My White Mountain Fieldwork

Caption: Observing the Golden Siren limestone. (Photo credit: Woody Wilson)

This summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to complete my undergraduate independent mapping in the breathtaking White Mountains of California, USA. The Whites are a place that I will always cherish, as this trip has allowed and, in some ways, forced me to grow so much as a geologist and as a person. The landscape is scattered with wonderfully fragrant sage bushes, ancient bristlecones pines, and a wide range of lithologies, from glittering marbles and dolomites to quartz monzonites, which showed a beautiful mosaic of felsic and mafic crystals, and shales and siltstones that contain the Pre-Cambrian/Cambrian Boundary, which I quite literally stumbled upon, after falling down a ravine.

This trip pushed me to have a lot more confidence in applying all the knowledge I have accumulated over the past 2 years.  I left California with a few new scars from trying and failing to graciously descend the gorgeous but very steep hills and mountains that define the landscape, and the assurance that I can work my way through any challenge thrown at me, a skill that will serve me for a lifetime.

The trip is close to my heart, especially because of the people I met along the way. From the White Mountain Research Centre (WMRC) staff who kept me well-fed and sane, the American geology students from Central Washington University (CWU), who were a very welcomed breath of life after two weeks of isolation in the Californian desert, to the PCT hikers and cowboys, and cowgirls in Rusty’s saloon down in Bishop, the trip was made special by everyone I met in my time there.

The Whites and its sage-covered hills took my breath away, quite literally, as the altitude sickness really slapped me across the face, but despite the trials and tribulations I experienced (a Covid-19 outbreak, being hit by a boulder, getting snowed in, getting tailed by a cougar, etc.), the month I spent at WMRC has been one the happiest times of my life.