Friday Field Foto #91: Snow-covered outcrops in the distance

In my head it seems like a lot of my Friday Field Fotos are from my PhD field area in Patagonia, but I was looking through the list and realized I haven’t shown one of the actual outcrops in about a year.

Today’s photo is a bit dark, but it was a dark day … it was taken looking to the north while standing on top of this outcrop. The snow-covered mountain in the distance is called Cerro Divisadero and was my field site for some detailed work, which became this paper. There are no roads to get to that mountain — read about how to get there on this post.

Tres Pasos Formation, northern Magallanes Basin, Chile (© 2009 clasticdetritus.com)

The outcrop from which this photo is taken is generally the same stratigraphic level. Note how the strata are dipping to the right in the river valley and on mountainsides. Basically, you are looking along strike.

Cerro Divisadero is infamous for the bad weather — even when other areas further south are quite nice. For example, on this particular day the mountain on which this photo was taken was free of snow even though they are similar elevations. The Patagonian ice sheet is off to the west (left in this photo) about 30 km away and it always seemed the winds simply picked up a bunch of snow and then dumped it on that mountain.

Happy Friday!