September 28, 2024

A significant portion of the terrain of Portland’s West Hills between Burnside Road and US 26 is ancient and active landslides. Dr. Scott Burns, professor emeritus of Geology at Portland State University, took GSOC participants on a field trip exploring this terrain and observing the mitigation methods used over the years to try and arrest the sliding and damage. Dr. Burns has trained quite a few geologists about landslides over the years he has taught at PSU, and many of his students are now cataloguing and mitigating landslides throughout the Pacific northwest and other areas of the country.

June 7-9, 2024

In the June 2024 field trip, GSOC participants were treated to explore some of the geological fieldwork and mapping done by Jason McClaughry and field trip leader and GSOC Past President Clark Niewendorp of DOGAMI over the years 2014-2020. The main subject of the field trip was volcanic materials that originated in the Mt. Hood area of the High Cascades and were deposited on the eastern flanks of these mountains in Wasco County between The Dalles and Tygh Valley from the Late Miocene onwards. All this volcanic material is underlain by a platform of Columbia River Basalt. Also, the group examined the effects of folding and faulting associated with the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt. Late Pleistocene surficial deposits – notably wind-blown loess and megaflood sediments – completed the surface geology they saw in the area.

The GSOC Annual Picnic enjoyed a good turnout this year at Beacon Rock State Park in the Columbia River Gorge. GSOC had not sited the picnic here for over 20 years, and members agreed that this was a very good venue for a picnic. Not only did the site have a serviceable enclosed shelter building, but also a great view of some outstanding geology – Beacon Rock, a remnant of the last known outpouring of Boring lava, dated at 58,000 years ago.

This trip began in the mind of GSOC member Dr. Benjamin Sloan after he joined the society last year and participated in the Coaledo trip last summer. By September he was emailing me and asking whether we would consider doing a trip to Crater Lake. I replied that we’d consider the trip, then added a long list of logistical considerations that needed to be worked out, thinking that would be the last I’d hear from him. Well, one month later he had researched the technical papers, gone to Crater Lake to research lodging and travel routes, and sent me a list of tasks he’d completed. Turns out that Ben has been planning field trips worldwide and teaching geology for years as well as doing oil exploration.

Recap of the GSOC Willamette East Bank Bike Geotour - June 26, 2022

GSOC participants of the 3rd Eastbank Bike Geotour field trip met on the morning of Sunday, June 26, in order to complete the tour before the 90+ degree temperatures of the hottest day of the year (so far) set in. This tour had not been run in three years due to the pandemic, and the leaders included Ian Madin, who just retired from DOGAMI, and Dr. Lalo Guerrero, who teaches geology at Portland Community College. Take a journey with the group and think about biking it for yourself!

Recap of the GSOC Willamette Valley Transect Geotour - June 18, 2022

Thirteen happy participants of 2022’s first GSOC field trip piled into the back room of the Bear Creek Pizza parlor in Molalla this past Saturday night to eat dinner and sketch up their conclusions from the day’s journey across the Willamette Valley. GSOC Past President and Programming Director Sheila Alfsen led the group from Erratic Rock State Park on the west side of the valley to the Molalla Rosette to the east of the valley in more or less a straight line. The purpose of the trip was to observe the landforms of the Willamette Valley, concentrating on the fluvial processes at work in the sediments of the valley floor.

The Coaledo Formation field trip began about two years ago when Dr. John Armentrout, a native Oregonian and sedimentary basin stratigrapher with a long career at Mobil Oil, came to talk to GSOC about a project he was working on. He was revisiting a part of Oregon that he had studied in the early days of his career, the Coaledo Formation centered in the Coos Bay and Cape Arago areas. He had assembled a team of researchers from the University of Oregon and elsewhere to work on the multidisciplinary project. And he proposed the GSOC field trip as a precursor to a GSA field trip he would be organizing for the GSA annual meeting in 2021.

So, we were all preparing to go on the trip in August 2020 and then COVID struck. We subsequently revised the trip date and finally this year got the trip ready to go. It turned out to be quite a fun trip and well worth the wait!

With forecasts in the Willamette Valley due to surpass 115 degrees, suddenly a four-day geology field trip in traditionally hot Central Oregon seemed to be a very cool place to visit indeed! So, off to the (relatively) cool hills and mountains surrounding Prineville and John Day did 25 geologists and geologist-wanna-be’s travel. Led deftly by three intrepid women: Carol Hasenberg (primary trip organizer), Carrie Gordon (Day 1 & Day 4 Geologist) and Emily Cahoon (Day 2, 3 & 4 Geologist), the group caravanned in up to 14-vehicles to incredibly important and fascinating geologic formations that only friends-of-rocks and aficionados-of-prevailing-geologic theory would appreciate!