During the first weeks of last August 2016 and after intense planning, the Siberian Student Chapter and the Barcelona Student Chapter put a beginning to their collaborative expedition fieldtrip. This consisted on the first collaboration with any other Student Chapters from part of the Barcelona Student Chapter and it could not have gone any better, consisting on a thoroughly planned and amazing week-long fieldtrip throughout Southeastern Siberia composed by seven members of each Chapter. 

 

 

During the first days the students had the opportunity to visit some important ore deposits of Siberia: the Kamenushikoe Cu deposit and the Salairskoe Pb-Zn deposit, located 300km from Novosibirsk in the Salair Ridge (Kemerovo Region), and Sinyuhinskoe Au deposit, located in northeastern Altai. The two types of ore commonly found at Salairskoe Pb-Zn ore field were characterized by massive carbonate-quartz-barite ore and disseminated barite-polymetallic ore whereas in Kamenushikoe Cu deposit ore minerals were represented mainly by pyrite and chalcopyrite. In addition, students had the chance to collect amazing hand samples of azurite, malachite and chrysocolla between others. On the other hand, at Sinyuhinskoe Au deposit, members were provided insights on the skarns of different compositions developed in tuffs and carbonate rocks in the contact zone with the Sinyukha massif, mainly on the wollastonite, garnet-wollastonite and pyroxene-wollastonite skarns associated with sulfide minerals. 

 

 

When interning into the Altai Mountains, the Siberian Student Chapter excellently guided the Barcelona members to both geological and cultural places of interest such as a) the largest natural history museum in Siberia; the “Paleopark”, b) the Cambrian – Ordovician Gornoaltaisk formation “Dragon’s teeth”, c) middle Devonian volcanites related to the continental margin in western Altai-Sayan foldbelt activity, d) a bewildering catastrophic glacial megaflood deposit called Inskoy “stone garden”, e) the beautiful confluence of Chuya and Katun’ rivers and its complex terraces, f)  fossil-bearing Silurian limestones belonging to the Gromatukhinskaya series, g) petroglyphs of Turkic peoples (9000-6000 B.C), h) the Kol’ka Snegiryov Monument and j) the well-known Shirlak waterfall and the alluring blue lake near Aktash Village. 

Above all, we want to thank the SGA Siberian Student Chapter for their dedication, their guidance and for having provided and shared such joyful and memorable moments with us and to the SGA itself for having supported this collaborative expedition from the beginning.