Field trip

So, I had an extra credit feild trip today for my geology class in rock canyon. I asked Frik if he wanted to come with me. I thought it would be fun. Pretty much we would walk around and look at the rocks, see if we could identify them and figure out how rock canyon was formed. He decided that it would be alright, and he came with me. It was fun. We hiked around a bit and it was really cool to see some rocks and apply the stuff we learned in class to the real world. The TA was showing us some stuff, and she said, "Lets go a little further up so we can see another fold in the rock" or something like that. We started heading up and we saw the search and rescue cars parked farther up with a bunch of the rescue people standing around. It was a little weird, but they didn't seem to worried about anything, and I hadn't heard of anyone getting lost in rock canyon. I asked them why they were there, and they said it was for training... Anyway, we kept going up and stopped not far from the search and rescue team. Suddenly, we heard something that sounded like thunder, so I looked up to the sky (which was completely clear blue) and while I was looking up, I saw at the top of the mountain right across the stream from us a huge piece breaking off. The TA was surprised and she was like, "holy cow!" Some of us stood there watching for a few seconds when we realized that the falling rocks were knocking other pices of rock down, and they were headed right towards us. One of the search and rescue guys who was right there said, "Whoa! those are car sized!" So we started running. I felt kindof dumb running up the mountain, but when I heard the search and rescue guy yell, "Keep running!" I didn't feel so stupid. when I got what seemed to me to be far enough away, I looked back and saw that at the river, where we were standing, there were pieces of boulders about the size of watermelons that weren't there before. Some of the girls who were watching closer, not running for their lives, said that the pieces of rocks were spraying across the river... not just pieces of rocks, really, but huge chunks of mountain. It was so insane. Here we were, a geology class, going on a field trip to see the mountains, and we saw them... falling right on top of us...

So we were all fine, but the S&R people kept radioing back and forth and calling out to people to count off and asking if everyone was accounted for. When we walked a bit farther down, we saw 2 of the stragglers from our group who were stopped by the search and rescue people. And when we got to the bottom, there were people all around from the park (which is about a half mile away, I guess... I'm not sure) who had run up b/c they heard it.

Anyway... it's not like I almost died or anything, or that I feel like my life flashed before my eyes, but it was definitely an experience that I didn't think I would have today. And I don't even really remember starting to run... I just remember the water splashing my calves as i ran and the noise... it was so loud! Just the noise of rock breaking... It was really awesome and makes me want to think twice before I go climbing up there again... :o)