uh because it had snowed the day before uh and so we had to be also extremely careful so this is the website um if you go on to wikipedia and and google it it'll tell you a little bit about the route and uh as it says first ascent climbed by gersa and adler in 1973. so uh we climbed we did a little more climbing after this this is another peak not as high that's uh closer to the coastline so you can actually see the knock fjord here as we are looking out to see so jumping ahead to 1975 um this is uh so that was the end of the kayak trip it uh everybody uh we all survived no no syria no injuries at all we got home safely and uh and we decided to go back uh two years later uh by sailboat and so this was a sailing in labrador in 1975. uh you can see uh uh the virginia and i are here uh lizzie is the uh the chief uh mate on the boat uh uh steve is taking this picture anyway this is uh this is the boat uh from taking uh sailing up in the very northern part of labrador we had some um interesting uh encounters with icebergs um as you can see here we actually obviously uh this picture was taken from the dinghy we set aside we got off the boat some of us did to take this picture this is uh uh one of the bays that we uh sailed into we had been in this in the kayak uh previously this uh this particular bay is has a little problem for the sailboat you can't get across this with kayaks so there's no problem we just carry them across but um we can't we decided to come in here anyway because there was a storm brewing and this is a very protected area we're actually anchored temporarily to a beached chunk of rock of ice here ice small iceberg but we did some more climbing and this uh uh this shows the ascent actually as virginia right there of a peak called mount torn or soak it's uh not quite as high as deeberville or mount uh kalbic and it's 52 32 feet i i mentioned the names uh it was interesting i i'll just flash back to that point the these um that peak mount kalvik uh was originally named well it had no name when we did it we tried to name it uh after um uh grenfell was a famous explorer up here unsuccessfully the canadian geographic board didn't want to hear anything about a bunch of americans naming a canadian peak but um it turned out that the the uh the peak lies on the border between uh quebec and newfoundland and the quebecers named it after at least they thought they named it after a peak after a person a french explorer named reveal who has never been in this area by the way but as it turned out um it wasn't quite on the border and it was 30 feet inside a newfoundland the actual highest point so the newfees renamed it mount kauvik after a famous eskimo but it's now it's sort of known the same so you can you can go on wikipedia and either um uh call it uh deaverville or calvic it'll it'll eventually get you to the same place i should mention that yeah i i think i mentioned once already that that peak is the uh highest peak in canada east of the rockies so and uh but it's also the most remote major peak in canada over 300 miles away from the nearest uh point of civilization but anyway so here's uh a summit view from um uh uh mount targasoke um looking out towards the ocean and this is uh knockbuck fjord um i should mention that i didn't have a sailboat in 1973. i got this sailboat and you'll see my pictures of it shortly uh in 1975 but i named it after this fjord uh uh knock fox so so this is a picture looking down towards the knockback fjord from this uh from the summit and that little speck right there if you can see it is our sailboat so we climbed over almost a vertical mile to get to the top of this peak um and this is a picture of me uh in 1973 uh standing on the summit so here's uh yeah here's another topographic map um again much more detail than we had at the time but this shows uh mount tauren or soak 52 52 here the knockback fjord up here and um and then mount calvic slash d reveal uh back down here and this is uh uh another uh google earth image of the of the same area there's something like 10 50 of peaks over 5000 feet up here in the in the uh torn gas this whole range of mountains are called the torn gats and it is now a national park but you still there's still no way to get it there easily you either have to take a float plane or hire someone in a boat or you could do what we did in kayak 250 miles off the coast but it's still basically as isolated as it was uh when we did it in 1973 but it is a national park and there are even routes that are uh you can go online and and and google it and you'll find description of various things you can do up here including climbing mount calvic here's another view here's a view of another peak that again was a first ascent all the peaks we climbed up there were all first ascents no one had none of the eskimos who lived up here ever would have considered doing something as crazy as climbing these peaks and so it took some nut cases from the united states to begin it um and uh well we climbed another peak in a place called bear's gut uh and it's about four thousand feet high now my friend uh our good friend chris gertz uh died in 