The NEW Post Your Campsite/gear/knife/hiking/anything Outdoorsy Pic Thread!

Is that something eating/burrowing in the bark of eucalyptus? Cool shot of the Kangaroos, and with joeys! :thumbup:
 
Its a Scribely Bark gum , there is a bug that lives in inner bark , it goes from egg to moth or whatever it becomes , leaving that pretty scar in its wake . When the outer bark falls away each year , the inner bark comes thru now showing its decorations .
My wife is currently in the neuroscience ward .. this is in the grounds of the hospital , the roos are tame as anything .
Its actually a nice patch or bush there thats left undisturbed for a while , I think 100 years or so .
 
Just a couple of pics of a short (5miles) hike my girlfriend and I did this morning, about 20-25 km from where we live.

The hike started out a bit messy. We missed a sign and started following a different route than we had planned. It made us go straight through an industrial zone, which was not that pleasant. Finally we came up to a dirt road between the trees. That's when it started getting nice.

wdkp.jpg


The hills in this area used to be sandbanks. When the sea suddenly regressed approx. 5.8 million years ago, the iron in the glauconitic sands was exposed to oxygen. This obviously caused oxidation of the top layer of the soil, making it rock hard. This top layer of iron yielding sandstone protected the (then sandbanks) hills against erosion and provided later residents with plenty of construction resources.
The hill we 'climbed' (between brackets since it wasn't that steep or high) was covered in trees. We were pretty amazed to see this when we made it to the top...

hv0y.jpg

I'm not a religious person, but finding a pretty large statue like this one in the middle of nowhere always impresses me, regardless of its meaning.

Continuing our route...
gyiv.jpg


Almost stepped on this little guy
cjpm.jpg


Finally, we arrived at the mining area where the iron ore had been mined for centuries by the locals. It isn't very pure iron ore so there was not a lot of commercial value in it for the locals, but to sustain them it was enough. It was primarily used in construction and for the restauration of older buildings in the area. I'm not sure if it was ever used to make tools with...
fu3x.jpg


You can still see the marks made by the pickaxes
q4wz.jpg


The Victorinox Farmer was with me...
uwzl.jpg


That's it. I said it was short :D
 
G. Shark, the way you read the land is really cool, the pick-axe marks would have passed through my brain without making a dent. Do they not also make samurai swords from iron ore in sand? Is it common for sand to contain iron? If so, what is it about sand that makes iron like to be in it, sorry for the poorly worded question? That looked like a really nice place to walk. Also, not meaning to be pushy, when will we get to see some pictures of Berchtesgaden area, unless it was someone else, but I'm pretty sure you said it.

Myal, I'm sorry to hear about your wife. If it is not too inappropriate to ask, what is wrong with her?
 
GS, I agree with eujaee, when you go out, you really have a knowledge of the ground on a large time scale to flesh out your picture of the area. It IS cool :thumbup: Nice shots! :thumbup:

eujaee said:
[...]Myal, I'm sorry to hear about your wife. If it is not too inappropriate to ask, what is wrong with her?
Click to expand...

Jeez, I completely blew by that and interpreted it as 'my wife is working in the neuroscience ward'. I hope it's something manageable.
 
eujaee said:
G. Shark, the way you read the land is really cool, the pick-axe marks would have passed through my brain without making a dent. Do they not also make samurai swords from iron ore in sand? Is it common for sand to contain iron? If so, what is it about sand that makes iron like to be in it, sorry for the poorly worded question? That looked like a really nice place to walk. Also, not meaning to be pushy, when will we get to see some pictures of Berchtesgaden area, unless it was someone else, but I'm pretty sure you said it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliments. I always find it interesting to see from what point of view others interpret their environment, and I guess this is my nice :D. I don't know about the samurai swords. I live in Europe so... Furthermore, I have no knowledge of knife/sword-making processes so I wouldn't know what kind of purity you'd need. I do know it's heavy, yet durable building material. It was often used for buildings that were supposed to stand the test of time. Think of churches and mansions of rich people in the Middle Ages. The iron is part of the glauconite that is present in the soil. Glauconite (a mineral) is an iron potassium phyllosilicate mineral, meaning that iron is an integral part of the chemical compound/bond of the mineral. Glauconite is a mineral that is often found in slowly deposited marine sediments, mostly on the continental shelf.
Here's a wikipedia extract on how it is formed:

It develops as a consequence of diagenetic alteration of sedimentary deposits, bio-chemical reduction and subsequent mineralogical changes affecting iron-bearing micas such as biotite, and is also influenced by the decaying process of organic matter degraded by bacteria in marine animal shells. Glauconite forms under reducing conditions in sediments and such deposits are commonly found in nearshore sands, open oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. Glauconite remains absent in fresh-water lakes, but is noted in shelf sediments of the western Black Sea.
Click to expand...

