Mineral King, California

Starting with my first research student here at Denison, I returned to ancient volcanic rocks with my ongoing research at Mineral King in California. Here, a sliver of crust (dark red/brown in the image) has been incorporated into the Sierra Nevada Batholith, a large body of granite and allied magmas. The pendant, as it is called, has a number of rhyolite units from the Jurassic and Cretaceous that record a period of active caldera volcanism along the western margin of North America and record how the crust along the west coast had changed over a period of over 60 million years.

Fondest memory: Waking up to the sound of coyotes on both sides of the valley while backcountry camping.

Image: Landsat image from June 30, 2013. USGS/NASA.