1977 of uh of a cancer uh very tragically at a very young age and after our after he died we attempted to name this peak after him and this was in uh in the late 70s so about five or six years ago i i actually never knew we were successful and about five or six years ago i looked at a mecca as i was preparing a talk like somewhat like i'm doing here of this area i looked on a map and i saw a peak called mount girza and amazing so we were actually successful in aiming to speak after him and uh so it's a beautiful peak as you can see the view looking out to the ocean and there's a website uh which uh describes um chris and his uh he's a quite a was it quite an accomplished climber he's he's done first ascents on mount mckinley not the first climb of mountain but first ascent of the the north face uh called the wickersham wall and other major climbing events that he's uh as well as uh here in in wyoming he he did a lot of climbing with some of the uh famous uh climbers uh in in in in in wyoming as well okay so um that's uh that's labrador and uh so we're gonna move on or move southwards uh uh to the island of uh newfoundland and uh talk a little about the first the geology of it and then uh some of our uh you'll see some of the geology in our pictures as well as our some of our sailing adventures so here's the uh here's the assembled here's the assembled newfoundland as it exists now and it's broken into these various uh areas i sort of touched on this a little earlier but i'll talk about a little bit about how it all got uh assembled so the humber region which is on the peninsula uh underneath has the base rock of the canadian shield and it has uh that together with dunnage uh and dunnage is pretty much what it means it's it's a it's all sedimentary rock from this bottom of the iapetus ocean that got pushed ashore and shoved over in some case in the case over the uh this region but actually created this area called the dunnage uh which is as i say uh this is this middle region right here then this this brown region which they've lumped in this viewgraph they've lumped with the dunnage area it's actually mostly granite uh that occurred about 400 million year old granite that occurred that was uh in this island arc where there were some volcanics that occurred during this subduction of uh event as the closure was as the closure was happening of the ayah but just ocean and so that's that's largely uh volcanic granite and then on the eastern side uh this sliver called gander and the avalon are all fragments of europe and mostly africa of morocco so and so what happened was the iepetus ocean collapsed uh went away we had a collision of the continents and then when the continent reopened when the atlantic reformed uh starting 200 million years ago and then and beyond uh this these chunks stayed from africa stayed attached to um uh north america and i'll talk and needle there's a a major parallel to this uh uh in on the european side it's called scotland now i'll mention that in a bit again anyway this uh this uh western area is the northern end of the appalachian uh mountains um and uh on in the humber area and they extend all the way down to the blue ridge mountains in the uh southern united states so this is a modern geological map of um of newfoundland the island uh with the peninsula here and a lot of this rock is uh exposed rock from the uh canadian shield you can see this is labrador over here and so this is uh uh in this case it's a not that old this southern part of labrador is only uh 1.8 billion year old nice and that's similar uh similar nice over on this side as well uh there's also um uh various uh layers of uh sedimentary rocks along here you can see in this middle area in this uh in the uh dunnage area uh there's all this red area and that's all granite and it's mixed in you did also with some limestone and other sedimentary rocks and then you have this very different area over here on the east side which is the uh conglomerates uh in uh from and and ash and lava and going back from uh europe or uh africa and okay so anyway so that's uh that's uh just a brief overview of the uh geology of uh newfoundland i wanna uh so we're gonna talk mostly now about uh the geology in this area down here and uh that's in what's called the grossmoor national park and um i've already mentioned what what uh well we'll talk some more about this as well but one of the major interesting features of the growth mourn park is something called the table lands where which is actually a region of uh of the mantle rock that is now above uh that is above sea level and uh and is very impressive and so uh this is a little uh cartoon showing uh that talks about the geology in the gross morn park itself uh the park the middle of the park is uh uh formed by bon bay a deep uh wide bay uh and you have up here about one billion or a year older nice uh with on top of the long range mountains again the northern end of the uh appalachians a fault uh that runs through here and on the other side of that fault is uh is largely sedimentary rock much younger uh 400 and some million year old sedimentary rock um and uh this