Viking_Yearbook_66

p; ge0l00y li0ld lri[ They looked like scores of insects scouring the rocks along the Sandy River above Trout- dale rather than what they were-PSC stu- dents, part of the 400 who took thb Ceology Department's November field trip up the Columbia Corge. They traveled only a short 83 miles up through the brochured beauties of lnterstate 80, but when they returned to Portland down the Washington side of the Columbia they had been back a long 40,000,000 years in the Northwest's geologic history. For in the Corge, the Columbia has carved a geologist's dream, a panorama in technicolor that ex- poses all the rocks that make the mountains in the Cascade range. For the geology buffs, Troutdale was orienta- tion to the signs left by the lce Age series of great floods that modified the Corge. The postcard-familiar view from Crown Point be- came a panoramic stage on which they were introduced to five type-cast characters-five distinctive examples of volcanoes, all the way from cinder cone to composite. ln the Oneonta Corge the science trippers, circa 1966, stopped to hold research requiem for a forest that died under a lava flow of 30,000,000 years ago. And, between Hood River and their lunch at The Dalles, the students saw where nature had momentarily put her work away in three great folds of the earth's crust-folds that were as plain to the eye as the folded blan- kets on their laps. To the educated eye, that is. Every year the geology field trips grow. The long-established November Corge junket this year had to be rerun on Sunday, and called for reinforcements from scientists outside the ranks of PSC's staff. Headed by John Allen, Ceology Department head, the tour guides included Paul Howell, U. S. Army Engineers; Ralph Mason of the State Department of Ceology and Mineral lndustries (originator of the PSC field trips 15 years ago). and Portland State faculty: Mrs. Miriam McKee, Paul Ham- mond, Don Shaffroth, Richard Thoms, and Robert Van Atta. t'lF '\" \:x \q- t* " , ot * *.' ; j .,.s_r,i' r.d$i' '& "d* -%{ :;;''.,S 'd# IIF "r rl I ;it s-