The Caliente Series & Caliente Camp Series

I'm bringing everyone up to date about my Caliente series because I'll be adding new posts soon. The series is multiple in nature: two related series have been running side-by-side. I'm calling the first one I started the "Caliente Camp series" and the second one the "Caliente series." In real time and in blog time, the Caliente Camp series started before the Caliente series.The Caliente Camp series: These posts are mostly about a helicopter exploration camp I was part of in 1978, with some accounting of the two 2009 road trips I took to the area to travel down old roads. These stories will continue have now been completed.

• Map area in Meadow Valley Wash: about the first area I mapped as a professional geologist, with some geological references.
• Our Camp in Meadow Valley Wash: a little about the first Caliente trip and the 2005 Meadow Valley Wash flood, an introduction to the 1978 helicopter camps in general, and an introduction to the Caliente helicopter camp in particular: camp basics, camp equipment, recon basics.
• Caliente Camp: Some more Exploration: my second visit in 2009 to re-check the old campsite, along with the checking of a couple other nearby areas, looking down the railroad tracks and bridge near the old camp, and photo shots of sand, running water, underbrush, cliffs, and wildlife.
• Caliente Camp Continued: Part 3: camp layout, camp construction, the water and shower system, the helicopter and buzzing of the outhouse or shower.
• Caliente Camp Continued: Part 4: I get unwanted attention from the camp cook and helicopter fuel-truck driver.
• Caliente Camp Continued: Part 5: what the food was like, more about the two camp cooks, and who will be in which camp.
• Caliente Camp: Part 6: A bit of a truck problem in Kane Springs Wash while the helicopter is down for maintenance.
• Caliente Camp Part 7: Getting Stuck in Pennsylvania Canyon: We drive into the canyon while doing truck-assisted exploration - and can't get out!
• Caliente Camp Part 8: Getting out of Pennsylvania Canyon: We get unstuck, and escape!

The Caliente series: These posts are mostly about my 2009 road trips to the Caliente area, although part of the two trips are documented in the Caliente Camp series, and some 1978 stories are told in at least one of the Caliente series posts. The Caliente series includes a couple posts about the geology and rock formations of the area, and other related items like the wildfires that were in progress during my second field trip. These stories will also be continued have been completed.

• From the Field: Caliente, Nevada: about Caliente, Nevada, the railroad station, a weather station, and smoke from California fires.
• Caliente Smoke Update: the thick smoke in the Caliente area was from the large Station Fire in southern California.
• International Vulture Awareness Day, 2009: photos of a turkey vulture seen near Caliente.
• Smoke from CA Fires as Seen from the Ella Mountain Lookout: photos taken from the Ella Mountain Lookout in the morning and afternoon, the geography of the area, the lookout, and a little bit about getting to the lookout.
• Meadow Valley Wash: Cottonwood Canyon to Elgin: about the Cottonwood Canyon area, about a couple 1978 traverses we did in the area, and pictures of volcanic rocks in the cliff walls of Meadow Valley Wash south of Elgin.
• Meadow Valley Wash: Elgin to the Narrows: driving from Elgin to "the Narrows," the Elgin schoolhouse, a "damaged" dirt road not taken (introduction to Pennsylvania Canyon), "road closed" and "flash flood area" signs, and the south end of the Rainbow Canyon part of Meadow Valley Wash.
• Friday Field Photos: The Narrows: what rock is this? There were no correct guesses
• Meadow Valley Wash: The Narrows: the spectacular ash-flow tuff cliffs at "the Narrows," a deer, and the creek in Meadow Valley Wash, with some geological references.
• Friday Field Photos: Tepee Rocks: the ash-flow tuff making up the rock formation known as Tepee Rocks east of Caliente on the road to Ella Mountain Lookout (whew!), with some geological references.
• Meadow Valley Wash: Up the Canyon to Caliente: driving from "the Narrows" to Caliente, looking for the side road to the 1978 map area of the Caliente Camp series, train tracks and a train, and a beer at the end of the road.
• Pennsylvania Canyon: Getting There: driving the dirt road to the Ella Mountain Lookout, bad roads, on the wrong road, some unusual trees (Gambel oaks), and I'm about to go into Pennsylvania Canyon.
• Pennsylvania Canyon: Into the Canyon: driving into Pennsylvania Canyon over steep, rocky, and sandy roads; a wild horse or four or five; a washout or two; a lunch; and more unusual trees (Ponderosa pines).
• Caliente Camp Part 7: Getting Stuck in Pennsylvania Canyon: How we got stuck in the sand in 1978.
• Caliente Camp Part 8: Getting Out of Pennsylvania Canyon Yes! We did get out!