um this area called the tablelands is all 500 million year old peridotite it's a mantle rock that normally is uh 20 uh miles below the surface uh but during the the collision of uh that occurred during uh parts of the uh the the erogeny the taconic orogeny it was squeezed up and is now uh forms this table land in the grosborn park and it's probably the largest area of peridotite that's uh above sea level in the world so uh this is the same map but i just labeled differently i'm going to show you pictures of some of these areas we're going to show you a picture of western brook pond here shortly uh grossmoor mountain is here we'll so i should talk about that there's something called a norris point i'll be a picture of that shortly uh green gardens some volcanics there and then the tablelands that i just talked about this period time so here's uh here's western brook pond uh uh uh at least after you've uh managed to get up to the top it's about there's this is maybe the most dramatic and and iconic part of the grossmoor national park but there's no trail to here there's no easy way to get to this point you have to actually hire a boat to take you uh down the pond now i should mention something about the pond this once was at sea level it's now 100 feet above sea level because what happened is this bay was was heavily glaciated 10 000 years ago during the last glaciation when the ice melted the land rebounded and it essentially cut this bay off which was a bay in the ocean and it created uh what's now called a pond western brook pond uh so it is no it is not sea water um it might be still be somewhat brackish it probably isn't it's probably pretty fresh by now but anyway so you have to uh get a guide to take you by boat to here and then uh then you need the same guide to a lot to navigate all the way up here because it's a very difficult route there's no established trail and it's the the worst part of it is that it's infested with this the world's worst swarms of black flies that i've ever encountered and it was pretty ugly getting up here but finally when we were able to climb that 2000 feet to get up here uh we were out now in in a breeze and the flies were much better anyway so uh this uh i'm gonna come back and we're gonna talk some more about uh the western brook fawn in a bit but this is uh i mentioned norris point this is a folding of of the shale of layers of limestone over shale that occurred during this taconic erogeny this collapse of when the iapetus ocean collapsed this is uh hiking on this peridotite tableland rock um as i mentioned this is uh some of the this is probably the largest area of exposed periodic type in the world so this is one of the major features of uh grossborn park in fact as i ment as i didn't really highlight it but the park itself is really a wonderland of uh geology um so this is a just another view of the tablelands um it uh it's uh peridotite is uh ultramafic it contains less than 45 percent silica and has a fair amount of iron and manganese in the form of olivine in it there's uh areas of it where there's it's been metamorphosed which is quite interesting and it creates this rock called serpentine serpentite um which is you can see what it looks like almost a fish scale and it's what happens uh to the peridotite when it's exposed to heat and flowing water and it has this uh green which is probably from the olivine that's in the that it made it's made up from and you can also see these interesting patterns these crystalline patterns that look like snake-like patterns in in the rock as well and so this is a view from the tablelands looking over bombay okay so um now uh going back and uh to um western brook pond um i mentioned uh uh how it was formed uh this is a reflection uh obviously uh while we were on a boat trip going to the end of it the rock is uh on top is mostly uh 15 one one and a half billion year old nice and granite from the orogeny when rodinia was formed this is a view looking down uh western brook pond from the boat and this is the same view i showed you in a bit but we uh while we were up there we did uh uh we walked a little bit more and uh and on this uh beautiful open uh rock and then we unfortunately had to go back down through the uh swarm of black flies to get to our boat um but anyway we made it and uh overall it was uh we had a beautiful day for this uh we were very fortunate on the way down there was this nice waterfall uh okay so then the following day we climbed a grossmorn peak gross morn peak itself is uh mostly sedimentary rock um 500 uh million year old sedimentary rock uh and largely um from the bed bottom of the uh i efficient ocean that was scraped up during the acadian neurogeny and on top of it is um uh cambrian quartzite and so we'll um um and there's just uh another view of the geology map uh the mountain just to remind you is up here uh western brook pond is here table ends here yeah we're also going to uh i'm going to show you some pictures of some volcanics that are on down here green gardens the last thing we'll see is something called cowhead up here uh where this this limestone so this is a view