2016 Italy/Switzerland Field Trip James E. Talmage and Hamblin Global Geology Fund Raiser

With two proposed dates for the trip: July 30 – August 13, 2016 or July 16 – 30, 2016 DAY ONE AND TWO depart SLC at 11:05 am Saturday on Delta flights (via Atlanta and Rome) and arrive at noon in Catania, Italy the next day (Sunday morning). Travel by bus to Taormina and stay at a comfortable hotel (San Domenico Palace Hotel). Have our own brief Sacrament meeting. Rest up after the overnight flight. Sightsee around this 3000 year old city for the remainder of the day — much to see!

DAY THREE, on Monday we will take a bus and tram to the top of the giant, active volcano Mount Etna which is paused since May. If it is erupting next year, we will take the best vantage point to view it as suggested by our certified Mt Etna guide, but not be as foolish as the people that took this video in June. We can still stay at a safe distance (Valle del Bove) and have great views. Nice eruption views from our hotel are possible every few years (below). Stay in our Taormina hotel again. [*See disclaimer.]

Tuesday, August 2 or July 19, 2016 – DAY FOUR After breakfast we will get on the bus and leave our hotel and go directly to the Milazzo ferries where we will board the 10:00 am hydrofoil ferry for Vulcano – the ancient gateway to Hades. The hikers will hike about 1 mile to the top of Vulcano to examine droplets of molten sulfur and how vulcanian deposits are formed. There also active fumaroles at the summit and a small acidic crater lake. [Dr. Jani Radebaugh (on the left) was the co-leader of our 2007 Hamblin Italy and Switzerland Trip and is a co-leader in 2016. She has posted many wonderful photos of the 2007 trip here.] Non-hikers (those over 50☺) can walk over to the famous mud baths or stay near the dock. All can enjoy very good gelato before we leave. Re-board ferry and arrive on Stromboli in the afternoon. Stay at Hotel Villaggio Stromboli (shown below). The bougainvillea-lined walkways on Stromboli are some of my favorite places on earth! Wednesday, August 3 or July 20, 2016 – DAY FIVE If it is likely to be cloud-free at the summit, we will hike to the summit on DAY FOUR or FIVE. We will leave at 4 pm and get back at 11 pm. Take the virtual tour to see what it takes physically (10 km). If you want to come on the hike, get in shape now; it’s a once in a lifetime experience! If you can’t hike, you can take a boat around to the NW side of the island and hopefully view eruptions from the ocean. You could also spend time on the beautiful black sand beaches, as there are very few of those in the world. We are staying two days on Stromboli to increase our chances of having cloud-free conditions* one day. Rest up; eat pasta (just before), and be ready to hike on the second day if we strike-out the first day. [I’ve hiked to the summit two days in a row and I’m an old guy!] See typical eruptions here. [*See disclaimer.]

Thursday, August 4 or July 21, 2016 – DAY SIX Leave Stromboli in the morning and take the ferry/bus to Catania and then the 1.5 hour flight to Rome. We will stay near the center of Rome at a Marriott property. The architectural motif, used thorough out the Rome temple which is under construction, is Michelangelo’s unique design (below right) made in 1536 for the Piazza del Campidoglio. The rendition of it sits atop the Capitoline Hill which is the most important of Rome’s seven hills. Michelangelo considered both his design and the hilltop to be sacred. His design will become consecrated after dedication of the temple at some point in the future. Our Marriott property hotel caps an adjacent member of the seven hills, the Quirinal Hill, which is close to public transportation. Your homework is to find all of the occurrences of Carrara marble used in Rome. Friday, August 5 or July 22, 2016 – DAY SEVEN Complete your homework while walking today (~ 3 miles). The Carrara quarries have produced more

marble than any other place on earth; you have a monumental homework assignment! We suggest that you consider visiting the Rome Forum, the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum. This makes a nice grouping with Campidoglio. Stay another night at our hotel in Rome.

Saturday, August 6 or July 23, 2016 – DAY EIGHT We will be taking a bus for all parts of the tour from this day until we leave from Zurich. It will be a very pleasant four-hour drive from Rome through Tuscany before we arrive at our hotel in the Cinque Terre city of Porto Venere. Thirty minutes before we arrive at Porto Venere, we will stop at the Carrara marble quarries for a wonderful tour (4 hours) that will include the quarries, the quarry inside the mountain, and the Tor Art Studio, where The Christus and Twelve Apostles were fabricated for the Rome visitor’s center (as shown in the Church video). Both Thorvaldsen’s and the Church’s Christus statues were fabricated in Carrara from plaster originals. See how these and other statues are replicated at the Tor Art studio.

Right: Piazza del Campidoglio. Left: BYU’s replica of the Michelangelo design reminds us of BYU’s Mission, Jesus Christ – “the real source of truth” and eternal life. (Bentley, Education in Zion)

Left: Michelangelo by Volterra. FFKR architects adapted the Campidoglio design when the JFSB was built and centered the plaza on the Education in Zion spiral staircase. The College of Humanities uses the same design in its logo.

Sunday – DAY NINE Sunday is a day of rest and what better place to rest than in our hotel in Porto Venere, a UNESCO world heritage site and the Cinque Terre national park. Our group will hold our own church services (we are on the 9 am schedule) then you are free to visit the five Cinque Terre cities (Rick Steves) via ferry, hiking, or simply relax in the village (Lord Byron’s grotto, St Peter’s church, etc.). We will stay another night before departing for the Alps. Monday – DAY TEN Driving just a couple of hours to Aosta Valley in northern most Italy, we will examine very unusual rock derived from the sea floor – burped back up along the northern most edge of the African plate. We will take the trail for Servette-Chuc mines to see semi-precious stones like garnets (below center) and massive copper deposits mined during Roman times. The copper-rich, terrains produce bright blue naturally occurring springs (below right). After lunch on the site, we will continue to examine a metamorphosed seafloor Mn deposit at the Praborna mine – including looking for a rare purple rock containing manganese, Violane (below left). This hike will be seven miles, round trip, along trails that are not steep and well maintained. Previous students named this “The Sound of Music” hike – it’s beautiful! [The colors are so vivid, the setting idyllic, you almost expect to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves pop out!] We will stay in the Parc Hotel Billia for two nights which is idyllic.