These two series overlap, and I've switched back and forth between the series, partly because I started the Caliente Camp series before I made the second road trip into the area and didn't know what kind of series I was starting.

Last update on 15Oct2012

Our Camp in Meadow Valley Wash

While out and about on that recent trip I mentioned in an earlier post, I hunted and searched for the site of a long-ago helicopter camp in the Rainbow Canyon part of Meadow Valley Wash south of Caliente, Nevada. The hunting and searching was conducted through the window of a Prius, while the Prius driver dodged small and large holes in the road, skirted undercut edges of pavement where the river had nearly wiped out the road in the 2005 flood, and made seemingly endless passages back and forth from pavement to dirt and dirt to pavement, especially in narrow parts of the road that are now essentially one laned.

Pavement fragments from the originally two-laned road now in flood deposits on the side of the road.

A narrow part of the road in the gorge or narrows part of the canyon north of Elgin. Lower steep cliffs are in strongly welded ash-flow tuff.

Caliente camp, looking north up Rainbow Canyon.

Caliente camp - which I think I found, see this MSRMaps map location - was the site of our first base of operation in the summer of 1978. That first year - the first year of two years of helicopter-supported uranium recon - we had two camp groups of four summer geologists each, and the group I was in camped in four locations: Caliente, Deer Lodge, Hot Creek, and Bowman Creek.

The camps were helicopter camps in the sense that we used helicopters for airborne radiometric surveys and to get to our remote field locations. All camps were accessible by 4-wheel-drive. Two of our camps, Hot Creek and Bowman Creek, were along or below creeks with usable running water; two, Caliente and Deer Lodge, were not, and for those we hauled water in large tanks that fit in the back of our half-ton and 3/4-ton pickup trucks. I'd call the usable water "potable," but that implies that it was good enough for drinking without any treatment, and almost all our water was treated with the addition of chlorine bleach.

Our main jobs, as young and budding geologists, were collecting stream sediment samples, taking scintillometer readings, making sketch maps of the drainages we traversed, and mapping occasional areas of interest, over which we had staked claims. Our more detailed maps, still considered recon maps, were at a scale of 1:24,000.

The view from my tent door looked something like this - provided that I really found the right location after 30-plus years of floods.

Camp sat at the base of a 1000-foot-high cliff on an alluvial ledge perched over the flowing water of Meadow Valley Wash. Our camp equipment - tents, trucks, trailers, shower, and outhouse - were scattered amongst the cottonwood trees, facing toward the cliff and away from the paved road, the train tracks, the creek, and the opposite cliff wall, all of which were crammed into that narrow gorge. We were hidden from casual view by cottonwood and willow thickets.

I placed my tent as far away as I could from the center of camp, a center marked by a 55-gallon drum-turned-into-wood-stove, which we used for heat on chilly early mornings before the helicopter took us to the heads of various drainages. Camp was arranged in one long line, from the shower at the north end to my tent at the south. In between were L's trailer, the mess tent, a propane refrigerator, the heating drum, G’s trailer, the cook's tent, L’s tent, G’s tent, two tents for three other early-starting summer geologists, a tent for the helicopter pilot and fuel man, the helicopter, fuel truck, and our brand new 1978 Ford 4-wheel-drive pickups. The outhouse - not in the same line as the main part of camp - was up the hill a ways, amid the privacy of sagebrush and purple sage, it's open door facing toward the nearby cliff.

L and G were our two bosses, the head boss and a sub-boss of the Western District of Northern Exploration Company, NEC, a U.S. branch of a major Canadian mining company (not the real company name). L's trailer was the larger of two field trailers that we used that summer, one trailer for each of our two recon camps. At Caliente camp, we used L's trailer for cooking, storage of supplies and maps, and as a small field office. Each afternoon before dinner, we plotted sample locations, lines from our helicopter-borne radiometric surveys, and any mapping we had completed on clean, unfolded 7.5-minute topographic maps. G's trailer, the smaller of our two trailers, would be used the same way when we later split our gradually growing group into two camps.

The main road, paved and graveled, ducks under the railroad tracks where it leaves the camp area and heads north toward Caliente.

Continued at Caliente Camp: Some more Exploration and Caliente Camp Continued: Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and others.

