GEO-EPEDITIONARY LEARNING IN DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE

The recent adoption of “Expeditionary Learning Experiences” for high school students over the last few years at Tri-Valley High School, in Healy, Alaska, has led to a unique geo-outreach program presented by Denali National Park and Preserve and the Murie Science and Learning Center. For the spring of 2009, a geology course was offered involving a one-week outing in a remote location in Denali, aimed at focusing on gold mining claim evaluations using systematic gold panning, shallow seismic investigations, surface geology evaluations, GPS oriented claim staking, and final property reserve calculations.

Expeditionary Learning attempts to bring experts into the classroom, takes students into the field, and engages students in real world learning experiences. The idea was popularized by the Outward Bound Organization, where outdoor field experiences, developing teamwork, courage, craftsmanship, perseverance, and compassion, are used to create powerful learning experiences and foster academics and personal growth.

The course took place in the Kantishna Mining District of Denali National Park and Preserve, and involved eleven student participants (and three instructors) spending one day of in-stream pan sampling of placer claims, a second day of seismic evaluation of gravel depths and gold recovery-reserve calculations, and a third day completing a GPS survey of 3 adjacent lode claim boundaries. Students then assembled final reports and slideshows demonstrating the reserve gold values and methodologies to obtain the data. The participants learned the particulars of placer gold origin and deposition, excavation and panning techniques, the mineral components of black sand concentrates and fine gold reduction, subsurface layer character and acoustic responses, three-dimensional mineral reserve modeling, and GPS survey techniques, including GPS data overlay on map and satellite images.

Success was partially demonstrated by the in-depth reports, slideshows, movies and posters presented to parents and the public on the final day of the course. But the greatest demonstration of success was watching teenagers panning into the late hours of the “midnight sun” for gold, and for the magic, mesmerizing mineral, magnetite, which was infinitely more abundant than the gold.