It is striking that in some sediments that are directly deposited on top of each other glauconite sometimes appears and then just disappears again. For example, the Kattendijk Sands (Early Pliocene) contain lot's of glauconite, but the slightly younger Oorderen Sands that are deposited right on top of the Kattendijk Sands contain no glauconite at all. It mostly has to do with depositional environments. Speed of the water, depth of the sea... those are the primary variables. It's a green mineral, that was often used as a pigment.

I'll be taking pics of the Berchtesgaden area as soon as I get there. I'll be leaving the 25th of August and I'll be back about a week later. Thanks for the interest ;-).

HikingMano said:
GS, I agree with eujaee, when you go out, you really have a knowledge of the ground on a large time scale to flesh out your picture of the area. It IS cool :thumbup: Nice shots! :thumbup:
Click to expand...

Thanks HM, much appreciated!
 
Went on a 7-day hike in California'a Sierras, Ansel Adams Wilderness.
Sorry, but I can't get my pictures to display.

http://flic.kr/p/fs6gNY
 
Last edited:
Galeocerdoshark - Interesting stuff. You must be deep into geology...not my profession but my true love in life.

That picture of the beech forest really reminds me of my time in Germany, I saw some nice beech forests there.
 
lambertiana said:
Galeocerdoshark - Interesting stuff. You must be deep into geology...not my profession but my true love in life.

That picture of the beech forest really reminds me of my time in Germany, I saw some nice beech forests there.
Click to expand...

Deep, well like in your case it's not my profession. Since I'm not a professional, I'd get the label amateur but I'm really bitten by it. My interest in geology is more of a side effect, but a necesseray and helpful one. It's extremely valuable in understanding how the fossiliferous layers that I sample are formed. It helps me recreate the environment that those critters used to live in and hence it helps me understand my hobby a lot better. I could only tell you this information because it's relatively close to my home town. The geology around here is pretty much active knowledge for me just because I'm in the middle of it. Same thing with localities I frequent for fossiling. I know in what kinda stuff I'm sampling. However, if you'd catch me off guard during a hike in an area I'd never been to and you asked me to identify a generic rock, I'd have to scratch my head and think pretty hard in order to make an educated guess. The geology of some places is more active knowledge for me though. I'm by no means an expert.

The beech forests are pretty nice around here, indeed :thumbup:. Pine and spruce forests are very common here too, but are not indigenous. They were planted en masse after the Romans conquered these areas because they grew quickly so the locals wouldn't be without wood too soon. A new era began where cities with large complexes (churches, abbeys, castles, strongholds,...) boomed, so tons of wood were needed.

All of that on a sidenote :D
 
Great pics flatblackcapo! Love the picture of that SAK and the nicely contrasting colors with the red, the bright green and the light grey :thumbup:

Redsquid, seems like one helluva cool trip. Lots of beautiful pictures. What was the average altitude during your stay?
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the knowledge dump, G. Shark. I think I understand it, well some of it, crazy, I thought it was your profession.

H. Mano, about the neuroscience ward thing, I dunno, I might have read it wrong too. Only Myal can confirm.

Sorry, no pictures, did San Gorgonio couple weekends ago, still working on the shots. Nothing I really want to show so far, disappointing cause it was 16 hr death march. There should of been Japanese soldier yelling at me and poking me with a bayonet.
 
We had six different campsites along our hike, and on average, we slept at about 9000 ft. The highest pass we hiked over was 10,780.

I guess you found my flickr?


Here is my flickr, so people can link until I can post pictures.

www.flickr.com/photos/andersonorsburn
Galeocerdoshark said:
Great pics flatblackcapo! Love the picture of that SAK and the nicely contrasting colors with the red, the bright green and the light grey :thumbup:

Redsquid, seems like one helluva cool trip. Lots of beautiful pictures. What was the average altitude during your stay?
Click to expand...
 
HikingMano said:
Nice looking meadows and lakes you guys visited! :thumbup: How'd you like the trip?
Click to expand...

I loved the trip. The cooking kit was a bit heavy, supplied by the Sierra Club, but other than that, no complaints. OK, one more complaint: a few nights, the temperature dropped to 30 degrees. :-) I would have liked to have gone with a small group of friends However, I decided kind of late in the season, that I had to see the Sierras, and was intimidated by the thought of planning a trip, so I just went online and signed up for a Sierra Club trip.

The hike that I enjoyed the most was the day we went over Post Pass and Isberg Pass. I like the open feeling above the trees.

I was surprised by all the flowers up there. Some were past their prime, but many were not.

I discovered that I like wax currants, and I enjoyed the company of the others in the group.
 
Thanks for the pictures, redsquid2. Those packs looked extremely large and heavy, 10,500 ft with that load would have ended me. I think I recognize some of the folks in those shots, they look a lot like the people who pass me on the trail while I'm sucking air. That is a cool puukko too, what size blade is that?

WarnerB, I've been thinking about trying Whitney for awhile, but 14,500 is no joke, not yet at that advanced level. The mist shot and the long exposure on the creek are awesome, like National Geographic. What was shutter speed, aperture for the creek picture?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top