Summiting Mt. Doom

Merhaba!

In an effort to not be TOO far behind on my blogging, here's a little bit about my week in Sivrihisar (not last week, but week before, that's how behind I am!). We traveled 4 hours by bus down windy mountain roads to this location to look at metamorphic and igneous rocks. We saw two granites, and mountains made out of marble. Because the marble was weathered though, it wasn't shiny or smooth or counter-top quality in appearance - it was lack-luster in a literal sense. It was easy to distinguish though based on the lack of vegetation growing on it. Because there was so little vegetation, it was easy to get great views from the ridges on which we were mapping, whereas at our local mapping spot you can't really see much through the trees. This is good for locating outcrops and finding yourself on a map, but it means lot of extra sun protection needed! One of the guys in our group is from the southwest and he made the comment that in our 4 hour drive it felt as if we'd gone from Italy to New Mexico.

The one area in the mapping area that did appear to be lush with vegetation (relatively) was the highest peak in the area. It looked like Mt. Olympus from the lower slopes because there always seemed to be a crown of fluffy white clouds hovering above it. Here's a shot from below:

My mapping partner, Marcus, and I decided on day 1 that we would get our map finished in time to spend an hour hiking to the top to check it out, which we did manage to do. Being not so poetically-minded, he named it "Mt. Doom" as a reference to Lord of the Rings. It was pretty strenuous, and like any mountainous area, it looked closer than it was for a long time, and when we got to the top it was hard to tell if we were actually at the highest point, but we're pretty sure we made it! Here I am at a point close to the top, protecting myself from every possible ray of sunlight even from other suns in other galaxies:

While in Sivrihisar, we did some cultural sight-seeing after dinner one night. Sivrihisar used to be an dominantly Armenian community several hundred years ago, and we visited an old Armenian church that it being restored. This is the church, pretty standard appearance:

These are some gargoyles that are on the side of the building:

Although the community was dominantly Armenian (therefore, Christian) until relatively recently, there have also been Muslim people living there for a long time - we went inside a 700-year old mosque! It was all wooden and had a very ancient feel to it. The entire floor was covered in very colorful rugs for prayer. There is a balcony of sorts that is curtained off where the women pray so that the men are not distracted by the women while in prayer. Something I thought was pretty neat architecturally were the columns supporting the ceiling indoors. The columns were wooden, but the tops of the columns were marble and had a variety of styles: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. We were told by our guide that when the mosque was built, these pieces had been taken from ruins of ancient Greek temples and buildings in the area and used to top the wooden columns. Just shows how many different groups of people have inhabited this area throughout history!

On the drive back from Sivrihisar we made a seemingly random roadside stop to check out some blueschist rocks. Blueschist is a VERY high pressure metamorphic rock and is VERY beautiful. Blueschist forms in subduction zones where one tectonic plate is dragged underneath another and the underlying plate experiences extremely high pressures. Studies done in this area show that these rocks formed at a depth of about 100 kilometers below the Earth's surface! The craziest part is that they've made it all the way back up to the surface where they're just sitting in this tranquil, wooded glen. Blueschist, because it forms deep in the earth, has a tendency to actually change to a different rock when exposed to surface conditions, so it's not easy to find in an unadulterated state.

That's pretty much all the excitement from week 3! Week 4 post coming soon!

Salaam alaikum,
Sarah