The ash deposit

Today we processed rock core to a depth of 1198 ft.  The weather has been cooperating and we can dry the boxes of rocks in the sun before photographing and logging them.

Speaking of photography, we finally got a decent picture of the ash I've been mentioning lately.  For a sense of scale, the rock shown here is 3.5 inches across.  Feel free to click on the photo to look at the ash beds in greater detail.  The cross bedding seen in the upper left of the picture might just be a surface scratch, I didn't notice any other cross bedding.  This is by far the finest and most well-bedded ash we have seen so far, from a depth of ~950 ft below the surface.  Such ash is an indicator of an explosive eruption, which is an eruptive style thought to be relatively uncommon from Hawaiian volcanoes.  However, there are a number of historical accounts of explosive eruptions from Kilauea volcano, as well as ash deposits found all over the island that date long before the first Polynesian explorers arrived.  Such fine ash can be carried far by the wind, so we can't say yet which volcano may have produced it.