Meadow Valley Wash: Up the Canyon to Caliente

It’s now about mid-afternoon on the first day of my most recent Caliente field excursion, and after a quick lunch under a cottonwood tree on the side of the road, I decide that it’s time to continue my journey north on Highway 317 in Meadow Valley Wash. I’ve left Cottonwood Canyon, Elgin, and “the Narrows” behind. I have one more planned stop - despite the smoke and afternoon heat - before I head to the motel in Caliente: I want to find the road into our old mapping project near Boyd, so I can drive in and take a look around. In the meantime, one of the many trains that passes through the canyon has caught up with me.
The train keeps pace with me as I approach our 1978 camp area, which is just to the right of the highway in this photo. The train pulls through the bridge near camp and approaches the Boyd siding. Hard to say which vehicle is going faster, the locomotive or my truck – railway speed limits from Elgin to Caliente are mostly in the 30 to 40 mph range, and the highway speed limit is 35 mph or less, often marked 20, 25, or 30 mph because of curves and washouts.

What am I looking for exactly? Well, having not examined the old topo maps in detail, I’m looking for a place from memory, a place where we crossed over or under the train tracks. I think that place is just north of the Boyd siding, near the steep reddish cliffs we mapped, but I can’t really remember whether we drove over or under the tracks.
Whoosh! Past the north end of the Boyd siding I go, and past one possible way under the tracks. I continue driving north with the train, rather than stopping. By now, it seems like I'm racing the train - but I'd better not do that, because of all the washouts and places where the pavement was undercut by the 2005 flood.
I finally come to this little cement underpass, and although I'm north of the unnamed canyon central to the old project area, I decide to check it out - because it's there.
With the train still moving north, I walk under the cement underpass to the east side. No, this is not the place – not the place we crossed the tracks to get to the mapping project back in 1978. Although scrape marks about truck high on the wall suggest that people have driven through, the road heads off to the north, away from the area I’m trying to reach.
While driving north to the cement underpass, I’ve looked along this entire length of track for any approaches that might be possible places to cross over the tracks, and I really haven’t seen any. I take one last chance that there might be a place to drive over the tracks at this north Boyd marker - but as you can see, there isn't. Part of our former project area can be seen in the background: all those reddish, rhyolitic rocks, capped by what may be the Ox Valley Tuff.

At this point, I drive south, back towards the only other underpass I've seen, the only place that might provide access into the old project area.
Yes! This is the place! It even looks familiar! This underpass is here, just a little south of the northern Boyd marker (previous photo) and just a little north of the north end of the Boyd siding. This is the place we used to drive under the tracks to get to our map area. As you can see, it's chock full of green, rooted tumbleweeds (Russian thistle).
The road went under the bridge, and then straight into those bushes on the far side before turning to the left to head up the unnamed dry wash north of the reddish cliffs.
You can vaguely see where the old road would have gone into the bushes, although I really couldn’t follow it from there. The underpass is much higher and wider than the puny cement thing I walked under earlier. It doesn't, however, show any signs of recent use as a roadway!
As I walked around on the east side of the bridge, I found this railroad-parallel, two-track road - also inaccessible. I was disappointed not to be able to spend the rest of the afternoon driving up the old canyon road - possibly with vehicular agression I could have gotten part way in before getting stuck - and with the thick smoke hanging over the canyon and the afternoon heat increasing, I decided against climbing the steep talus slopes of the old project area.
So, I walked back to my truck...
...and drove north, bypassing the entrance to Kershaw-Ryan State Park on my way to Caliente.

But was I done for the day? No. I had it mind that I still had time to drive to the Ella Mountain Lookout, and from there into Pennsylvania Canyon from the east side, since I hadn't made it in from the west side at Elgin. That way, I would only have to stay in Caliente one more night. (Yay!) So I drove through Caliente and turned right onto the Clover Creek Road, took the dirt road past Tepee Rocks, and made it one hour into what turned out to be a four-hour-long, one-way journey to the lookout and into the canyon, before I realized that more than an afternoon's worth of driving was ahead of me if I continued on. I turned around.
Back in Caliente, I found a bar - but not the old Northern Lights that I remember from 1978. It closed about three or four years ago, according to some old-timers patronizing the Shamrock Pub, which is next door to what used to be the now-defunct bar.
As I sat there, Classic Vinyl played "Do It Again" by Steely Dan. It seemed like my entire trip was an attempt to recreate the past or to somehow do it all over again.

