2025 University of Memphis
Field Camp – My Capstone Experience
Grace Y. Sandidge, SA-12627
Photo taken on June 6, 2025, during the 2025 University of Memphis Field Camp – Grace Sandidge standing in from of an overturned, thinly bedded ductile Willwood Sandstone from the Upper Cretaceous – Eocene that is exposed at Rattlesnake Mountain.
When I decided to become a geologist, field camp was painted as
a rite of passage, the ultimate test applying classroom and labora- tory training to solve geological problems in the field encompassed into a culminating experience. Every lecture, lab, and field exercise had been building to this moment. In June 2025, I spent four weeks in Powell, Wyoming completing my field camp course. In these four weeks I traveled and mapped across five locations in northern Wyoming and southern Montana, studying geologic structures at five different field sites: Clarks Fork Canyon, Rock Creek Canyon, Rattlesnake Mountain, Elk Basin, and the Wild Horse Range at Horseshoe Bend. Each site presented a unique geologic challenge and required me to apply the mapping and structural analysis tech- niques I had learned in the classroom. It was challenging in every sense: physically demanding, mentally exhausting, and emotionally intense. However, field camp became the most transformative part of my undergraduate journey and how I see geology, myself, and the world around me. I found myself navigating unfamiliar terrain with my field partner, a map, and compass, making interpretations of geologic structures, and learning to trust myself to bridge together the geologic story within the study area.
Every field site offered a different lens through which to
understand geologic time, structure, and processes. At Clarks Fork Canyon, we studied rocks shaped by a combination of glacial activity, faults, and surficial deposits. The canyon's towering cliffs and exposed stratigraphy told stories of how this location was carved and shaped over geologic time. Rock Creek Canyon provided additional complexity in structural and rock formation interpreta-
16 TPG •
Jan.Feb.Mar 2026
Photo taken on June 23, 2025, during the 2025 University of Memphis Field Camp – Grace Sandidge observing uplifted and deformed rock units at Bighorn Canyon that have been shaped by the Laramide Orogeny where
exposed rocks are from the Precambrian through Pennsylvanian. An excellent site for observing structural geology, highlighted by a monocline.
www.aipg.org
tion, while Rattlesnake Mountain painted a deeper understanding of tectonics and erosion contributing to the geomorphology of this site. Elk Basin was my first time at an active oil field. The air
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