Tuesday, November 25, 2014

2014 Diary: Day 16 - The Low's Revisited

By Nick and his team (Penester, Haajiera and Ndidi)

Today saw the return to the previous area in the north, partly necessitated by travelling for just over 3 hours to the last outcrop of yesterday to recover Nick’s hammer…a small sacrifice in comparison to the effort of procuring a new one! Plus a worthwhile exercise in GPS navigation, so all was good. The day was once again spent in basement, but this time with more variety in that extensive development of largely intermediate to felsic volcaniclastic metasediments was encountered along with the granodiorite. Dykes of the Gannakouriep suite are widespread, with dykes intruding earlier bodies being a subject of interest. A quick escape down to the Orange River (the juxtaposition of river and desert is a highlight of the Richtersveld) to cool down was successful; the search for a possible diamond in the river gravels was not!

Clockwise from top left: ‘Hand of God’ eroded into the sheared basement metavolcanics; team scale perspective; Gannagariep dyke-intruding-dyke exposure; Nick at the granitoid contact with his re-claimed hammer, Haajirah getting her chance to develop 4x4 skills in the real environment; Nick, Ndidi, Penester and Haajirah escaping the 40+ deg desert heat today; Penester overcoming one of her field ‘fears’ (spot the little bird) :)

No comments:

Post a Comment