January 1 - 19 Entries

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19 January 2008
Centro Austral De Investigaciones Cientificas (CADIC)
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
20 degrees C, blue skies, no wind!

What a Difference USAP/RPSC Makes - Dave Barbeau, University of South
Carolina

First off, sincere apologies to our faithful readers who may have been
let down by the sudden and prolonged drop-off in the number and
frequency of journal entries since our departure from Antarctica. We
greatly appreciate your interest in our work and adventure and hope we
didn`t lose too many of you during our hiatus, repeats of which
hopefully we can avoid in the future.

Whereas inertia (in this case, of a body at rest) is certainly
partially to blame for this protracted lack of journal-ing, the
infrequent updates in and of themselves have a pertinent story to
tell. While aboard the Gould, as hard as we tried not to, it was easy
to take the various forms of USAP/RPSC assistance for granted.

As helpful, generous and patient as the wonderful people of CADIC are
(surely we`d be much less efficient without their guidance), our field
work in Tierra del Fuego (and everywhere else outside of Antarctica I
have worked) is the antithesis of RPSC/USAP campaign-style science. We
buy our own lamb, beef and bread; we prepare our parrillas; we set up
and take down our tents. We rent cars and drive ourselves and our
rocks around the estancias, coasts, dirt roads and mountains. We
arrange trips by zodiac and ATV to remote parts of the island. We
negotiate and search out reasonable prices and we keep track of and
worry about budgets. We keep a close eye on the fill-levels of our
various tanks (vehicles and food stores and stoves and water bottles).
None of the above were our concerns during LMG 07-17 (hence the time
to keep up with journal entries). All we worried about was science. I
can't imagine a more perfect setting to work under. I mention this
solely to (once again) express the great appreciation I have for the
support folks of the RPSC/USAP/AGUNSA system.

I'm hoping that today's inertial change persists and we keep up with
the documentation (and fill in the past blanks) of our Tierra del
Fuego adventure. This will be a challenge - tomorrow Zahid and I are
off for a three-day slog via ATV along the Atlantic coast to Cabo
Leticia, Punta Noguera and hopefully Caleta Policarpo with our friend
Emilio Jerez Blanco, meanwhile Gombosi and Kendra will tackle a gap in
our Oligocene targets near Punta Gruesa and Cabo Irigoyen (also of the
Atlantic coast). ....then begins the adventure of getting our 600
kilos of Argentine samples to Punta Arenas via rental car for shipment
to the States via the USAP cargo system. When the customs offices of
two countries are involved, nothing is for certain. Wish us luck!

Today's entry is dedicated to
la Familia Olivero y Equipo Olivero who have been wonderful hosts,
friends and allies in our quest to achieve the goals of our project.
Gracias por todo.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, January 7th 2008

We decided we will camp at Lago Roca for two nights so that we can
gain some extra time by not driving back at forth to CADIC every day.
So we, the guys, arrived at the campsite around noon and got engaged
in setup with the tents while the girls were doing some food shopping.
After all of us got settled with the logistics, we looked at the map
and had our conversation about what sample to collect in next two
days. Lago Roca campsite is a typical tourist spot and lots of hikers
around the world come visit this part of the Tierra del Fuego National
Park during this time of the year. There are few Locas Verdes basin
fill deposit we wanted to collect. We, however, just spent that day by
cooking Argentina beef and relaxing in the shelter tent since it was
too late to plan for something else.
--------------------------------------------------------------
January 6, 2008
Ushuaia, Argentina

Today marked a wonderful and picturesque day in Ushuaia. During field
work today we looked at one set of igneous rocks, the Ushuaia Pluton
and some metasedimentry rocks of the Rocas Verdes Group, in particular
the Yagan Formation. We had excellent luck sampling both sets of
rocks.

The day started out with a late morning start, as we knew it would be
a relatively easy day since most samples occurred as roadside
outcrops, and thus would be easily accessible. The day from the start
was beautiful, with calm sunny skies and crystal clear views of the
mountains surrounding Ushuaia. Barbeau told us this type of day was
extremely unusual as the surface of the Beagle Channel, which we
travelled parallel to, was like glass reflecting the Chilean mountains
in the background

The first sample was on an overlook just outside of town. We first
found some nice pockets of diorite in what was overall a very mafic
pluton, but by the end of the road we struck gold...so to speak...or
really in our case pegmatite. We found several areas of very felsic
material, and one small unit of pegmaticic material with pink
feldspars up to 2 cm in size (normally these occur on a mm to sub-mm
scale). We collected samples of both the diorite and more felsic
material, both of which should be extremely useful in the
thermochronology component of this project as both samples are of good
lithology to yield large quantities of the desired minerals.

After collecting this sample, we had a somewhat long drive down a dirt
highway along the beagle channel across from Puerto Williams, Chile
(which claims itself as the southernmost town in the world). Here we
scouted for coarse-grained units within the Yagan formation. Only a
few kilometres from the end of the road we discovered coarse-grained
sandstones and conglomerates, with interesting structural features to
boot. I have few doubts that these samples will yield zircon, one of
the primary minerals we are interested in sampling for.

Along with a few shale samples this marked the end of the field day.
We had another scenic drive homeward to a wonderful home cooked meal
at CADIC, prepared by Amy.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Team Barbeau Journal
Friday January 4th, 2008
Kendra Murray, Carleton College.

location: S 54 51.264´ W 068 27.757´
weather: gusty winds, variably sunny

After returning late from fieldwork on Monte Martial last night we
decided to take an easy morning today, catching up on sleep, paperwork
and literature reading. I decided to walk and window shop along the
main touristy street of Ushuaia. Multiple massive cruise boats
(headed around Patagonia and Cape Horn or to the Antarctic) dock here
every week, and many shops cater to that crowd. It´s great to be able
to explore the city through out our month here and find neat shops and
restaurants which the average tourist world miss. One block after
another of shops filled with t-shirts, leather products, sweaters and
alpaca yarn, pottery and knicknacks for every souviner need. There
are also a multitude of Mate options. Mate is a traditional South
American hot beverage that is similar to loose leaf tea. You steep
"yerba", the dried leaves of a tree related to holly, in a small gord
or other cup called the Mate (pronounced ma-tay) and then drink it
through a "bombilla", a metal straw with a simple filter on the end to
catch the leaves. Argentinians will carry Mate, yerba, and thermoses
with them, and when you walk into shops and businesses often there is
Mate out and being shared amonst the employees. The Mate and
Bombillas can be quite beautiful.

Once we picked up our rental car in the midafternoon, we scouted along
the coast of the Beagle Channel between Ushuaia and the Chilean
border, sampling for thermochron and detrital zircon analyses in the
Tobífera formation. Then we entered the Parque National Tierra del
Fuego, and scouted out the contact between the rocks of the Cordillera
Darwin complex and the thrust sheets that compose the southern part of
Argentinian Tierra del Fuego and the boundary between the Scotia and
South American tectonic plates.