EDUCATIONAL FIELD TRIP STOPS IN THE BLUE RIDGE AND SURROUNDING AREAS UTILIZED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY AT APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Our department uses its location in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina for field trips at all levels of our curriculum. Many of these outcrops are at road cuts open to the public and suitable for visits by large numbers of students and teachers. An outcrop of the Blowing Rock Gneiss (BRG—1.1 Ga) on US-321 south of Blowing Rock, NC includes phases of high and low grade regional metamorphism (augen gneiss and greenstone), distinct episodes of felsic and mafic intrusion, and late-forming joints similar to, but less complex than the well-known “Tweetsie outcrop” we use north of Blowing Rock. A nearby outcrop on US 321 is the site of a rockslide that closed the highway (Dec. 2006) where foliations in the BRG dip parallel to the hill slope. In Ashe County, NC, meta-ultramafics in Todd include actinolite-talc schists (crystals >1 cm) and garnet-chlorite schists with garnets >1 cm diameter. Staurolite-kyanite-garnet porphyroblastic schists are present on US-221 at the bridge over the South Fork of the New River. In Banner Elk, NC, metaconglomerate of the Grandfather Mountain Fm (GMF) includes large quartz and other clasts in a colorful phyllosilicate matrix. At Beacon Heights, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, exposures of the GMF preserve relict crossbedding in a Neoproterozoic quartzite, and are crosscut by en echelon quartz veins. Many quarries and mines in the vicinity of Spruce Pine, NC host the world-famous Spruce Pine Pegmatite, but some include exposures of eclogite and dunite. There is a topaz collecting site at the bridge over the Elk River on US-321 near Poga, TN where specimens can be 2+cm diameter (although few are gemstone grade). Excellent examples of bedrock weathering include weathering pits (saucer-shaped depressions etched into rock by granular disintegration and spalling of thin rock flakes) at Flat Rock Trail on the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Linville Park. Farther afield near Eden, NC, the Solite Quarry exposes >200m of continuous section from the Upper Triassic Danville-Dan River rift basin. The section includes dolomitic and carbonaceous shales, silts, and sandstones exhibiting Van Houten cycles attributed to Milankovitch cyclicity in the Cow Branch Fm. Several of these rocks and many others are in our “rock garden” and can be visited virtually at http://mckinneymuseum.appstate.edu/rock-garden.