Project: Volcan Baru

A 5-day visit with volcanologists...

The adventure shed light on the far corners of the field while also establishing a scope for the project. While new questions cropped up during the trip, the theme never changed:
What is going on with these debris deposits?!

What we were looking for:
Multi-colored, buried blocks that explain the insides of debris avalanches. Within massive quarries, road and stream-cuts, and construction sites, the presence OR absence of these features provides information about composition and energy.

Textures, when volcanoes fall down, particular things happen to the rocks: fracturing, shattering, shearing, disaggregation... that is to say: busted up. Something we're seeing at the distal end of the deposit is jigsaw fracturing. Not every block is like this, but by now I've seen enough of these to link it with the mixed-up phase of the avalanche. This photo is an example, rock hammer for scale.

Topographic clues, despite the estimated age of the events, the topography still tells us something about the past - and adds a few more questions to the whole picture, but it's no good to ignore the hints given by aerial photos, digital elevation models, topo maps, and panoramic views. There is a 20-square kilometer area that is dissected by erosion and abruptly becomes high, rolling plateau - why?

Carbon samples, wood or charcoal or bulk soil samples that can date or at least constrain the timing of events. As far as I'm concerned, finding 7 samples within a 5-day visit is as good as it gets for a debris avalanche.

Contacts, we were lucky to gain access to the largest construction site I've seen in Panama. A new dam is going in on the Rio Chiriqui Viejo - I learned that there could be 10 more built sometime in the future, interesting... Here, the excavation is cutting so deeply that we saw both debris avalanche material and the underlying bedrock exposed within the same view. Construction workers looked like specks and whether they knew it or not, they were pointing out the unit base for us - thanks guys!

Places like this will be worthwhile to revisit. This kind of construction requires incredible excavation, in the river valley as well as further away where quarries appear to provide gravel for all of the concrete needed to stabilize the slopes.

The 5 days were a success - we have new information and ideas about Volcan Baru's debris avalanche deposits. Also, there was time to talk-story with friends and enjoy the best sunset spot I've ever seen in Panama.

Challenge: Return to the Summit

After hiking up the trail from Boquete, I reached the summit of Volcán Barú after 6 hours of walking in the dark. Thankfully, there was no hail storm to greet me at the top, just breezy mountain air, a couple of hikers, and the fantastic views that I (and my last hiking buddies from the year before) had missed last Christmas.

Almost stumbling to the summit cross, I didn't feel a spark of excitement, more-so there was a feeling of release. After the disastrous trip from the previous year, the return-trip had gone smoothly and yet the overwhelming sensation was: peacefulness.

I had started the hike at 11:30pm, a taxi dropped me off at the National Park entrance. I had left behind the drizzle of the bajareque and the starting elevation (roughly 4,000 ft) put me above the valley clouds. With a LED headlamp and a full moon above me, I hiked for 6 hours (maybe more like 6 and a half) up the long, 14-km trail.

Unfortunately for me, the wonderful ¨Flower Festival¨ of Boquete happened to be starting at the exact time when I arrived to begin my hiking adventure. I regret the timing, not because I don't love coffee, not because I don't love country fairs, but because I couldn't sleep worth a damn to prepare myself for an all-nighter, hiking toward the stratosphere.

When the trail passed the Los Fogones camping area and then snaked up to the observatories and radio towers, blasts of cold air hit me from the North. The sudden shocks helped clear my head from the strange LED-induced tunnel vision, the dreaming- yet- not- quite sentient awareness of shadowy rocks that resembled animals from moment to moment, and general fatigue. I was shivering and rickety as I finally found an outcrop enticing me to take a seat.

I picked a wonderful nook in the rocks and this is what I saw:

It was roughly 5:45 am and the lights from Davíd were multicolored and festive from this elevation (11,400 ft or 3.5 km). The moon had just set and the stars were still bright. I was sitting next to one of ANAM's buildings and wondering just how long a sunrise would take... not that I wasn't happy to hang out at the summit, but I was down to one last water bottle, feeling tired enough to sleep on the spot, and feeling cold enough to wonder if my knees would splinter to bits if I stood up too quickly.

I spent 15 dark minutes photographing the summit observatory area while the sky brightened. Then it was time to make the final hike up to the benchmarked summit.

There were already 5 people there: 3 Panamanians and 2 Germans. There is a stark-white cross at the highest point and unfortunately, a fair amount of graffiti on the dome rocks. But the sight wasn't completely marred, some rocks showed beautiful, curving dacite, small flowers sprouted inches up from the gravelly hollows, and then there was the view.