You go back Jack do it again
Wheel turnin' 'round and 'round
You go back Jack do it again

From the Field: Caliente, Nevada

I just got back from a short trip to Caliente, Nevada. The weather was looking good when I headed down there, with temperatures predicted to be slightly lower than average, especially if clouds like these stayed around. This photo is from the early evening of the day I arrived.
Caliente is a railroad town. Its mission-style railroad station is now being used for city offices, library, and other civic-type functions. This photo looks south down the railroad tracks, and shows the Boxcar Museum, painted bright red-orange, beyond the railroad depot. Supposedly "officials at the depot frown at people crossing the tracks" to get to the station, but I was assured by someone at the Shady Motel that it was okay, although I didn't see anyone else doing it.
Nevada Historical Marker 249 is on the north side of the railroad depot. Although the sign is stamped 248, apparently two were marked 248, and this one is called 249 on the official list. Text is here.
By the morning of the first field day, thick smoke had moved into the area, supposedly from big fires in Utah. Colors were consequently a little yellowish to reddish, and a bit dulled. You can see an anemometer and some other equipment behind the lampost and to the right of the tree, on the northwest corner of the walkway surrounding the railroad depot.
The anemometer is part of the Caliente Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) weather station. The only place I could find readouts for this CEMP station was at the Weather Underground. All other online weather reports for Caliente appear to be extrapolations from the usually hotter cities of St. George and Las Vegas.
The main readout panel shows a typical early morning temperature of 58° F (about 14° C).
Temperatures after daily field excursions were usually in the 93° to 95° F range (about 34° to 35° C). That was hot enough for me!
This is a sunset photo, taken in the evening after the first field day, with most of the old main part of town in the lower right. Smoke was thick through the first field day and through the afternoon of the second field day, when the skies cleared and views improved.
On the evening after my second day in the field, smoke moved in again, apparently from the east.
The sun looked like this in the early morning on the day I left, red from the smoke.

Related Posts:
Map Area in Meadow Valley Wash
Our Camp in Meadow Valley Wash

Note: As pointed out by @FlorianBoyd, the Kelso Train Station is similar to the Caliente Depot, and is also on the same Union Pacific rail line.

Update: DRI has a map of all their CEMP weather stations here, as pointed out by ChrisM in the comments.

Caliente Camp Continued: Part 3

I finally decided on the most likely Caliente camp location, so I settled in and tried to find some signs of our occupancy in that long-ago time, the summer of 1978. The north end looked familiar, so did the middle and south ends. I couldn’t identify any historical signs, like things we had left behind, probably because we didn’t leave anything behind.

The only possible signs I found of the old camp were pieces of charcoal, not necessarily located where we had our wood stove, but maybe, just maybe. Or maybe the charcoal had been left by hunters or other since-then campers.
It hadn't gotten too hot, so I found a comfy spot under a tree and sat down. Was this the tree I had camped next to? Maybe, but maybe the one I camped next to was farther down the camp road, or maybe it wasn't there anymore. I sat awhile and reminisced. (That's what we older types do, you know.)

I’ve mentioned Bob Shannon before. As our “intrepid expediter, camp builder, and drilling arranger,” Bob was on hand when we set up the Caliente camp - our first camp of that first year - and he built all the camp accoutrements not hauled, driven, or flown in to every single one of our camps, that summer and the next. He saw to it that our eight-by-ten, six-foot-high, green canvas tents were floored with 4' x 8' sheets of plywood, which fit under the cots that held our individual sleeping bags. Each tent - except those of our camp bosses, L and G - held two cots for two tent mates. My tent was singular at first, but was doubled later when the whole crew, including the only other female geologist hired that summer, showed up.
At Caliente camp, Bob constructed our first shower of the season, a sturdy and somewhat open contraption made of two-by-fours and plywood. Water came from a metal shower head attached to a 55-gallon drum propped overhead. Water went into the drum from a 200 gallon tank located far enough up hill from the drum to allow water to siphon into the drum through black hosing. Showers were often, but not always, warm or even hot, depending on the effect of clouds on our solar heating system. Cold water went into the shower drum in the morning to hopefully be heated by the sun. In some camps, our black tubing came from an uphill, creek-fed water source. Because of the long run of black tubing down the usually shallow slope, water in the tubing was heated by the sun during the day, and then added directly to the shower drum in the afternoon. The system worked well on most days through the summer.
The water tanks - we had two, one for L's camp and one for G's - could, when empty, be wrassled around by one or two guys in the back of one of the two three-quarter ton pickups we had gotten especially for hauling the trailers and the heavier pieces of our camp gear: lumber, the refrigerator that came along after G found it at an old mining camp, and the 200-gallon water tanks full of drinking water.