looking from pretty much the summit of grossmoor and peak um about 3000 feet and looking down at something called 10 mile lake and here's virginia on this quartz uh uh cap uh over the shale and limestone and uh so now we're down at sea level at uh um at green gardens where uh we have uh uh uh uh the intrusive rock basalt um the salt as well as some pillow lava that formed that was uh emitted underwater and formed these nice little pillows uh also we have some quartz intrusion uh into the gabaro and then at cow head you have this interesting uh limestone formation that is complete has been totally tipped up by uh the the acadian neurogeny um and uh um so it's a very very interesting example of of all the geologic forces that work in this area so now i'm going to make a a a tren we're going to jump across the atlantic and uh just uh just mention something i mentioned earlier that this erogeny uh this event that this closing of the iapetus ocean and the uh collision of the continents had effects on both sides of what is now the atlantic and uh one of the most notable features that occurred on the uh uh european side they called it we it was called the taconic orogeny on the america on our side the american side it's called the caledonian orogeny on the uh european side and it's a mountain building neurogeny just like it is uh on on on our side of the ocean um but here's uh here's what actually occurred a cartoon showing the the narrowing and collapse of the iapetus ocean here are the wha what are going to become parts of northern uh ireland and scotland here's southern ireland and england and as time goes on and the ocean collapses you get a total you get a merging and so uh you get you get this uh area merging together and then when the current atlantic formed guess what happened the these chunks stuck on top of england and uh ireland and uh when they separated they so we have a chunk of of of north america that's now part of the european continent and it's called scotland and of course we uh on the field trip that we did in 2015 which this next picture is taken from that uh you can see the amazing geology that's evident there due to the same event that occurred and here just a flashback to those who are on this trip this is a three billion year old nice uh called they call it louis city and nice after the island of louis uh on top of um 550 million year old quartzite and then this is lewistonian nice here so this is a unconformity uh a two and a half mil billion year unconformity of this nice of the quartzite on top and then you have this thrusting of uh uh that occurred with uh the same layer of of uh nice from uh from something like 20 miles further away slid on top of the quartzite so you form this sandwich of a nice quartzite nice anyway that's i just thought i would mention that just to uh highlight the fact that um there is uh there was a uh an event that occurred uh that's parallels the event on this side i'm gonna have to move a little more quickly and both of the geology is over now i'm gonna just give you uh uh a brief uh set of pictures of our sailing trips our 18 sailing trips that we made this was our very first trip i didn't even have the name of the boat on it yet but we hauled the boat all the way from niskayuno to schenectady new york to cape breton 1100 miles this was our um uh we were in uh uh on the coast of um of uh cape breton at town called inganish and we're going to make our first crossing across cabot strait so this is uh this is cape breton this is newfoundland so we did this crossing overnight and arrived over here in the day and um the first six times we did this trip we crossed cabot straight and it was never my favorite part of the trip because this is a nasty batch of water can be very nasty particularly coming back because you have to go into the prevailing southwesterlies to get over here on the way back and that's never a lot of fun plus this is a fog factory um the whole south coast of newfoundland is a leash or warm south southerly winds come on hit this cold water and you create fog and so uh navigating the strait as well as along the coast is often done in the fall but we in over 18 trips we we uh we uh explored this area and got to know a lot of friendly nice people in various villages on the coast and um we um we explored uh the whole area many many times are some of our favorites are i'll just briefly show you um uh geology map a lot of granite in this section where where we spent most of our time this was our very first uh arrival and um on the south coast after i had worked out the scheme of how to get here by trailer and and having the boat launched in cape breton and sailing across caves straight and with a with a uh a baby that was about one year old at the time and uh here we are at a a place that uh has the name of illa mort but in spite of his name it's quite a beautiful spot um as you go east uh you get into the uh uh area that's largely granite uh this was uh the top one of the towns uh on the south coast this is where that this is the last town on the south coast that has the road to it from the west and there after you leave rose