There were clouds moving in from Costa Rica and from the Caribbean Sea. The sun wasn't quite above the horizon, but the pre-dawn light allowed a wonderful view of the Sea and the Pacific, of Costa Rica's mountains and Panama's Cordillera: "then" the sun came up.

A perfect triangular shadow appeared behind Volcán Barú against the blue Costa Rican backdrop. The yellow light touched the highest peaks and warmed up the grayscale views. The details of the world below 10,000 feet became fuzzy and then, suddenly everything was clear and brightening from the anticipated sunrise.

To my delight, the little hills around the small town of Volcán were alight, individually touched by the sun. For anyone paying attention, little hills anywhere near Volcán cause a knee-jerk response:

Hills? Oh, you mean hummocks? Oh! I wonder if I've been there yet!

It was fun to see my study area, my field of hummocks lighted and already identified. That was when I decided it was time for a self portrait with my subject:

The Panamanians were glad to take the photo and in turn, I photographed them - but all of us were struggling to stay still for the shots, we were still shivering from the cold.

The view to the North was quickly filling with clouds, but the Bocas del Toro coastline was clearly marked by the pale-blue sea. The view East had the dramatic Cordillera and the direction of my little community within the Comarca Ngabe-Bugle. Boquete was visible just behind the crater rim and to the South the lights of Davíd had mixed with the sunshine but the Pacific coast was well-lit and the long point of Burica Peninsula shot out into the ocean like a breakwater. To the West, the congestion of Volcán was roped in by the Río Chiriquí Viejo and the distant blueness beyond represented Costa Rica's mountains.

It was also gratifying to stare into the gulch of Barú's crater. The surrounding peaks fit into my mental map of lava domes and the dark ring further away was the bounding wall of the most recent failure - the debris avalanche scar that was currently muddling my brain with thesis questions.

I only spent an hour and a half up there, at the peak. I knew my energy would continue to leak away and it would be better to find a warm rock somewhere below 10,000 ft where I could snooze for a while.

So I took one last photo from Panama's rooftop and wished the other hikers well (some of them had actually pitched their tent on the neighboring dome next to the summit - their little tent must have been blowing like a windsock last night, completely exposed to the 4 Winds). Then slowly, like a timid abuela, I inched my way back down to the observatory area. Once back down to the main trail, I put one foot in front of the other until, after 2 hours, I had to stop - I hadn't even crossed the first "moat," the deep ravine between the lava domes and crater rim. It was sometime around 9am but at least I was below the tree line. Birds were singing, the wind hardly moved the mossy tree branches above me, flowers were glowing in the sunshine, and so I found myself a nice warm rock.

I fell asleep for roughly an hour, I can't remember exactly now... but several hikers were passing by when I realized that I felt more hungry than tired. After snacking, I continued the descent: crossed from the last dome to reach the crater rim, then across the "moat" to the rim again, and then descending, descending, descending for hours.

I stopped by the Park Entrance, paid the visiting fee ($3.00 for residents) and then didn't stop walking until I reached the Volcancito parada to wait for a bus - around noon I was dropping off to sleep again - this time in a soft hostel bed that was just as comfortable as the sun-warmed rock I found above the clouds.

I am happy to report that the trip was successful, I enjoyed every view along the way, I was never actually hit by rain, there was no fear of frostbite, I took many photos, I am not afraid of volcanoes in the dark, and my feet are still attached even though my shoes need ShooGoo attention.

Project: Volcan Baru

This is just a quick update - quicker than normal.

The research I plan on doing based on Volcan Baru is progressing, just as it has been since I arrived, but NOW it's time to actually blog about it.

After a year spent in-country and focusing on Peace Corps activities, the hardcore geology work is now ready to take center stage. That is to say, when I'm not juggling aqueduct and latrine construction, I am hiking (or bicycling as it may be) out to my field area to map a volcanic deposit.

The fieldwork has already begun and I'm not joking about taking a bike, my research area is huge and there is a lot of ground to cover. Where am I working? Here:

(The USGS map shows 3 shaded areas: blue is Volcan Baru's edifice, brown is the lahar flow field, and in green is where I am working: the debris avalanche deposit, DAD. The original paper where you can see this map and the full explanation is here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1401/)

How do you map a VDAD? The primary features I'm focusing on are the hummocks, already deeply buried by thousands of years of lahar flows, but with a little help of aerial photos and lots of time spent "hoofing it" - I'll be able to map out the extent of the region and hopefully gather enough information to explain how such a large-scale event occurred and when.

