Rested but still jet-lagged, we boarded on the train to Castelplanio, where we were received by our host Alessandro (Sandro) Montanari and part of his family. After a short drive, we were finally introduced to what would be our home for the next 13 days, the mountain village of Coldigioco. Coldigioco is located in the Marche region in northern Italy, between the cities of Ancona and Perugia, and sits at the heart of the northern Apennines. Sandro – together with a selected group of international geologists (including Professor Walter Alvarez from UC Berkeley) – runs a field station at Coldigioco, very close to beautiful sections including the K-T boundary.

The first days in the Coldigioco area were spent on day trips to Gubbio, Furlo, Conero Rivera and Assisi, where we had the opportunity to experience some of the highlights of Apennine geology, and Italian culture and cuisine. We were all particularly thrilled to hear, from Alvarez himself, the story of the discovery of the iridium anomaly that led to the impact hypothesis for the K-T mass extinction, at the very outcrop where all the work started! During these initial days, students collected samples, and were later introduced to the art of thin section preparation back at Coldigioco. After two days of intense lab work, students presented their individual findings in entertaining and science-packed 5-minute presentations, a format that was so successful that it has already been overused during the most recent Spring Break trip. Our last days in Coldigioco were spent on a mapping project in the Frasassi area, where the students struggled to decipher the complexities of the local geology, but successfully recognized – just by walking around! – the presence of a synclinal fold partly overthrust by an older sequence. The triumph was celebrated with the “Big Ciao Ciao Party”, which naturally included abundant food and wine at the private home of Pope Pius VIII, in historic Cingoli.

Photos courtesy of: Ayla Pamukçu, David Rowley, Erin Atkinson, Guilherme Gualda, and Julia Rasmussen.