blanche go east there's no more road until you get all the way across the entire uh south coast and you're in the saint john's area and then there are roads coming west from st john's for a little ways this is one of the outports there's no roads along the south coast but there are towns and they're all accessible only by water so one of the areas that uh we we enjoyed was this uh central area uh it's called uh uh on the coast call a little town of grand bridge we got to know the people here very well if you look at this chart you'll see this is a british admiralty chart this chart was these charts on the south coast with what we had these are the charts we had available they were done by the british in the in the 1880s 70s and 80s and they have some significant longitude errors like as much as a mile but over the years i learned where everything was and gradually the technology got better and i went from dead reckoning to various things like loran a and then c and then finally gps so i i worked out all the locations of all this stuff and knew how to do it this is the village of grand brit that we had some very close friends and uh our children we came back here year after year and our children began to become friends with some of the children here and uh and we became friends with their parents and uh this town um is the name is great noise excuse me is uh named after the waterfall unfortunately this town isn't occupied anymore the the uh fishing on the south coast of newfoundland is uh is pretty much uh off the uh is over it's uh a moratorium because the cod has been overfished and they're the canadian government so people can't make a living here anymore these villages have been abandoned uh the government is essentially paid for the people to leave and then move to other locations and this is just some of the terrain uh around there uh this is one of the beautiful bays that are just right next to um right next to uh uh grand brit uh it's just a view we spent many many many years exploring this area um this is the next area along the coast uh near a town called bergeo um which is actually a fairly large town and it does have a road to it but does go along the coast it comes down from the north and uh the last six times we went here we actually took the boat all the way here by road because they finally paved it's a hundred mile road from the trans-canada highway and and uh once they paved it we were we actually came here because you could not we could found we could launch the boat here because they have services that are meant for the fishermen but they were happy to uh launch us as well and beautiful country um here um some of the uh this is uh uh actually a provincial park it's called the sandbanks with all these beautiful sand dunes and and islands we did fish uh before the uh cod before the moratorium on cod fishing we were fishermen's and we caught lots of cod which was uh wonderful here's a picture of virginia and i in 1981 in our cabin on our tiny little boat uh we lived on this boat for three weeks uh plus when we were on the coast and uh in in in all forms of uh nasty weather nice weather fog rains everything this is one of the islands on the off the coast uh called ramya uh then one of the the last areas uh that that we probably one of our favorites were the high bay area where these deep bays go in six or seven miles from the coast the areas on top are about 1500 feet above sea level mostly granite with some um with some sedimentary areas this is probably our favorite spot it was uh called a dead man's cove in a lagoon bay and you can see the beautiful rock that forms these bays we climb many times we've climbed up this particular hill to get up to the table land on top uh 1500 feet or so above sea level there's a picture of our boat looking down there uh pitcher plant which is actually the flower of the newfoundland flower such as it is and some nice blueberries this is how we did our laundry uh in freshwater ponds um this is one of the villages that's in the lahoon bay taken in 1950 uh but it was abandoned shortly uh after then and uh this is my picture of it in 2005 our last trip there you can see almost everything is gone um that's just it was a color picture you can see uh dead man's cove was just on the other side uh it's right over um right over here is dead man's cove beautiful waterfall that we that we had we were walking up other bays further along beta view it's a picture of our boat sailing down the coast another bay called aberon bay which we visited many times a beautiful wishbone type of waterfall here there's a picture from the water level looking up at that waterfall we've had some horrendous blows in here by the way every once in a while you'll get in here and you'll get winds that will come down this cliff and one time it blew as much it blew almost hurricane force winds fortunately my anchor held and we survived but uh it can it can be pretty hairy up here at times this is a a village that still exists one of the few maybe the only outport on the south coast of newfoundland that still exists uh this was uh um it's called francois which is at the