More fieldwork should have happened in November, but renewed construction in-site and VERY bad weather changed my plans. During the week of the 16th a major storm system approached Panama's northern coast. A huge cell of rain (is that correct to say? maybe it's better to say "cells") moved in from the Caribbean and sat over the shoreline dumping rain and rising winds. Rivers were flooding, small streams graduated to rushing highways of mud, landslides covered major roads, bridges were damaged, houses were washed away, fincas were drowned, and unfortunately, some rescue efforts failed.
(Photo by Angel Rodriguez; road to Cerro Punta; Rio Chiriqui Viejo)

(Photo by SINAPROC staff; aerial view of flooding in Bocas del Toro, Nov. 16-30, 2008; http://www.sinaproc.gob.pa)

Formal report here: United Nations report

PC Volunteers were evacuated where possible, in some cases it was better to ride out the storm than cross the bay of Bocas del Toro, but it's going to be difficult for many of them to return to their sites.

Good luck you guys!

Volcano Fieldwork Part 2

February 17-20th: What is this rocky prairie? This photo was taken just seconds before the clouds moved in completely to take away the view of the summit dome. My volcanological companions and I visited Volcan Baru´s amphitheater during an uncharacteristically rainy week. After exploring the area of La Yeguada with PCVs Karinne and Noah, we took the Interamericana, headed west, then drove due north to the volcano. This was a good time to visit the largest known debris avalanche in Central America. The photo above is a view into the amphitheater of Volcan Baru. We are standing on a lahar surface and looking roughly East up into the dome complex. Too bad about the weather, the summit antennas are already hidden by the incoming rain.

Since we had the benefit of several great geological minds, we took time to look at a phenomenon very different than lava flows. Debris avalanches are dramatic, but very rare events at volcanoes. By rare, I mean that they don´t happen every day but many volcanoes around the world have collapse features like what you can see at Baru. Some preliminary studies describe this particular deposit as the largest in Central America. What does that mean? At this point it just means that a whole lot of mountain fell down many thousands of years ago.

Want to know more about hummocks? Go here: USGS VHP

Events like this are very interesting for a number of reasons but I´m interested in them because they scoop out a volcano and create new terrain. After walking around Mount St. Helens for a while in 2004, I developed a particular interest in the features called hummocks. They represent coherent blocks that tumbled, slid, or floated along with the rest of the debris that made up the flanks of a volcano. Here´s one outcrop of a hummock but it represents a blocky phase and lacks the multicolored characteristic typical of most hummocks:

(Bill, Guillermo, and Karinne for scale)

In the fan of deposits from Baru, you can find these hummocks and start to get an idea of how the collapse took place- this could be good thesis material.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and brainstorm project plans, everybody - this was a valuable series of fieldtrips!

Volcano Fieldwork Part 1

February 13-16th:
First few visits were to the Cerro Colorado region (Comarca highlands) and later Volcan Baru (to Boquete unfortunately during the same time as the jazz festival; no time to listen to music!).

We weren´t sure exactly which peak was Cerro Colorado, but we sure found the copper mine area easily. The view here is roughly south looking out from the terraced area where mining might continue in the future. We found some interesting deposits that we didn´t quite expect here; there were layers of pumice that must have come down from a volcano located higher up in the mountains. Where? Not sure yet, but for us, the pumice is far more interesting than measely copper veins!

After the quick visits in Chiriqui, we visited La Yeguada volcano in Veraguas. Before reaching the dome complexes, we stopped at a river crossing.

Here I am pointing at a kettle-like feature in the surface of a highly-jointed (entablatured jointing) ignimbrite.

We debated if this was a very glassy andesitic lava flow, but there are flow bands and compacted pumices (fiamme) within the unit. This is an interesting outcrop to study but also intreguing for the artistic eye.

The visit to La Yeguada provided a glimpse of what Karinne had been working with - heaping dacitic domes in an ill-defined crater with a poorly constrained age. This is a difficult field area...

Christmas '07

Trip to Volcan Baru (a very cold and very wet trip). I´ll share the drier photos here, but 90% of our trip was spent soaked through and colder than I´d like to remember.