Tuesday, August 9 or July 26, 2016 – DAY ELEVEN After breakfast and packing our lunches, we will meet at 8 am to take a bus to Breuil-Cervinia (the Italian half of the Matterhorn) and then park at Fontanaz (below, right; about 6 km back down the canyon) and hike to nearby Lake Cignana to examine volcanic rocks caught in the Alps-forming collision of Africa with Europe. [This brings us full-circle on our trip to examine volcanic rocks again.] They have been tectonically shuffled and metamorphosed to high-pressure and ultra-high-pressure (coesite, garnet, lawsonite) conditions. Both here and at the last stop, we will have the benefit of having a local geologist accompany us. The non-hikers may wish to only attempt a small portion of this day hike so they can visit some (i.e. Fenis) of the castles in Aosta Valley (after seeing the Italian half of the Matterhorn).

Left: Lake Cignana (lake is in the lower left) is slightly above the tree line, but it is worth the amazing hike with its remarkable rocks. Right: Me on my way up the Cignana trail (in May) with Breuil-Cervina (the Matterhorn) in the distance. Wednesday, August 10 or July 27, 2016 – DAY TWELVE After breakfast, we will board the bus for the St Bernard Pass and then transfer to a train to Zermatt, Switzerland. We will stay here two nights in the Hotel Tannenhof, but it will not be enough time in this consummate tourist trap that everyone loves, described very nicely by Rick Steves. [He mentions my favorite bakery! It closes early, along with everything else (~5:30 pm). Go to it before it closes.]

Thursday, August 11 or July 28, 2016 – DAY THIRTEEN After breakfast and perhaps packing lunches, we will all take the Gornergrat train and subsequent gondolas to the saddle beneath the Matterhorn. You may choose to get off at any station and stay at the top or elsewhere, as long as desired, before returning on one of the trains that run every 20-30 minutes. On the trip up, John McBride and others will explain the geophysical work they have been doing on the glacier. We will not be climbing the Matterhorn on this trip, but watch this astounding video of the climb. [One can see why over 500 alpinists have died on the Matterhorn since the first climb in 1865.] If we could climb it, we would see a nappe (=fold) that places African basement rocks on top of Swiss continental rocks, but only Africa composes the summit. Views like this from Lake Stellisee (above) should be adequate for most and occur at as we take the Gornergrat train and gondolas to the Matterhorn glacier paradise and stand on the boundary between Italy and Switzerland. At 3,883 m (12,740 feet) you should have a good view of the top of Etna (10,922 feet) in the distance, 1,500 km away. The beginning of this trip occurred there, with Rome half way in between, making a nicely symmetrical trip!

Friday, August 12 or July 29, 2016 – DAY FOURTEEN As always in Zermatt, we will wake up to the sound of cowbells and goats. After breakfast and a little shopping or hiking, we will stop at our wonderful bakery for lunch and then catch the 1:30 pm train to Zurich. We will arrive in Zurich at about 6:30 pm and take a train (15 minute ride) to our Hotel Welcome Inn near the airport. Dinner and breakfast are available at the hotel, but some may choose to stay downtown in Zurich and eat dinner at the Zeughauskeller for authentic Swiss cuisine. Some may also stop at the Co-op near the train station to get chocolate and buckets or boxes to serve as a second checked bag for collected rocks (or the chocolate you just bought).

Saturday, August 13 or July 30, 2016 – DAY FIFTEEN Be at the Zurich airport by 8 am for our 10:35 am departure on Delta flight 67. Arrive in Atlanta at 2:50 pm. Depart Atlanta at 4:35 pm on Delta flight 1881 for SLC or on other fights to wherever you are heading. And thus ends the most amazing trip you will ever take! See the Google maps of our routes below. *Disclaimers: We are doing everything possible to insure eruptions at the two volcanoes (a rather unusual promise that only geologists would want, lol) and cloud-free conditions at the mountain tops (Etna, Stromboli, and the Matterhorn). Going in late July or early August is our best hope for achieving that. We have even less control over the Church’s schedule on completing the Rome Temple. We will drive by the Rome Temple and view it from the proximal IKEA parking lot. If we can do more than that, i.e. attend an open house or something else, we will do so, but it is very unlikely. No promises, of having volcanoes erupt or temples completed, are given or implied! It will still be an amazing trip.

Left: Gorner Glacier as viewed from the old Monte Rosa Hut. Right: John McBride leading the troops through Zermatt

For an interactive map of the Etna and Stromboli stops, click on the link below: Etna /Stromboli https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zCWaylvQYAMM.k5jVjX41BP0s&usp=sharing

10 mi

For an interactive map of the Rome Italy stops, click on the link below: Rome https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zCWaylvQYAMM.kFflRkp5r2K0&usp=sharing

500 feet

For an interactive map of the Northern Italy and Switzerland stops, click on the link below: Northern Italy/Switzerland https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zCWaylvQYAMM.kci0w_-0xFgY&usp=sharing

20 miles Indication of Interest After you have thoroughly read and digested the itinerary, take a one question survey at: https://byu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/preview/SV_eV9orZJhwCInhlP