Amherst Trek

To complement JT's picture from Amherst College, here's the view from the Holyoke Range.

Atop Long Mountain, looking west toward Mount Norwottuck.

Atop Long Mountain, looking southwest.

Atop Rattlesnake Knob, looking east toward Long Mountain.

Atop Rattlesnake Knob, looking north. The red arrow points out Memorial Hill at our fair College, with the towers of UMass looming only a few pixels behind as specks.

JT, another reasearch fellow, and I set off after a slightly too filling lunch upon the longest hike of my life. From Amherst College, the Holyoke Range looks like a line of hills, roughly level with the top of Memorial Hill. After traveling to the ridge, I can tell you that hill is the word used by people who haven't made the journey.

The Holyoke Range stretches over 50 miles. It represents the erosional remnants of a basaltic lava flow from the early Jurassic Period, almost 200 million years ago. Before the Atlantic Ocean formed, there was a series of failed rifting incidents in what is now the Eastern United States. Analogous to what is now happening in the Great Rift Valley of Eastern Africa, an upwelling of magma spread the crust under paleo-Massachusetts, creating a rift valley and lava extrusions in the thinnest areas. Also related to this event was the deposition of sediment in a deltaic setting inhabited by a variety of dinosaurs, resulting in the preservation of dinosaur footprints. With the lithified material currently located in the Connecticut River Valley, Edward Hitchcock, the third president of Amherst College, collected many specimens, thereby amassing the largest assemblage of dinosaur footprints in the world. It is now housed in the College's Natural History Museum.