We began on Dec. 24th, getting a taxi ride up from Boquete to the entrance of the National Park. The day was misty and cool, but the three of us thought we had a good chance of a clear day: just give it time, right?
By lunchtime, we had a fairly hazy view of the valley below us. Clouds were still moving above and appearing to come down from the north, we continued on. The hike is roughly a 6 hour trip up a 13km path climbing to 11,397 ft (3474 km). It´s a fairly direct route, and in good time, we reached the summit just before sunset.

Unfortunately, by sunset the mist had already become a hard rain: a horizontally blowing rain that stung like hail. It was going to be a very cold night... We had been hoping to share cabin space with the ANAM people who maintained the posts at the summit, but apparently the Christmas holiday was well-respected, even at the volcano summit. We were knocking on all of the doors of those little white buildings you can see in the picture below (after the rainy trail view).

On Christmas morning we woke up and unrolled ourselves from the picnic table, the tarps, each other, and the sleeping bags - I was suddenly happy to be alive: my companions didn´t decide to mutiny and kill me for my sleeping bag! Sincere thanks to Rebecca and Richard.

When we walked with squelching strides back down the volcano, we had a good turn of luck and caught a minibus to take us back to Boquete. I admit that the return trip was a bit miserable, but I think the most miserable of us all was little Dante, Rebecca´s dog. He was barely a year old and he was already suffering the extremes that life in Panama could offer him!

The next day, when we woke up in the warm confines of our hostel, we were greeted by a glorious view of the volcano. Hardly a cloud in the sky, we could see the treeline we had crossed, the domes we had slid down in the dark, and the white ANAM stations that denied us entry. The view reinforced my desire to return, I´ll get back up there and be able to point to the two oceans... one day.

So, when can we go again?

Suggestions for the next trip? Yes, wait until the dry season has actually started. If we had planned to hike just a week or two later, our odds would have been better for a dry time. The trouble is, though, that we ¨should have¨ just waited to hike on the 26th instead of the 24th and then, also, our rain problem would not have existed. So let that be a lesson! It´s still near-impossible to plan around the weather.

Peace Corps Training

August - October 2007

Training, ah yes, what did Brian always tell me: Just get through training!

My introduction to the Peace Corps began on campus at Michigan Tech, but the real-life experience of it began with several days of staging in Washington, DC. After introductions and many reviews of the Peace Corps goals, challenges, and nuts-n-bolts, our group of 42 aspirantes flew to Panama. I suspect that, country to country the 3 months of training are similar in design but likely wildly different in the ways that the aspiring volunteers are challenged. My days were filled with language classes, tech training (big focus on aqueducts, latrines, and health education), official "Chorrera Meetings," and lots of host family interaction. Toward the end of the 3 months there were several visits to Volunteer sites (definitely high points of the experience). As for adjusting to culture shock and self-assessment/self-doubt, I wasn´t surprised by these challenges but my, they are sneaky mindgames!

The following are some images from the Tech and Cultural Weeks. Both were a good mix of hands-on work and cultural challenges. The EH group visited two different volunteer sites in the Comarca Ngäbe-Bugle and stayed with host families. For some of us, it was a tough challenge to reencounter host family introductions and adjustment issues. Having already lived with a family in our Training Community, it wasn´t so easy to go through the social awkwardness of: hi, my name is... and reexperience the newness of idioms, personal habits, and idiosyncrasies of a new household.

The Tech-Week experience was also great bonding time for us in Group 60. After a long day´s work, we could rely on a gathering at the Co-op. Cookies and sodas and then the pivotal discovery that we could order hojaldres... these were the golden hours.

I´ll be honest here and say that these last 2 photos are not from anywhere near the Comarca. They were taken from an area close to Volcan Baru - from the lower, forested flanks of the volcano. Why was I there during training? Well, there just happened to be a little extra time after Culture Week ended and enough time for a quick run (literally a run) up to Boquete for an afternoon; this proved to be a wondrous vacation for me. The cool climate, the high altitude fresh air, the somehow denser forests, the rugged terrain, the fresh coffee, and the moments of contemplative solitude were very satisfying. Some would complain that Boquete is not what it once was, that it is now a place quite overrun by external influence - this may be true, but up until that visit, I had not known any other place that would serve me a bowl-like mug of cafe con leche. Without shame, I will admit that a you can "supersize" me a latte any day (but I don´t want fries with that, please).

Also, a quick addition. Rebecca was savvy with her camera and documented one of the crazier ¨dynamicas¨ we encountered in Training. Here´s all of us Environmental Health aspirantes doing acrobatics.