end of one of these bays we had arrived here on a day where we left about uh three hours before entered out into the pea soup fog and i managed to navigate my way along the coast with zero visibility find this bay and then came in the people i was with were blown away that i somehow managed to do this but by then uh this was 78 i had i developed enough techniques and navigation skills to be able to pull this off here's uh here's what we looked like in 1978 when we arrived we were quite the scene uh for the locals every time we went to one of these places uh we were uh we were definitely uh subject of a lot of curiosity this is the uh village of uh francois on a nice day and it's it's at the end of this uh precipitous bay um lots of beautiful hiking that's involved there this is uh the uh uh last bay that we i'm going to talk about this is uh ron connor bay amazing rock formations here this uh beautiful church this bay this this town was abandoned uh even befo again before we ever got there so these some some people still had houses they used for the weekend but um the church was there and managed to stay standing until 1987. and this is in 1982 when our daughter um it was always a favorite thing for us to do to come here and uh see every year did this church still survive and unfortunately in 1987 the locals had taken so much wood from it that it blew down one winner beautiful muscling here's uh on the left is muscling in 1985 catching mussels and uh here's here's muscling in 1994 our son was about the same age as our daughter in 1994 i think the bucket is the same bucket that we were using in 1985 by the looks of it um and we did lots of beautiful hikes there's uh our our boat incredible rock formations here major rock climbing opportunities if you were into that uh at the time i was i was not and this this is the very end so this is uh this is some pierre um we visited in 82 and 94. i'm showing this largely to show the difference in in the geology because these islands which are french islands um were quite amazingly different from the south coast when we first got there in 82 there actually were places where patisseries and french restaurants you could go to whereas in the south coast you you only had stores which had canned food at that time nothing fresh um the economy was uh mostly fishing but uh tourism so because the the canadian the french canadians love to come to a piece of real france and so they they were here it's a picture of uh san pierre during the uh uh sailing era here's a picture of uh san pierre during prohibition these bottles are boos a lot of booze came into the united states from uh from san pierre if you look at this building in the background um this was in the uh 20s obviously and this is my picture taken 82. it's the same buildings uh it's just they don't they're not quite as quaint looking as they were in uh in that era this is uh this is the larger island nicholon um which it doesn't have as large a town but it's uh still an interesting place to explore and that's it so um at the end of the talk i'll uh if there are any uh questions um it's pretty much a whirlwind tour of uh of eastern canada and uh hopefully uh uh imparting some uh in information about the geology of that area which is quite fascinating i think frankly a lot more interesting than the geology of the lower uh uh east coast of the united states but anyway there's mike any questions for mike um you can either uh unmute yourself and ask questions or or just a loud round of applause of course but uh mike i just gotta ask uh that first trip whose crazy idea was it one and number two how did you console your wife yeah well it was chris gertz's idea my friend chris he it was his idea to do that uh trip up the kai up the coast and uh it was not his idea to do the climbing he we were intending to go across and and cross uh to the other uh on gava bay side uh but as i mentioned in the talk uh there wasn't enough water in that river uh uh at the location that we intersected it to do it but it was his idea i was actually at the time quite pleased with that uh outcome however i was much more interested in the climbing of that area that than i was in crossing uh the peninsula and of course we ended up uh with this uh fairly major summit uh that uh uh is uh um you know to this day i mean it's not often you can climb the highest peak in uh uh in in an area that uh that's significant and uh so that's my one of my feathers in my cap from those days having accomplished that and let's see you were gone what seven weeks did you say no it was all things considered it was prob by the time we actually got back it was over six weeks yeah something like that and how did you console virginia well she uh she was so hopeful i would return it was uh you know it was uh i think she was hopeful i would return anyway um but she seemed pleased when we got back um i was uh we were starving though at the time i i you know i had lost quite a bit of weight um i remember going into a grocery store and buying a six pack of snicker bars and eating all of them in in one sitting it was yeah you know uh when we were up there um