My Third Field Trip Part 1

After I had spent twelve great days on field mapping, it was time to say goodbye. Most of the students and the two academics went back home but eight students including me went just to the next five day geological field trip to Witzenhausen, Hesse, Germany. Whereas Adorf is in the northwest of Hesse some 50 kilometers to the west of Kassel, Witzenhausen is quite on the other side of Kassel in the northeast of Hesse close to the border to Thuringia.


Größere Kartenansicht

We even had one free day until the arrival of the other 21 students (So, all in all, we were 29 students.) and the three academics who came from Berlin to this so-called sedimentary-stratigraphic field trip. We spent this day on relaxing, playing poker and drying sausages...indeed...twelve days of field mapping made us become a bit...let's call it 'more like geologists'.


This geological field trip is famous for its accomodation - an old castle. 'Jugendburg Ludwigstein' once was a real castle. Since the 1920s it has been renovated und administrated by the 'German Youth Movement Wandervogel'. However, most doors and ceilings are so low that many of us and especially me banged our heads many many times.


After we had welcomed the others the next day, we got a two day introduction into the local geology and stratigraphy. Our task for this field trip was to create three stratigraphic profiles of local outcrops including their depositional environments and geological history. During those two introduction days, the academics showed us twelve very different outcrops of whom we had to choose one for our first profile on which we worked in groups of two or three. I teamed up with two very good geology students in my grade and we decided to work on a carbonate outcrop with a lot of marlstone and several tempestite layers on a former continental shelf. I will show you photos of some of the outcrops in the next part. Stay tuned!