Michigan Tech '06

The Year On Campus 06-07

The PCMI program (Peace Corps Master's International) on campus is actually fairly old. I learned that the Forestry Department and the Engineers (both Civil and Environmental) have been collaborating with the PC for more than 10 years. Currently, the university is developing a Science Education program that will also partner with Peace Corps, but for the moment, the Geology Department is the youngest MI program on campus. We're the pioneers: Woohoo!
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The autumn weather in this part of the world is beautiful. Upper Peninsula weather is "special" and most would agree it's a bit infamous, but before the layers of snow close in, the warm September days are powerfully distracting as the semester begins. Like a classic New England autumn, the maples create a spectacle and follow up with a heaping mess of fallen leaves - the transition is gorgeous.

While worrying about course-load, Peace Corps paperwork, and how to prepare for a 2-year experience in a developing country, I met a lot of great people juggling the same stresses. The geo MIs made up a tight but small group, so I enjoyed sneaking into the events/gatherings of the engineers and foresters. This was especially easy since my housemates were a wonderfully mixed lot: returned volunteers, aspiring volunteers, and adopted PCMI (yes, that's you Dhita). We weren't the only house near campus that focused so much PC power, the 900 House was another magnet for us. Theme parties (the '80s will never die), socials (Jack's movie selection was topnotch!), study sessions (oh GIS), a Thanksgiving extravaganza (special thanks to Matt's Mom&Dad!), Christmas tree management (Panchita and Dhita had a vision), and overflowing washermachine events remain fixed in my memory of domestic life.
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How new is my program? New enough that the first wave of students hadn't yet returned from Peace Corps service to defend their thesis. It was possible to email the far-field students, but it was a tough way to get an introduction; this meant that very bit of advice and quickly-typed explanation helped immensely. It's not possible to feel completely prepared for the upcoming experience, but certainly over the course of 2 semesters it's possible to adjust to what is "knowable" and "unknowable." For example...

Knowable:
1. When the PC invitation letter arrives, you will celebrate.
2. When the final exams are over, you will celebrate.
3. When the Spanish skit with ghosts and jungles ends, you will celebrate.
4. When your advisor says: we'll support you, you will celebrate.

Unknowable:
1. What country you will serve in.
2. What language you should practice.
3. What thesis topic you will develop.
4. When the PC assignment will arrive.

Important Lesson:
Know when to celebrate.

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Winter Carnival on Campus:
Too famous to brush over, too important to forget photos! I could fill up a webpage full of all of the photos I took - but I won't, the university is maintaining a perfectly good site here:
http://www.mtu.edu/carnival/gallery/
I didn't try broomball, but the MTU winter was great fun. Hockey games, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing (thanks for the invitation Jim!), ice skating (you got better Matt), shoveling, hot chocolate, snow sculpture-touring ... I feel pretty good about the winter semester. I could have done without the Calculus class, but I think we all knew that from the get-go._________________________________________________________________

During both semesters, it wasn't possible to stop mulling over what the next year abroad would be like. Above all possible questions the bothered me the most, I desperately wanted to know if my country of service would offer me volcanoes. I wasn't particularly bothered by the prospect of learning an obscure new language or if I would have to cross piranha-filled rivers someday in order to reach potable water; no, I had more serious concerns. Will I have a volcano to study? This was an "unknowable," a terrible, terrible "unknowable."

Since my geology program focuses on Central American geologic hazards, I felt very comfortable with the prospect of narrowing my mulling activities to 14 countries due south of the United States. Early in the Fall Semester, I took on a project that would appear to have no definite end: a webpage.

As an attempt to both brainstorm what my future work/world would be like, I began a site that could provide information about what volcanic conditions exist in both South and Central American countries. The scope was a bit ridiculous, but I adopted a plan to post what material could possibly help me while I volunteer in the "unknowable" country. We shall see just how helpful this proves to be! _________________________________________________________________

Peace Corps Details:
The application process is long and often painful for aspirants, but I believe that I was spared quite a bit of heartache. Not many complications existed with my forms: I applied to Michigan Tech in Dec. 2005 and didn't click "Send" to complete the Peace Corps online application until August 28th, 2006 before moving to campus. My official interview was held on campus sometime in November (then stretched to a telephone conversation) and the medical checkups happened fairly easily across the Portage. The acceptance letter showed up in December, the assignment details appeared in mid-March.

Mid-March, yes! This was fairly early but certainly felt far too drawn out at the time. Was the post a surprise? Yes to that as well.