Volcano adventures: Passing my days in Uni...

Carlos went up Nevado to try to recover the truck today. Unfortunately because the truck's been stuck up there we haven't been able to go into the field, which is really frustrating considering the weather has been amazing all week! The good news is that the truck is now down in Colima town, but the bad news is that something to do with the radiator is broken and needs to be replaced. So we can't go into the field tomorrow, and then it's the weekend and we're not allowed to take the truck at the weekend, so we have to wait until Monday to go back into the field. Grr.

And doubly Grrr, Carlos watched an amazing eruption from the top with rockfalls followed by a blast. His photos look awesome!

But on the upside, I'm getting a lot of time in the lab to process my samples... and Eric's helping....

Sieving that samples... Eric looking at charcoal

I have to sieve the samples in 10 different sized sieves, and then weigh each fraction individually. From this it's then possible to say something about the size of the eruption etc. I'm also looking at the amount of lithics (pieces of rocks ) present compared to pumice. The lithics can be from the lava dome which was blasted to pieces by the force of the explosion, bits of rock ripped off the conduit wall as the magma rushed past, or from the magma itself. Again the amount of lithics present can tell us something about the size and explosivity of the eruption.

Some photos around uni...