On Thursday
at 10am we went to Chalk Bluff Road to look at the Bishop’s Tuff formation.
Both of the units here were from explosive volcanic eruptions, but their actual
depositional events were slightly different. The bottom unit was deposited in a
pyroclastic fall, which means that material dropped from the volcano and didn’t
have any flow. The upper unit was deposited in a pyroclastic flow, which means
that material was carried down the side of the volcano under gravity. They were
both lapilli tuffs, meaning that the grain sizes within the units went up to a
maximum of around 64mm.
We arrived
at Hot Creek at 1:45pm, where we looked at the hot springs that unfortunately
we weren’t allowed to go in as they were too hot!
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| Hot Springs |
At 2:40pm we
went to an obsidian, rhyolitic lava dome which is part of the Mono-Inyo Crater
Chain. Unfortunately we couldn’t really see much here thanks to the snow that
came down the day before! The views were lovely, and a few of us had snowball
fights, before leaving there at 3:30pm.
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| Lava Dome |
We then went
to look at the Inyo Craters at 4pm, where several 1,000 year old eruptions took
place, however we couldn’t see much there either thanks to the snow. At least
it was very pretty! At 4:40pm we headed back to Lone Pine Hostel, which was
just next to the motel, which unfortunately was full, where we stayed for the
night.
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| One of the Inyo Craters |
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