you know we we were short of food and uh particularly when we were hiking we would um you know we would race ration our food i mean we had each day we had a bag of food for a day so we couldn't and and and and we we had a few extra days so every once in a while we treated ourselves to the uh an extra day but um chris was amazing because he was the only one that wasn't short in rations he didn't get any more food than the rest of us but his body metabolism was so much more efficient that he he had plenty of food in fact he would not eat all the candy that was uh every day we had our allotment of candy of snicker bars and and raisins and uh and what have you and and and um and uh and tootsie rolls and in fact we would joke about it is it better to just chomp down the tootsie roll and and or suck it for as and make it last as long and the other thing we you know needless to say money didn't count up there there was no where to get any more food other than catching fish and we um would brend short uh so but chris had this bag of uh extra uh food or and mainly candy and and and uh i hated uh raisins i even starving i would have a hard time eating raisins to keep keep my lunch down because i i just couldn't stand the taste so he kept the bottom from the raisin market from falling through completely he was willing to trade raisins for snicker bars or hershey bars and so uh i'll never forget that that that you know that that experience of uh being up there for weeks uh now short of food and uh and and you know doing doing all of this and dreaming of what it would be like when we finally got out back to civilization uh so mike there's a couple other questions from the audience the geologic maps look very detailed way more navigation maps how and why is that yeah that's a good question the navigation maps have gotten better by the way so um there the last trip we made in 2005 we actually uh had newer charts and uh but you know um it is interesting though because the uh now it is true that uh if creating a navigational chart is not easy but creating a uh uh a geological chart isn't easy either but you know a navigation chart means you actually had to go out there and sound the water and that's that is a very difficult time consuming expensive process and it's very interesting when you look at labrador now i was showing you only charts of newfoundland but the labrador charts were even more sketchy uh and all there was when we were in the sailboat we didn't need charts depths for kayaks but when we were in the sailboat all there was was a line one single line of depths that would ran up the labrador coast and then there were areas where they simply draw squiggles across the chart and said non-reconcilable that basically the chart they had they had it coming from both two different directions and it didn't really mesh up correctly and so they simply just threw out their hands and say non-reconcilable well eventually you know there just isn't a lot of commerce up there in labrador and uh and even in uh newfoundland and it took uh and it took some time before the canadian government decided to uh uh actually launch their own uh uh efforts to to do the um you know charting of creating new nautical charts now one of the reasons for the geology though is is is is commerce because there are minerals in newfoundland and so just like uh everywhere else i think the geology maps got formed uh the details of because of people searching for uh minerals and there's there's even gold mining done along the south coast of newfoundland so i think that's part of the answer is that of the uh oil sur well oil would be uh mostly offshore up there but uh search for um other minerals and uh uh on was probably the reason that the geology charts are are as detailed as they are and the next question also concerns the geologic reconstructions and the cartoons what was your source on those yeah those are um most of that is uh all uh done uh by the canadian government and uh and uh and if you go online and um uh you can you can find these uh most of those charts and and the cartoons and uh uh it's a high level you know what i was giving you here obviously was a high level view of the geology there's needless to say a lot more detail underlying all of that but those that high level view uh there are um canadian uh uh government uh websites that have all of that information on them and i think this might be the last question you did a night crossing uh why did you do it at night and how long did it take you yeah we every crossing that we did across cabot straight were always night crossings uh and why uh because uh you wanted to arrive on the shore the opposite shore during daylight and so the easiest way to do it was to do it at night um you uh you left uh in the sometime during the uh afternoon or whatever depending on how far you were gonna go and uh you uh uh you would then these the crossings uh tended to be somewhere between 15 and 25 hours uh and so well the 25 hours it would be a full day but 15 hours uh would be the shortest you know the shortest crossing and uh that would you know so if you left in the afternoon