Please join Derek Loeb for a geological tour of the Nature Conservancy's 13,000 acre Juniper Hills Preserve. We will be able traverse 40 million years of eastern Oregon's geologic history, from the upper Clarno Formation through the lower John Day Formation to the present, all in one day with time to spare for a lunch break. Along the way, we will be attempting to tie the rocks to the plate tectonic setting, the paleo-geographic setting, the climate and the eco systems.
After an initial meet up and orientation at the barn, we will hike a few hundred meters to examine 40 million year old Clarno Formation lahar deposits. We will then move by vehicle to a two track road where we will walk, about a mile round trip, to a nice exposure of the 'Painted Hills' Bridge Creek Member of the John Day Formation. We will relocate to shade and limited facilities of the barn for a lunch break. After lunch, we move deep into the preserve in vehicles on a rough two track ranch road (AWD SUV vehicles should be ok as long as they have robust tires). We will make an attempt to voluntarily ride share in order to limit the number of vehicles. We will be driving about 5 miles one way and along the way we will make stops to look at a Quaternary age andesite dike/intrusive and take a short hike to the Clarno-John Day Formation contact (see photo above). Our final stop and short hike will be to a viewpoint to view a narrow canyon cut into a Quaternary age columnar andesite flow.
Total walking mileage for the day will be about 3 miles with modest elevation changes but there is some shorter steep sections and some of it will be on rough trails or mild cross country. Other than barn, there is very little shade, but we will never be very far from the vehicles.
There will be a designated ride share meet up location in Bend and Prineville.
Please note that this event is limited to 15 participants and registration must be done via the registration button on the trip listing on the COGS website. Only COGS members and a guest may register. Registration will be confirmed on the webpage by a light green box indicating registration was successful and by a confirmation email. If you don't get this email you should try the registration process again. Please contact Derek Loeb ( derekloeb@gmail.com ) with any questions.
Central Oregon Geoscience Society
Email: COGeoSoc@gmail.com P.O. Box 2154, Bend, Oregon 97709
