MCCOOK RIDGE, UT

A back country flight with Luke Watters of OK3 Air out of Heber City, Utah. It was a great flight and lots of fun flying a Cessna 182 with glass cockpit. This video has some nice GoPro shots as well.

Winter Ridge Airstrip
Utah Back-Country airstrip

Backcountry Pilot gathering for a little fun at "Lakeview" Airstrip in Norcal West side. Great day for flying

October 10, 2013 - After replacing my tach cable, I needed to do a mx flight, so I used it as an opportunity to go look at the leaves, check out the conditions at an airstrip I'd like to check out some day, and to finally land on the dirt strip at my home airport. All in all, a great afternoon of flying!

Willow Flats Backcountry Airstrip

Our Saturday adventure was to meet up with Allen and Noreen at a piece of hard pan in NW UT to retrieve a bike I had lent him a few weeks before. Here are some videos of our landings and the kids on the hard pan.

Backcountry trip to Willow Flats and Middle Canyon Utah

Jim Darnell in Crazy Horse going the distance of 313.3' in the Hot Farm Tractor class.

Dr. Bob Raynolds presents A Story of the Geologic Evolution of the Bighorn Basin in 6 Easy Chapters: Rocks for Everyone!

The story starts in the depths of the Earth….crystalline rocks like granite make up the first chapter and the foundation of the story. Chapter 2: seas come and go—again and again—leaving fossils, redbeds, and huge cliffs of limestone. Chapter 3 records the arrival and departure of the Interior Seaway, seen in massive expanses of dark shale and marine fossils. Chapter 4: the birth of the Rocky Mountains; a time when the Bighorn Basin became well-defined for the first time. Thousands of feet of fossil-rich sediment filled the basin, a record that is world famous and draws researchers to the Basin every summer. Chapter 5: the erosion of the mountains and volcanic eruptions in the Absarokas; during this phase an instability on the basin margin launched the famous Heart Mountain mega landslide, creating a feature that graces Cody’s landscape today. The sixth and final chapter sees the regional uplift and incision of the landscapes, carving the terrain we know today.

All the rocks in the region can be fit into this framework, and though they have many names, the story they tell can be explained in a logical way where each event leads to the next and each rock fits into a logical pattern. This non-technical talk offers rocks for everyone.

Dr. Raynolds, a consulting geologist who has lived in Denver for more than 25 years, earned a Masters in Applied Earth Sciences from Stanford University and a PhD from Dartmouth College. He has taught at the Center for Excellence in Geology at Peshawar University in Pakistan, at Dartmouth College, and at the Colorado School of Mines, where he is presently an adjunct faculty member. Part of his responsibilities at CSM involve teaching applied field methods in geothermal exploration.

He is a Research Associate at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science where his dissertation research on the sedimentary rocks that accumulated at the foot of the Himalayas led him to study rocks in the Denver Basin that record the uplift of the Front Range. This has culminated in a series of publications focusing on deformation history and the stratigraphic control on groundwater distribution patterns.

Raynolds started research in the Bighorn Basin as an intern with Princeton University in 1969. This work involved crawling over ant hills looking for fossil teeth. Later he taught field classes based in Greybull for Dartmouth College for many years. This involved teaching students how to make geologic maps and to keep out of trouble in the mellow evenings along the Bighorn River.

He is Past-President of the Friends of Dinosaur Ridge and the Colorado Scientific Society. He has taught industry courses on rift valley and Western Interior Basin stratigraphy. He has taught short courses on water resources in China and in South America. His recent lectures focus on the character and integrity of the geological record and its role in helping us understand the impact of changing climate on Colorado’s ecology and water resources.