Lesson 12: Sediment Transportation

Goldbug Hot Springs, Elk Bend, Idaho

This past Saturday, I went to Goldbug Hot Springs with my boyfriend and a few friends. There is a lot of water movement and sediment is being deposited. In the picture above, you can see one of the hot pools in the upper righthand corner. This pool is also pictured to the left. While the sediment in here is smaller, it is still gravel sized because it is bigger than 2 mm. There are quite a few big rocks in the pool as well that are well bigger than 2 mm. In the mountain stream, pictured to the left, the rocks are a lot bigger, but still would be classified as gravel. The grains in here are poorly sorted. There were many different sizes of rock in the pool and the stream, ranging from maybe a centimeter or 2 across to massive boulders. There was also some smaller clasts floating in the actual water that were sand sized. Most of the rocks here were fairly rounded, most likely due to the flow of water over them. You could easily be barefoot in the pool and the rocks in the stream weren't too bad either. It is a very high energy area, being close to the top of one of the mountains in that area. This explains the poorly sorted and larger rocks. I didn't notice any sedimentary features like ripples or dunes in this area. If this area was to immediately compact, it would definitely form conglomerate rocks. It is poorly sorted and rounded, and would have gravel sized clasts which would indicate it is conglomerate.


Here's a picture of me and my boyfriend by the mountain stream on the hike down, with more sediment being transported. These pictures do not do the hot springs justice and I highly recommend doing this hike at least once!