Friday, October 24, 2008

Where on (Google) Earth #150

Above, the WoGE #150 image for y'all to give a shot at. I doubt it's very difficult, but don't know - they've all seemed impossible to me until the last one, and they've seemed hard to locate in cyberspace, also. I can only recommend that Peter Lufti's postings for WoGE be somehow added to the Allgeo feed so we can tell easily when and where it's been posted (since he wins so often!). But maybe we are just meant to search for it!
To play WoGE, post the location of the above place in the comments - latitude and longitude or a description. To win, post the location first! If you win, it passes to you. If you can comment about the geology, that would be great! I'm invoking the Schott Rule: wait one hour for every time you've won WoGE.
I've never won one of these things before - I used to try a lot, but finally stopped after realizing that even in an hour I usually wasn't even coming close. WoGE #149 looked very familiar to me, so I GoogleEarthed it quickly (I think that if you can Google something, then surely you can GoogleEarth a place - a new verb!), and then posted the answer as fast as possible, only stopping to look up a couple place names in my handy-dandy Oregon Atlas. And I checked out TerraServer, also [now MSR Maps].

Yes, it was the Three Sisters near Sisters, Oregon. For certain former Oregonian readers of mine, please click here to see the Three Sisters as seen from Google Earth! And please read the comments, Tuff Cookie of Magma Cum Laude gave a spectacular description of the geology of the Three Sisters, far surpassing mine!

Posted at 6:40 PM Pacific Daylight Time, (GMT -7 I think because of summer time) October 24, 2008.

UPDATE 04Apr2017: These are the Whipple Mountains, with Savahia Peak nearly centered. I've added this update so the blog will find this post when using the search "whipple" and "savahia." I've gotten tired of not being able to find the post easily.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

34.28N - 114.53W

This is the Whipple Mountains metamorphic core complex developed during the Miocene in the Colorado River extensional corridor of the Basin and Range province in SE California. It is one of the classical examples that inspired many of the modern concepts of metamorphic core complex formation and associated low-angle detachment faulting triggered by large-magnitude crustal extension. The image features the sinuous Whipple Detachment Fault along which exhumed metamorphic core units (Precambrian and Mesozoic) represent the foot wall ("lower plate") in the north and northeast, and tilted Cenozoic volcanic and sedimentary units (dark brown NW-SE trending strata in the picture) form the hanging wall ("upper plate") in the south and southwest. The original breakaway of the detachment fault is thought to be somewhere in the W-SW, as far as the Old Woman Mts. and Iron Mts. (outside of the picture). The Whipple Mts. metamorphic core is part of the lower plate that bowed upwards as the result of extension-driven unloading and isostatic effects of associated magmatic intrusions, and caused a reorientation of the original detachment fault in the west. That is, at first glance, the Whipple Mts. detachment fault segment featured in this image mimics a thrust (reverse) fault.

Silver Fox said...

Peter, congratulations! And nice description. You get WoGE #151!

I'm not sure I see how the detachment mimics a thrust fault, though - it's younger on older, but maybe I'm missing something!

Silver Fox said...

Ah, maybe you just mean that the detachment fault is almost flat-lying, especially at Savahia Peak, which is the oval-shaped, dark-brown hill of tilted Tertiary volcanic rocks just west of center.

Ron Schott said...

Grrr. The Schott Rule sucks!!! What idiot invented it?

I just came out of my waiting period, but Peter came out of his first... D'oh!

Silver Fox said...

I thought from you probably had it figured out pretty quickly - and I thought maybe you two would be pretty close to even by now! I guess not, though.

Better luck next time I win! Ha! (I mean if you post Cascade volcano again.)

Anonymous said...

Is Peter beating Ron now in the total # of wins?

We need to make sure others know about Peter's Wo(G)E posts ... if another one stalls for too long, we can publish reminder posts or something.

Silver Fox said...

I think Ron must be ahead - he had to wait longer than Peter did.

If Peter's WoGE posts aren't added to the Allgeo feed, then Ron should add them to his feed (at least, I don't recall seeing them there!).

I got so lucky this time!

Anonymous said...

Links to the newest WoGE challenges are always posted as comments in the previous ones, so I don't really see how would one get lost on track... Anyway, I've just posted WoGE #151, rush for it 'coz it's free ;-)

A Life Long Scholar said...

So--that waiting rule, does the clock start from when the "where on" post is made, or from when the previous winner finds the spot?

Not that it matters to me, I haven't yet had a chance to play--I'll wait till my thesis is submitted before I start trying, I think. Otherwise I could lose some serious time. I'm certain I'd enjoy it, but...

Silver Fox said...

The waiting period (Schott rule) starts from when the new WoGE post is made. Right now, Maria won Peter's WoGE, and Lab Lemming won hers but hasn't posted a new one yet. The fact that you've posted the new one has to go in the comments on the place you just won, as well as posting the new challenge on your website.