At Caliente camp, we filled our water tanks at a Caliente city water spigot. The tanks were made of thick, sturdy metal, and lined on the inside with a white plastic material. Every now and then, Bob would throw in some Clorox to sterilize the water, especially when new or suspect water was used. At the time, I had never heard of adding Clorox to water in order to give it the chlorination treatment so common in municipal and county water systems, but Bob was an oldtimer who knew all about such necessities.
The two-by-four and plywood outhouse, built by Bob, was equally sturdy and as elaborate as the shower. Two holes were dug deep, the depth designed to last for the duration of each three- to six-week camp. I was able to avoid the latrine-digging and re-filling chores by virtue of my predetermined female status - I was never asked to participate and did not complain about being opted out.

A two-seater sitting area with plywood back and sides for shielding was placed over the holes. The door of the outhouse was an open entryway that faced away from camp and gave an unobstructed view of the local scenery, whether it was of hills, bushes, or valleys. We arranged a flagging system to indicate when the outhouse was in use.

Unfortunately, the view from above the outhouse was unobstructed. Occasionally, the helicopter pilot or one of its male passengers would get the idea that buzzing the outhouse or shower was in order, usually only if C, who would join us at the next camp, was inside. She did not take kindly to these voyeuristic flights, but somehow her anger only spurred them on. Fortunately, the guys got these wild hairs only infrequently, and equally fortunately, they were not perpetrated on me.

...To be continued...

Caliente Smoke Update

As reported in my last post, the Caliente area was covered by a thick blanket of smoke most of the time I was there, especially on August 30th through September 1st (and possibly after that, but I wasn't there to observe). Local speculation was that the smoke was most likely from fires in nearby Utah, such as the large Mill Flat Fire.

Satellite images I've seen since leaving Caliente show that most or all of the smoke in the Caliente area was from fires in California. This post at the CIMSS Satellite Blog, especially, shows the plume from the Station Fire in southern CA going across the Caliente area on August 30th, then clearing somewhat during part of August 31st. Smoke returned to the area on September 1st. The related high-altitude carbon monoxide mass or plume is shown here by JPL.

The above view is from the road to the Ella Mountain Lookout, looking to the east.

Map Area in Meadow Valley Wash

We - MOH and I - recently returned from a trip that took us to points south. It was kind of a quick trip, but we did manage to drive by the first area I ever mapped professionally, back in the uranium exploration days of the late 1970's.

This first map area is in Meadow Valley Wash, about 19 km (12 miles) south of Caliente, Nevada, just north of the Boyd railroad siding (general location map). Meadow Valley Wash is a river most of its 177 km or 110 miles (length according to Wikipedia), especially south from Panaca. I saw intermittent stream symbols on the map only intermittently (ha!) in the area northeast of Panaca. It's headwaters are in the White Rock Mountains and Wilson Creek Range on the Nevada-Utah border northeast of Panaca. From Panaca it then flows mostly southward towards the Colorado River, via the Muddy River, which it enters near Moapa, Nevada. The Muddy River flows into northern Lake Mead.

Meadow Valley Wash is prone to flooding. One recent big flood was in 2005. The shapes of things have changed since the last time I was in the area 31 years ago. The river channel has moved around some in the Rainbow Canyon area between Caliente and Elgin; some old roads or river crossings appear to be gone.

And now I've gotten away from the main point of this post, which was my first professional mapping experience. We were in the area to look for uranium in the Tertiary volcanic rocks in the area of the Caliente caldera complex, and also in and near the younger Kane Springs Wash caldera to the south and southwest.

The altered and strongly hematite-goethite±jarosite-stained zone - that mass of light orange to red-orange to red-brown rocks in the photo above - is part of a rhyolite flow, dome, and dike complex probably associated with the formation of the Caliente caldera. The altered rhyolitic rocks - which overlie altered older andesite flows and flow breccias, and underlie mostly unaltered younger ash-flow tuff units in the map area - gave a strong radiometric anomaly, which ultimately proved to be due to high thorium (and at least normally high potassium) rather than from high uranium. We thoroughly mapped and sampled the area of interest and took a lot of ground scintillometer readings. Our scintillometers read in α (alpha), β (beta), γ (gamma), and Total Counts, and looked something like the scintillometer in this picture.

