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This valley on the eastern side of the gorge where the Grotte di Frasassi (Cave) is Natural Regional Park of Golla della Rossa and Frasassi. Sandro actually discovered the cave that has now become a major tourist attraction when he was a young man going spelunking with his friends looking for caves around Italy. We will be coming back to the caves sometime this week to get the full underground tour.
Basically all the land you can see in this picture is what we will be making a geologic map of in order to analyze how the stratigraphic layers have been deformed by tectonic pressure, faulting, erosion, etc. so we can tell the story of what has happened in the area and in the region over the past 100 million years or so.
We had lunch at the parking-lot-turned-tourist-trap where a shuttle bus leaves to take visitors to the caves themselves. Here we had some wonderful flatbread panini (which is actually just Italian for multiple sandwiches, or bread-something-bread, not necessarily pressed) and una poca birra. At every meal there is also acqua frizzante (sparkling water) and acqua naturale (normal) as well.
Carly, our other TA, just graduated from Lawrence as a geology major and also came on the program last year.
Back to the valley of San Vittore next to the Gorge of Frasassi (cliffs on right) for more mapping. Today we took a beautiful hike right up to the top of the cliffs on the north side of the gorge. This is the view of the valley that we got about halfway up.
At a settle between two peaks about three-quarters of the way up was a little field of Queen Anne's lace and these little purple flowers. There were also thousands of these little guys and thousands more bumblebees gathering the sweet pollens of these flowers.
We all gathered at a nice outcrop to look out over our mapping area and do some Swiss geology, hypothesizing using observation through binoculars instead of with a rock hammer and hand lens because the Alps are so hard to navigate and conduct geological research.
As we descended the mountain i snapped this photo looking into the gorge with the Male, our more trusted vehicle despite it being at least ten years older than the Bene.
Here Sandro told us the story of an ancient fault that has brought the Anidiriti del Burano layer, a stratigraphic section found deep beneath the surface in this region composed of gypsum evaporites, in contact with groundwater. The fault then allowed the hydrogen sulfide resulting from the re-hydration of the gypsum to be squeezed to the surface where it comes out of springs like the one pictured here. This hydrogen sulfide-rich water creates unique ecosystems in the Esino River, which has carved the gorge we are examining. these ecosystems contain bacteria that derive their energy from chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis just as the very first living organisms on Earth would have. This hydrogen sulfide water also eroded the caves that we saw later in the day.
A butterfly landed on Sandro's hat.
The great hall of the Grotte (Caves) di Frasassi. The roof of this room reaches about 120 meters above the floor. The caves are separated into 7 levels, the bottom two of which are flooded because they are below the water table. The third level that visitors can walk through has a series of paved paths to prevent the 300,000 plus visitors a year from ruining the caves features. When Sandro and his friends discovered this cave network as young men, they entered through the ceiling of this room and descended a ladder all the way to the floor. They then camped for about a week in the corner of this room to explore and document the cave's many rooms. It was awesome to have a very long and detailed tour of the cave with Sandro because he combined an incredibly extensive knowledge of the geology and biology of the caves with a number of stories about their first attempts at navigating the cave. It was definitely the best way to experience the cave.
The artifical light is very deceiving in the cave and distances are hard to judge but these stalagmites are about 12 to 15 meters high.
This was our only view of the water table looking about 30 meters straight down from the walkway.
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