Saturday, March 6, 2010

Heads Up!

This was posted yesterday at Dave's Landslide blog, along with a newspaper article. Pretty amazing, but I'm glad I wasn't there; that whole hillside looks pretty mashed up and unstable.
Rock slide on Hwy 96 in Northern California near the Humboldt/Siskiyou County line. from Paul Hailey on Vimeo.

I've been down this route some distance on a couple of field trips, coming in from I-5, but I don't think I've been as far as this spot. The geology along this road is mind-boggling. A geologic overview and road trip can be found here (3.31 Mb PDF), however, it was published 30 years ago. A lot can change in 30 years. I have found old field guides very useful, but it can take some experience and patience to get the most out of them. What was described as a "good roadcut" may be now completely overgrown with brambles, or hidden behind a clump of alders. It may even have completely disappeared, as the cut in the video clip above has.

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