Take a Colby Field Trip!

(And note that you can click
on all photos on this page
for enlarged views!)

At left, Mineralogy '98 pauses in the glow of a late autumn sunset at Friendship, Maine. Left to right in the front are Karalyn Parzych, Will Tackaberry, and Marylee Murphy; in the rear are Logan Perkins, Dave Fuente, Michael Eller, Anna Randall and Paul Dante.

(See the index to individual trips at the bottom of this page -
click on any that looks interesting and go there!)


These pages provide previews of several field trips conducted through the Department of Geology at Colby. The first link is to scenes from four separate field trips that are taken by students in the introductory physical geology course, to study bedrock, glacial and coastal features, as well as modern stream processes.
The field trip to Hartford is a Departmental trip that has been run in association with GE141 ("Interpreting Earth History"), while that to the Pineo Ridge (Blueberry Barrens) of eastern Maine is part of the glacial and Quaternary geology course field experience. Other virtual field trip pages are planned.
At left, Colby students climb in the alpine zone (above treeline) along The Knife Edge on Katahdin in Maine, the second-highest peak in the northeastern United States and third-highest in the northern Appalachians. This sharp-crested ridge, called an arête, was carved by glacial erosion into the granite of the Katahdin Batholith, a body of rock formed in the Devonian Period of earth history (some 380 million years ago or so) by melting of pre-existing silica-rich rocks. Katahdin is about a 3-hour drive from the Colby campus, and has been the occasional locale for geology field trips in several upper-division courses.

At the right, Colby glacial and Quaternary geology students pause during their search for the ultimate moraines in eastern Maine on a field trip in April, 2001. Laura Wilcox, Will Tackaberry, Melissa Trout, Anna Randall, Sandor Nagy and Paul Dante had just finished eating lunch and were getting ready to tackle the Big One at Pineo Ridge. The granitic boulders that dominate the moraines in this area form impressive landforms readily visible since they've been cleared for commercial blueberry cultivation.



Check out these other Colby field trips!




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This page last modified on 3 August, 2001