Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico

My primary (only?) visit to the Jemez Mountains (especially the Valles Caldera) was in 1978, as a UTEP Geology grad student.  The purpose was for me and three other grad students to be immersed in the concepts and terminologies associated with explosive caldera-type eruptions and their resultant Felsic (and sometimes Intermediate) Pyroclastic deposits before we started our planned Summer fieldwork in the Eagle Mountains in West Texas. 

There is a slim chance that we might have skirted the area a year earlier during the 1977 Summer Field Camp field trip, as the Jemez Mountains are adjacent to the Western margin of the Rio Grande Rift, at the intersection of the RGR and the Jemez Lineament.  After 43 - 44 years, some of the memories are rather dim.

The four following images are from scanned 35 mm slides, taken by me during the 1978 field trip.  The first two images are from west of the river, where the Bandelier Tuff overlies rift-related basalt flows.  Figure 3 is looking downriver (I think), while Figure 4 is looking upriver, though I am not 100% certain of the photo orientation.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

In amongst my thousands of largely-unsorted, unscanned, and unlabeled 35 mm slides, there are probably other Jemez  Mountains photos. 

Just a reminder, I understand about being tired after returning from a strenuous field trip, but after your energy returns, please label your samples and attach some sorts of descriptions to your digital photo files.  (And perhaps print a few of them and store them in an unlit place, perhaps even a file folder.)

It is hard to read 30 to 40 years into the future, you may remember where the photos/samples are from, but you may forget crucial details, i.e., learn from my mistakes.

Figure 5.

This (Figure 5) Valles Caldera tuff sample is one of the few that I collected and managed to hold onto throughout the decades.  (Though I may have donated it to a school after this digital photo was taken.  Records should be kept regarding donations as well, if you wish to "evenly" disperse samples through several schools.)