Continued at Our Camp in Meadow Valley Wash.


Some References:
Harding, A.E., Scott, R.B., Mehnert, H.H., and Snee, L.W., 1995, Evidence of the Kane Springs Wash Caldera in the Meadow Valley Mountains, Southeastern Nevada: in Scott, R.B. and Swadley, WC, eds., Geologic Studies in the Basin and Range - Colorado Plateau transition in southeastern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona, 1992, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 2056-E, p. 131-179.

Page, W.R., Dixon, G.L., Rowley, P.D., and Brickey, D.W., 2005, Geologic map of parts of the Colorado, White River, and Death Valley groundwater flow systems, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona: NBMG Map 150, map and text.

Rowley, P.D., Nealey, L.D., Unruh, D.M., Snee, L.W., Mehnert, H.H., Anderson, R.E., and Gromme, C.S., 1995, Stratigraphy of Miocene ash-flow tuffs in and near the Caliente caldera complex, southeastern Nevada and southwestern Utah: in Scott, R.B. and Swadley, WC, eds., Geologic Studies in the Basin and Range - Colorado Plateau transition in southeastern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona, 1992, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 2056-B, p. 43-88.

Smoke from CA Fires as Seen from the Ella Mountain Lookout

On the second day of my journeys through the Caliente area - despite warning signs like these saying, "Road Damaged Ahead," and a few unscheduled side trips due to faulty navigation - I finally reached the Ella Mountain Lookout, which is on Ella Mountain. The lookout area has great views for miles around. As noted earlier, however, the skies were full of smoke from California fires.
The Ella Mountain Lookout is at the end of a very long, bladed, sometimes washboardy, sometimes rocky dirt road, about 25 miles from Caliente, NV. Across the last three miles, the road is barely scraped into poorly to moderately welded ash-flow tuff, which makes a poor roadbed that is somewhat impervious to blading, creating an effect that resembles set-in stone washboard. When you finally make it to Ella Mountain across this deceptively substandard roadbed, you will find - for your backroad convenience - two porta-potties, one picnic table, and ample parking.
Despite what the sign says, no one was home.

I took some pictures from the Ella Mountain Lookout upper area (I didn't try to enter the lookout itself), and from the lower picnic-parking area. Below are some photo pairs, with the first of each pair having been taken before noon, when the smoke was still thick (about 11:00 am), and the second of each pair having been taken after noon, after some clearing (about 2:00 pm). The later pictures still show some smoke, but viewing distance has increased considerably - from about 20 miles to more than 60 miles.

This first pair looks almost due east from slightly different angles, toward Stoke's Flat. Some jagged rocks in the middle ground, of possible volcanic affinity, are featured.
In the next two photos, we are looking almost due north toward Pioche, NV. The lower mountains in the foreground are part of the Clover Mountains south of Caliente; the mountain in the middle ground is Chief Mountain in the Highland Range north of Caliente; the mountain in the distance is Highland Peak in the Highland Range due east of Pioche.
This next pair looks southwest toward the Delamar Mountains, which can be seen in the center and right of both photos, forming a slightly arching shape behind the canyons and hills in the foreground. The way distant mountain on the left in the second photo is Hayford Peak in the Sheep Range; the low area in front of that is Kane Springs Wash heading toward Coyote Spring Valley at the base of the Sheep Range. The Meadow Valley Mountains are on the far left of both photos, dipping towards the left. The canyon in the foreground is a side drainage of Pennsylvania Canyon.
The next two photos look almost due south, with a second tower near Ella Mountain behind some rocks on the right. Pennsylvania Canyon - the site of some past escapades - is behind the foreground hill, toward the left. Low hills in the background of both photos, at the end of the V of Pennsylvania Canyon, are part of the Meadow Valley Mountains across Meadow Valley Wash north of Kyle and south of Elgin. The far distant mountains, plainly visible in the second photo, are the Mormon Mountains just south of Carp.
In the last two photos, we are looking slightly south of east toward Stokes Flat and Sheep Flat, with other flats such as Fife Flat and Rocky Canyon possibly visible. The hills and mountains are all part of the Clover Mountains. Utah may or may not be visible in the far distance. The road dropping down from the saddle in the foreground is the road into Pennsylvania Canyon.
I'll write more about Pennsylvania Canyon in a later post.

For more about fire lookout towers, read this excellent post at the BLDG BLOG.