Check out the explanation of this core at the bottom of the page

Hey gang,

I just got done splitting and photographing the cores. They're spectacular! Have a look. The attached file is an image of all the core sections stitched together; the stitching program curved the final photo a bit for some reason, but they're straight in the real world. The top is to the left (next to the "PL07-03" label), and goes down to the right. The total length is ~118 cm (doesn't sound like much, considering the effort it took, but that's the length after I took out the slough that fell back in the hole after each push).

Key items:

1) The top 40 cm is dominated by poorly layered organic silt, with a nice charcoal layer (forest fire?) at 14 cm

2) dark sandy Mt. Baker BA tephra (~41-48 cm) with some light-colored ash in it, erupted about 6500 yr ago

3) a nice stick we cored through at 50-52 cm

3) a HUGE section of Mazama (Crater Lk) ash (~55-93 cm), erupted ~7500 yr ago

4) nice organic silts down to ~108 cm

5) Very nicely bedded sandy and silty ash interbedded with organic silt down to the bottom of the core (~118 cm, which contained some gravel)

Nifty! I'm waiting for Dave to come tell me about that lowest set of ashes. I plan to look for some twigs or needles near the bottom to analyze for radiocarbon dating down in California in the next few weeks. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Mike, I didn't get many photos of the coring, so if any of your club members come up with some winners, I'd love a disc of them for teaching! I'm going to have a great time showing colleagues the "two-snowmobile, 6 big guys and a couple of skinny geologists" method of lake coring.

Thanks again.

Doug

Douglas H. Clark, Assoc. Professor

Geology Department

Western Washington University

516 High St.

Bellingham, WA 98225-9080