We woke up early and began our drive further southwest to get to our field site-the Gerelt Hoshoo Locality. Otherwise known as “War Monument Locality,” this formation ranges in thickness from 250-450 meters and has been subjected to extreme folding, faulting, and fracturing from joint sets. We arrived just after 4 pm and we began to set up our camp before making a short field trip up the mountain to scope out where we would be doing field work the next four days.
The first thing we did when setting up camp was build our Ger, a traditional Mongolian nomad dwelling that stands on wooden poles and is covered with skin, felt, wool, and tarp.
This is where we ate all of our meals and would gather after a full day in the field.
After setting up all of our tents and ger, we drove up to the base of our field locality and took a brief tour before it got dark. Dr. Waters and Thomas Suttner briefed us on the sections of our locality including rock types, fossils that could be found, and the orientation of the sections so we could get right to work the next day. Since it was my first time examining a full geological field locality, I was quickly overwhelmed with excitement of the work I would be doing the next week-not to mention every time I looked up, I felt like I was in a National Geographic magazine!
This was our dinner served that night- yum!