Dust Hole

I was out driving around the other day, basically following I-80 from Lovelock to Reno, and I decided to take what I thought would be a short side trip, getting off at Toulon to check out a bit of remaining old Highway 40 just east of the Humboldt Dike.

After checking out the old alignment, I thought about turning around and going back to Toulon to get on the freeway, then decided to go on toward the old site of Trinity, where U.S. 95 south to Fallon meets I-80. Go forward, not back! To do this, I drove southwest on an easy portion of what turned out to be a long, tedious, and very rocky section of powerline road.

Near the top of the first rise, the road narrowed and turned rocky and then went into the first of a series of sideways excursions across several large and small washes coming south out of the south Trinity Range. Near the bottom of the first of these washes, I pushed my way through a small silt hole (I was already in 4WD in order to go slower over the sharp volcanic rocks). Rather than stopping and backing through the thing or trying to turn around at this somewhat late point (and thinking that Trinity would be just over the next rise), I kept going, only to suddenly find myself heading into an immense, roiled dust hole cut into old Lake Lahontan lake sediments (or Tertiary intra-volcanic sediments). I leaned on the gas pedal, thinking that if I came to a stop in the middle of the hole, I would be stuck and would have to send a SPOT help message or walk out to I-80 (or both). Waves of dust washed over the jeep covering it entirely, and for the last part of the hole, I couldn't see a thing. I didn't have time to turn on my window wipers, which probably wouldn't have helped anyway, and I kept going like a person with their eyes shut, trying to remember the next part of the road from the brief glance I had gotten.

I made it through, and instead of stopping to take any pictures of it, I continued on, just wanting to get the hell out of there. After a steep bit or two through rocks I actually scraped over a little (this is hard to do with the excellent clearance the jeep has), I arrived at the top of the next rise.

On an obscure powerline road, looking southwestward toward Trinity.

From the top of the rise, I could see that I had at least one more major wash to cross and more than a mile to go. At this point, I was just short of half way there (although I didn't really know that at the time), and I knew that I wouldn't be turning around to go back to Toulon, because I wasn't going to drive through that second dust hole twice in one day. (Or ever again!)

Here, I'm looking northeast across the wash I had just crossed.

Both dust holes are visible in the photo enlargement below, just right of the powerline in roiled, light-colored sediments in the center of the broad wash area:

From looking at this in Google Earth, I'm pretty sure that only the beginning of the second dust hole (the one closest to us) is fully visible in the photo.

I was running enough adrenaline right then, that I didn't try harder to get a better picture — I was focused more on getting out of there as quickly as possible and getting back to the highway!  I hurriedly cleaned the dust off the windows of the jeep, and drove on toward Trinity.

The view of the second hole that I would have had if I'd walked back over the hill a short distance.

When I got to Trinity, I took out the air filter out of the jeep and shook the dust out of it.

View Toulon to Trinity in a larger map

After getting onto I-80, I accelerated to traveling speed (warp 7.5+ or 75-80 mph; warp speed terminology on roads and highways explained here), leaving a trail of dust behind me for several miles, perhaps as far as about halfway to Nightingale Hot Springs.

Phew! Maybe I'll go back someday to get a better photo of the hole. Maybe.

(See embedded Google Maps view above for location of all geographic points of interest mentioned in this post.)

Update from the Lake: Tracks and Things...

...on the beach at Butt Valley Reservoir, also seen here and here.

Probably dog.

Deer?

Sasquatch — I mean, human.

Crawdad.

Small crawdad pinchers. Finger is red from blackberries.

Corbicula fluminea or Asian clam, not zebra mussel.

Jelly blob, probably Pectinatella magnifica, a type of freshwater bryozoan.

Enlargement of the same photo. This is a colony, and each of the circular to star-shaped indentations or rosettes supposedly consist of several individual organisms.

Shaly beach sand. Hopefully we'll see the reason for the odd shape of this sand in a few days!

Varying Water Levels at a Few Reservoirs in California

When MOH and I drove to Butt Valley Reservoir a couple weeks ago, we were surprised by the lake low lake level: it looked lower than we remembered seeing it, although we haven't been frequenting the area routinely for several years.

