A somewhat smoky view into the Mineral King valley, California from the slopes of Vandever Mountain. Image taken in July 2011 by Erik Klemetti. Sorry about all the programming notes lately here, but I just want to keep everyone in the loop. All next week I will be off in the Sierra Nevada of California taking part in the Geological Society of America Field Forum. 57 geologists will be spending the week trekking across the Sierras discussing how they were emplaced, what we know about plutonism and volcanism from their formation and really, just an awful lot about how large volcanic arcs form. The group leaders have us programmed from 8 in the morning until 10 at night, so I likely won't have any posts next week on the blog - but feel free to use the space below to discuss the happenings of the volcanic world. I will try to send some snapshots of the Sierran vistas I see (like this one above from Mineral King) via the Eruptions twitter account (@eruptionsblog), so keep an eye out for those - remember, you can see my tweets in the right hand rail on this blog. Hopefully once I get back from the Field Forum, we'll be back to (almost) normal.