Salar Grande
Originally uploaded by Heather and Rob.
I´ve just returned to the city of Salta, Argentina after a month of adventure in the high elevation Puna plateau of Argentina. As a part of my postdoc, I´m here trying to understand hte emplacement of HUGE pyrocalstic flow deposits from a volcano (now 2 million years old) called Cerro Galan. A month ago, I arrived in Argentina and joined a field course to learn more about Andean volcanology in the area. There were professors, graduate students, and industry professionals from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Mexico, Germany, Australia, Italy, the U.S., and more. It was a lovely trip, not only for the amazing geology that we saw and the friends that we made, but also for the great wide open scenery that´s so typical of the Puna. I´ll post pictures when I get back to Australia in December.
The second two weeks, I continued through the Puna with a group of 8 other scientists to the Cerro Galan volcano. Driving up to Cerro Galan is amazing. The base of the caldera sits at 4500 meters, but the caldera wall gets above 5000m and the dome in the center of the caldera is over 6000m. So, we´re talking pretty high elevation terrain. The climate is very very dry. North of the caldera is a wide salar, a salt pan that contains a very alkaline lake, home to many beautiful pink flamingos. The lake is completely contained; it doesn´t drain to the sea via a river, but is instead completely contained between the mountains. Many mining companies harvest salt deposits here from the lake. And surrounding this topography live many many vicuñas, animals that are related to llamas and alpacas, but have much thinner bodies and shorter hair. They are protected animals here in Argentina and so have begun to thrive in the high mountain areas.
The scenery is so wide open and enormous that it literally felt like my heart was trying to burst open to fill the space created by land that seemed to extend forever. There aren´t many trees and vegetation is sparse, but where a river does provide enough water for things to grow, small oases pop up with groups of families all crowded in to a small valley nook.
We spent several nights at a mining camp, which surprised me in the level of accomodation that was available. We ate hot meals at night, were serenaded by several members of our group who sing and play the guitar and clarinet as well. But after several nights, we headed up into the caldera to camp in the remote high altitude inner workings of the volcano. I´ve definitely never slept at such a high elevation, and certainly never been above 5000m elevation. But it all went very well. At that elevation the sun beats down mercilessly, and you must repeatedly layer on the sunblock. But the wind is ferocious and the weather can change very unexpectedly. We were all bundled up in at least 4 or 5 layers of clothes, tromping around the caldera. We spent 5 days, simply doing reconnaissance for next year´s trip: getting a general idea of what kinds of rocks are present in different areas of the caldera and how difficult it will be to access them. The wind howled around us, surging up through the narrow ravines and drying out the tips of our noses, the only parts of or bodies that we left exposed. Sunburnt and running, my nose certainly took the brunt of the weather effects. But after each day, we´d head back to camp and cook up a big meal, surprised to find that the wind usually died down in the evening, in our small relatively unprotected camp site. We held our tents down to the ground by piling rocks and sand up around all of the tents up to the level of the rainfly. We built a fire made from very small wood pieces collected on the journey up the mountain. And we had a lovely little camp.
The drive out of the caldera was long (only 180 km, but very slow going) and we managed to get one of the trucks stuck (bogged) in the sand on the way in the caldera. We spent 3 hours digging and placing rocks and laying out of metal traction plates to get the truck up the side of the hill. Good 4x4 experience... Similarly, a few days later, I managed to get the truck I was driving stuck in a river. A good hour later, after jacking up the car and placing a new surface beneath the truck (rocks, grass, etc.) we got the car out. Further up the road, to redeem my confidence, I drove the narrowest canyon I´ve ever seen a road built through - literally no more that a foot leeway on either side of the vehicle over rough, steep terrain. Yikes... everyone just holding their breath and intermittently closing their eyes or keeping them wide open.
Well.... I´m off to fill up our spare gas tank and water tank and resupply on food and rest as well. We´re back into the field for another 2 weeks, this time just me and Chris, a British Ph.D. student, and Chiara, an Italian Ph.D. student.
Love to you all.
h
