Grand Mesa and Netra's Crazy Landslide Tour

Today started off great. We went from Ouray and towards Grand Mesa. Along the way to our next destination, we stopped a couple of times to see deposits of Mancos shale. At one point, we were taken to Paradox basin which is made of shale and informed that there were probably fossils. We started searching everywhere almost like kids doing an Easter egg hunt :-)



Most of us found something that may have been fossils and for the ones that had not, Jack was nice enough to share some he had found. Thanks Jack!
Grand Mesa was spectacular. I think I am going to run out of adjectives on this trip. Dan drove the bus to the top and we were able to see the whole of Grand Mesa. We saw a landslide that had recently occurred from our vantage point along with other physical weathering.





We stopped by a lake for a group picture and a tribute to one of our sponsors.


We also stopped on the side of the road to investigate some debris flows.



Afterwards, we headed to Netra's landslide slide. It is one of his research projects. This was actually a grueling trek across scrub, stinging nettles, boulder fields, loose soil, then a "small" climb (150m?), across broken trees and finally the top, sort of. There were a few spills, a few scrapes but all in all in seemed my colleagues were happy of their reaching the top.