Back to the field…

First time in the field since CoVid… it was a rainy November in Barberton, but nevertheless it has been a productive trip.

The middle of the Hooggenoeg formation. H3c chert (left) overlying pillowed H3v volcanics (right).

Steve and Marcel both discovered Barberton geology. Marcel mapped and sampled components of the syenites around Badplaas. Steve, despite some car adventures in the mountains, reached various chert bands and sampled good sections below them.

Laurine, together with Alain and Jérémie, went hunting for addits, pit, trenches and disused mines to explore the structures of the quartz veins. They also have several tales to tell regarding unexpected encounters in the field, in particular with the various illegal miners who haunt the same places…

We were also fortunate to spend a bit of time with Christoph Heubeck (Uni Jena), currently organizing an ICDP drill project in the Moodies group. Christoph was kind enough to show us the drill sites, and also some other bits of geology around…

*This is drill site #1 of ICDP base project. On that day, they were struggling to get through unconsolidated muddy soil, and were about to reach hard rock.*

And lastly, the Stellenbosch crew (Gary, Alex, Bjorn, Tahnee, Mariana) came and met us for a few days, and we had an impromptu BuCoMO general assembly in the field…

*Making up for lost time… BuCoMO students hard at work in Badplaas !*

Of course, returning to France proved a bit more difficult that expected for the French component of the trip…

*Actually, returning to France was the easy bit. The **hard** part is to explain to the CNRS why we had to modify our plans and to get our expenses refunded…*

Laurine Travers, Steve Kitoga, Marcel Vinicius, Tahnee Otto, Mariana Werle, Jérémie Lehmann, Alain Chauvet, Gary Stevens, Alex Kisters, Bjorn van der Heyden, Jean-François Moyen – Nov. 2021