The White Mountains and the Italian Dolomites

 

    Hello nordic ephs + the nordic eph fan club 😄  

I am so happy the blog is up again much to popular demand! I cannot wait to hear about all yall's summer adventures. 

Lilly and I went hiking in the White Mountains in October mid-June. We were planning on hiking/running the entire ~20mi presidential traverse but it was 30F and snowing on the top of Mt Washington with 100mi wind gusts so we decided to improvise and hike some of the Carter Range instead.

We hiked with two of my MIT friends Einat and Gillian. Luckily they were donning purple (Williams colors) or else we may not have allowed them to tag along on our adventure! The weather ended up being in the mid 40s with strong wind gusts (maybe 40-60mph) above the tree line. Luckily we were dressed appropriately and mostly in the trees. We were bummed about the weather for mid June but we made the best of it! 

I am now in the Italian Alps (the Dolomite Mountains) doing a three week geology field camp with some students from George Mason University, University of Washington, and University of Pittsburgh. Here is the Refugio where we are staying:

Rollerskiers and bikers have been zooming by our hotel because we are located out of an epic mountain pass! This high school skier is from the Czech Republic. She was very friendly and was skiing with her brother (not pictured). We have seen many rollerskiers around nearby Val di Fiemme. 

I've been going on some fast, short, and hilly runs around the Dolomites, and I found this motivating message up a steep incline (SHAMELESS STRAVA PLUG). It made me go faster! 

I am doing the trip with classmate and fellow geosciences major Nick Ambeliotis (pictured above). We are very close to the site of Jessie and Kikkan's landmark team sprint WIN at the 2013 World Champs in Val di Fiemme, Italy. 

Here is a view from a gondola of the ski jumps where the 2026 Milan/Cortino Winter Olympic Games will be held. Val di Fiemme is where the Nordic races will be I believe.

Now I will not bore you with too much geology, but what I will say is that the Dolomite region has a large amount of varying geological structures and rock types due to the rapid uplift of the colliding Eurasian and African plates. 

Here is professor Marco from University of Trieste, Italy, standing on a red sandstone outcrop. He is our local tour guide and Italian sedimentologist. 

That little stand-alone dolomitic limestone outcrop is called the "Torre di Pisa."

A beautiful ammonoid fossil that's roughly 240 million years old!

Marco pointing out an ash deposit layer embedded amongst the various limestone stratigraphic layers. The ash allows geochemists to date the age of formation of the outcrops and therefore understand how these mountains came to be (hint: it's volcanism + plate tectonics)!

My sun protection is on point for a day outside at 6000-8000 ft above sea level!

Flying into the Venice, Italy, airport I saw a cool estuary. I'll leave y'all with that for now 🥳

Happy summer y'all!

Jacob