Standing on a wider-than-usual beach near the boat ramp on the east shore, looking south. 

The boat ramp is the dark, shadowed line below the tall trees on the same shore I'm standing on. The dam is a ways around the corner to the southeast behind the tall trees.

This picnic table from the day use area was moved out onto the beach, presumably as a prank. Photo from August 22nd.

A few days later the same picnic table was at water's edge.
Photo from August 26th.

Although the angle of the photo is a bit different, you can see that the lake has risen by looking at the boat ramp and a couple logs in the background, not to mention the trees. In addition, the beach on the far shore is no longer visible.

It isn't really normal for water levels to be rising this year in California reservoirs, but the lake level in Butt Valley Reservoir (the lake is alternately called Butt's Lake, Butt Lake, and Butt Valley Lake) is notoriously variable. In fact, swimmers and boaters are warned to watch the lake level, as it can rise suddenly if water is released from the next lake up the ladder, which is Lake Almanor. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the warning sign.

Indeed, in case I didn't believe my eyes (or you don't believe my photos), Butt Valley Reservoir contained 35,117 acre feet on August 22nd (probably a permalink, or play around with the dates yourself) and 41,627 acre feet on August 26th (same chart). Total storage capacity of the reservoir is 49,800 AF. The chart of reservoir storage for the month of August can be seen here (a probable permalink).

Meanwhile, the lake upstream in the Feather River watershed so-called "Stairway of Power" was dropping (tabular data), especially after August 21st (graph).

We've all seen some of the recent pictures of the main reservoir at the downstream end of the Feather River system (Lake Oroville above Oroville Dam). I wouldn't mind posting some of these here, but surprisingly, CDWR describes these photos as public domain and copyrighted and not for redistribution at the same time (right click on this one, for example). Instead of photos, view the Lake Oroville storage chart for all of 2014 here (should be a permalink).

What we can discover through various CDEC links and calculation tools, is that the May 2014 peak at Lake Oroville of 1,877,682 AF was considerably below the average May peak of 3,042,972 AF. I've read in comments that the 1990, 1991, and 1992 years were worse California drought years than 2014 (perhaps based on statewide storage, rain, runoff, or wishful thinking?), but at Oroville, storage at the beginning of September was a little higher in all three of those years than it was this year: 1,188,782 AF in 1990, 1,392,300 AF in 1991, and 1,401,554 AF in 1992, compared to 1,100,873 AF on 9/1/2014.

Update from the Lake: A Berrying Road Trip

We took off in under fairly clear skies and on a remarkably haze free day — the entire summer has been plagued by haze, smoke, and inordinate amounts of dust — in search of blackberries. On a loop road to the south, we stopped at a little overlook to look back at the lake, across part of a large burn from about two years ago.

Dead trees above the same overlook.

Fireweed.

We found our berrying spot...

...right down by the river.

It's hard to tell from this photo exactly how far down the water line is in this reservoir, but it's as low as we had ever seen it, though relatively much higher than the main reservoir downstream (great photos at the link, btw).

A close up of the entangled mass that floated in on the waves...

...from this larger mass out in the lake.

Not sure what this water plant is, but it may not be welcome in our western lakes, as it would seem to impeded boat traffic and swimming.

Early Morning Smoke

The sun is about to rise through thick smoke blanketing the
southern Humboldt Range.

Here, the sun is up, and the smoke is so thick that the high part of the Humboldt Range, which would normally be visible in the distance on the left part of the photo, is completed covered by the smoke layer.

Looking off to the southwest, layers of smoke over a green field. 

A screeching hawk on a phone pole. 

Not sure exactly where this smoke, smoke so thick I could smell it most of the day even when working inside, is coming from, but I'm suspecting the Happy Camp fire complex and others in NW California, at least until I hear anything to suggest otherwise.

Note: Photos uploaded directly from my phone to the Blogger app. Blog post was then manipulated on the phone using the Chrome web interface, which is quite awkward. Final touches added on the laptop.