2024 Rocky Mountain Cell Friends of the Pleistocene Field Trip

Oct 4–6 2024

Fish Lake to Blue Gate Badlands: new paleoclimate and geomorphology research along the Fremont River, central Utah

Coordinator and Contact:
Dave Marchetti
Western Colorado University
dmarchetti@western.edu

Download Tentative Schedule

Come explore the paleoclimatology and geomorphology of central Utah! This Friends of the Pleistocene (FOP) trip is motivated by recent and ongoing research into how one of the world’s greatest landscapes developed. Presenters will focus on Quaternary features and highlight recent and ongoing research into how the extraordinary features of this region developed.

Tentative schedule

DAY 1: Fish Lake to Rabbit Valley

• Quaternary Geology of the Fish Lake Plateau and 60,000-year paleoclimate proxy records from Fish Lake sediments
• Fish Lake graben-palooza and Rabbit Valley mega landslide

 
DAY 2: Sunglow to Teasdale-Torrey lowlands

• Thousand Lakes Fault paleo-seismic work near Sunglow Campground
• Developing laminated soil carbonate rinds as paleoclimate archives
• Boulder armored benches and soils near Teasdale and Notom

 
DAY 3: Capitol Reef to Blue Gate Badlands

• Blue Gate shale badlands geomorphology and landscape evolution

Tentative presenters

• Mark Abbott (U. Pitt)
• Bob Anderson (CU Boulder)
  
• Leif Anderson (U. Utah)
• Lesleigh Anderson (USGS)
• Chuck Bailey (William and Mary)
• Bob Biek (UGS retired)
• Andrea Brunelle (U. Utah)
• Vachel Carter (LANL)
• Thure Cerling (U. Utah)
• Amy Ellwein (WCU/RMBL)

• Scott Harris (College of Charleston)
  
• Tyler Huth (Wash U. St. Louis)
• Shannon Mahan (USGS)
• Dave Marchetti (WCU)
• Jesse Morris (U. Utah)
• Ben Passey (U. Michigan)
• Mitch Power (U. Utah)
• Tammy Rittenour (USU)
• Nate Toke (UVU)

accommodations

Camping:
Many of the trip leaders will be camping in the Fruita Campground at Capitol Reef National Park. If your group is interested in this you should reserve camping sites on recreation.gov 6-months prior to the first date of occupancy. So, you should be looking to acquire sites in very early April 2024 (~Wednesday, April 3rd 2024). This campground is almost always fully reserved in early October, so I want to stress that your only chance for getting campground sites at Fruita during the FOP is to reserve them very early!!
 
There are other public land campgrounds nearby that have reservable (on recreation.gov) and first-come-first-served camping. Private campgrounds that have reservable sites include the KOA and 1000 Lakes RV Park in Torrey, Utah. Both of these will also fill up in early October, so please reserve early.
 
Hotels:
There are multiple hotels in and around Loa, Bicknell, and Torrey, Utah. These hotels will also book out well in advance for an early October weekend, so again, please reserve early!
 
AirBnB and VRBO:
There are many options for short term house rentals. Our research group has done this several times and they have worked great. Again though, reserve early!