you'd be there the following morning in daylight and you you don't want to come on to a uh uh a shoreline from offshore uh during at nighttime particularly that shoreline where there are no navigational aids almost it's devoid even even in 2005 there really were no navigational aids along that entire coast that each of the the little towns like bergeo had some buoys uh because it was a major town but like grand britt had one buoy off of it that just uh sort of announced that you were arriving at a town and that was it along the shoreline between these uh towns there was no navigational aids at all yeah and uh the other question concerns when you're backpacking and hiking i'm assuming you carried some kind of fuel uh there's no wound up there so you weren't making a fire to cook with you know we carried yeah we it was all gasoline you know it was all it was all white gas in those days you know yeah they were uh stoves you know you probably you probably have seen them the old sphere stove kit that uh you had a sphere stove nested in with a set of pots and uh we had several of those and that's what we did and uh what kind of wildlife did you see uh not counting fish yeah right there caribou up there uh in the summer uh in in newfoundland in particular uh caribou uh but uh probably the most the most significant wildlife we saw uh when we were in labrador and this was on the 1975 sailing trip was a um a polar bear and virginia has a uh incredible story to tell about the polar bear but the the short story is we were on an island uh actually the name it was called maine island and uh she and lizzie were uh just exploring and looking at the flowers and what have you they were both bent over looking at some flowers and virginia raises her head and looks up and she finds a a polar bear 20 feet away fully erect standing in front of her and um and she she um lizzie is um is very excitable and so she virginia says in my most authoritative school marm voice i said lizzy there is a polar bear in front of us and we need to quietly very quietly stand up and grow get our arm link arms to try to make ourselves look bigger and slowly back away from this bear and uh they did exactly that and uh and uh the bear just didn't do fortunately didn't do anything it just stood there and uh they just backed away on the other side they got over this side of a hill and they were out of sight of the bear and they took off now we saw i ever i never i didn't see this particular encounter i did see the bear though the following day we had a fishing net uh set out and uh the bear attacked the fishing net to get that the fish that were in the fishing net and um we so we all got a sight of the bear um we did carry a rifle a high-powered rifle uh for uh for that reason uh as well as just in case we uh we well we thought maybe about hunting briefly um but anyway the rifle was never fired um the bear was never a threat but it was a certainly the most significant wildlife we in in um but we also saw a lot of black black bear up in uh in labrador too we we probably ran across quite a few black bear over the various uh uh time we are up there we also saw wild dogs feral dogs that were um probably once uh belonged to people up there that they just let them go wild and they were a bit they were a threat also so we had to be very careful about that as well well mike i i don't think there are any other questions so i want to thank you on behalf of all of us for yet another excellent talk i know you're into double digits at this point uh once mike i think i've actually done over 20. oh god okay way over double digits then uh and and and i think uh 21 is coming up next year so and by the way i wouldn't do it if i don't didn't enjoy it either obviously so you know right but uh amazing photographs very good geologic overview and uh you know thank you from all of us again for another wonderful and entertaining talk and uh we look forward to number 21 or 22 whatever it will be okay yeah yeah i'm i've i haven't yeah it's it's in that it's in that general area now that includes the uh the uh luncheon talks uh and you know up at the uh um museum and everything but in a way they that's that's the total more or less right well i i enjoy doing it and uh you know i i enjoyed doing this talk a lot and you can imagine why because for me it's just it's a it's a trip down memory lane of going back into those uh those uh that uh time when we did we were up there in labrador but all those years with our children grew up sailing in newfoundland and uh uh both of them so it was uh we didn't go to we didn't go to disney world we didn't take it to disney we took them to newfoundland and bought my daughter reminded us of that on a number of occasions right well it was also wonderful to see pictures of you in virginia uh from 40 something years ago as well so thank you again and uh we'll look forward to the next talk so okay very good thanks good night everyone you

Channel: Geologists of Jackson Hole

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Id: PAmtnbA-1OM

Length: 81min 19sec (4879 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2020