North-West Highlands a landscape aesthetically carved by geology

North west highland is located at one of the ancient coast close to the Atlantic and Loch Gleann dubh.
Before we dive into the great geologic history that this place offers, I would like to talk about couple things that happened at the time.Our day started as we checked out of Portress hostel, we neatly packed our belonging into our vans and drove for more than 3 hours to Loch Assynt and Archmore duplex for the field. 

I took this picture across the road as we were observing this amazing rock units
The site is quite famous for the geologic mapping amongst the British students as we ran into a large group of geology student that were doing excursion in the same area. Well you may wonder if any of us broke out of their shell and perhaps said something or stroke a sustainable conversation with the other side other than the usual glances and nodding perhaps(at least for some people). I would say that I saw few people from both sides did make a notable effort to find out what the other side was doing, one of whom was Charly-Bank who asked their  instructor who happened to have been working and conducting field trip in this area over a couples years then we briefly parted ways.
An erected strata column of the NW highlands' rocks units

Just to give you an introductory bits of the geology of this place,Northwest highland boast spectacular mountains, coastal scenery and a large area of exposed bedrock.This sparsely populated yet accessible area possesses a diverse geological features, making it a classic region where one feels closer to geology and landscape than anywhere else in Britain.(history has it that this region is one of the birth place for geological ideas in the world, take Victorian Scientific pioneers "the great debate" for instance).The geologic set up of NW highlands ranges from some of the oldest, most altered rocks in UK ('from the literature') a thin veneer of sand, gravel and clay left by the last the last glacier.The main rock unit aligned in NNE direction, and this grains are in turn reflected in the landscape. Approaching from the east as we escalate Creag Nambroc hill we encounter a cluster of rugged peaks.  All are build of altered/metamorphic rocks, the Moine schists also they are composed of Torridonian sandstone and some have caps of basalt quartzites. They overlook hummocky and very rocky terrain composed of lewisian Gneiss which stretches to the coast.

meanwhile Peter is looking out to pose while we
measuring the strikes and dips of the rock units
On the second day we visited the Knockan Crag a geologic visitors centre located about 20km north of Ullapool, a visitors attraction that tell the story of part of Scotland's turbulent geological past global processes that have been at work to create the unique rock formations and spectacular landscape at this historic site. we learn through recorded audio that the story of this place is told using poetry and we're able to found sculpture, interactive demonstrations and cartoons that illustrate the dramatic geological events of the past and the peoples involved in unravelling these fascinating stories.
We later unanimously decided to unforgivingly mapped out this region of which happened to be where Charly-Bank did his undergrad mapping course. After the mapping we were later told that the region had two thrusts the Ullapool i.e the oldest which was then over-thrusted by the Moine thrust which put thrust the bottom Quartzite on top.Not only did we came to realized that this area wasn't simple to mapped in 2days since it has been thrusted thoroughly but also we walked away knowing that we had more than couples thing mapped right and should anyone want to sharpen their mapping skill NW highland is more than just a good place to do so.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Isle of Skye II

the last post from Scotland 2018