Where are my rocks?

After a week of winter in July and hiking for 10s of km everyday, my advisor left us here alone. Our job is to find a type of volcanic rock called rhyolite, which should look entirely different than every other rock here. The problem is, the rhyolite either blends in with the surroundings better than we thought, or it isn't here at all. We have found a few promising outcrops, but getting to them safely requires lots of time, some rope, and maybe a helicoptor. We are thinking of hijacking some of the dozens of horses that are around here to save us some energy. They would have come in handy on wednesday when we hiked for 5 hours just to get the the base of a 1000 m cliff, the top of which contained one of the more important outcrops in the field area. As our luck would have it, it is crucial that we return to this area for a more detailed analysis. We are putting this hike off for a few days, but we will be spending quite a bit of time on a neighboring ridge that, when we looked a few days ago, seemed to hold a number of key outcrops for the research. We have made a good plan and a schedule, that I'm sure Brianna will keep us to on our quest for the elusive rhyolite!