Cliffs of the Ruby Mountains: More Views from the Hanging Valley Pullout

While I'm gradually working my way toward posting a bit about the nappe in Lamoille Canyon, let's take a quick look at more views of the cliffs from the hanging valley pullout.

A shadowed view of the cliffs to the northwest.

Stunning!

A view of the cliffs to the southeast.

When I took this photo, it looked like I could see a recumbent fold in the upper cliffs. I'm not sure that there is really a fold present, and in fact, I missed getting a shot of the nappe in Lamoille Canyon by just a little bit!

Small dikes or sills cutting the cliff walls.

Big Slushy Wet Snow Hits Northern Sierra; Some Folks Lose Internet

It's slushy at 4600 feet, anyway.

Our phone service--hence internet--is down, so I'm using a 1X Verizon connection. It's just a little slow!

I imagine there's a lot of snow at higher elevations, but the details of this storm are difficult to check out at 1X.

Twelve Months of LFD 2014

I missed this retrospective meme last year (as I also did in 2011), but here it is, back again, per DrugMonkey:

The rules for this blog meme are quite simple.
-Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year. I originally did this meme, after seeing similar posted by Janet Stemwedel and John Lynch. Prior editions include 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Previous takes on this Twelve Month meme at LFD were posted for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012. As usual for LFD, I've also added the accompanying first photo of the month, where there was one with the first post of the month, and a gratuitous sign photo for October.

So, here's the year 2014 for LFD:
January:

I'm sitting here inside flight 112--I think--with my phone in airplane mode, wondering if I can create a blog draft that I can save and post later.

February:

We've been having unsettled to stormy weather here in western Nevada for about the last week, with at least light snow accumulating in the mountains, though the south facing slopes have gone back to being mostly bare, even under today's cloudy skies.

March:

Flying back from Alaska on yet another recent trip, I was able to spot Rose Spit, which featured as Where in the West challenge back in October of 2010.

April:

A while back, I started collecting photos of Majuba Hill (AKA Majuba Mountain), partly because I pass by daily on the way to and from work, and also because of it's interesting shape and fascinating geology (which I hope to learn more about on this spring's GSN field trip).

May:

MOH and I will shortly be off on a field trip to a few nearby localities, including Majuba Hill, reportedly a great mineral and rock collecting site, seen here from I-80 looking northwest across Rye Patch Reservoir.

June:

Here are a few photoviews from Majuba Hill, while I get it together to take some rock photos:

July:

A quick report on a canoe trip we took recently:

August:

So, while I wasn't thinking about it, my 1000th post posted, and this is my 1005th! I'm not sure, really, what to say about this — although I'm also sure I'll think of something — other than Yay!!

September:

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

October: A colleague of my former (deceased) husband once said, "Archaeologists are the Cowboys of Science."

[He was wrong, btw. Read the post to find out why.]

November:

So there I was, traveling west on I-80 late last week — just after our first rain sans snow (except for at the high elevations of a few mountains east of the Sierra, like the Humboldt and Sonoma Ranges, which top out at 9836 and 9396 feet respectively), and before our most recent larger rain and snowstorm of this past weekend — when I came to the marshes that border the west end of the Fortymile Desert.

December: MOH turned me on to this song just yesterday (I didn't listen to much besides classic rock and country in the 80s).

Sammy Hagar: I Can't Drive 55 (lyrics)
Album: VOA, 1984

Links: Lamoille Canyon Geology

Geologic Map of the Ruby Mountains, Nevada - USGS Map I-1136 (Howard, Kistler, Snoke, and Willden, 1979)

Geologic Map of the Lamoille Quadrangle, Elko County, Nevada - NBMG Map 125 (Howard, 2000)

Geology of the Lamoille Quadrangle, Elko County, Nevada - text for Map 125 (Howard, 2000)

Lamoille canyon nappe in the Ruby Mountains metamorphic core complex, Nevada - GSA, Cordilleran Section, DNAG, Centennial Field Guide, v. 1 (Howard, 1987)

New investigations of Pleistocene glacial and pluvial records in northeastern Nevada; Day 3: Elko to Logan: The Lamoille Type Locality and Lamoille Canyon (p. 20-24) - in Geologic Field Trips to the Basin and Range, Rocky Mountains, Snake River Plain, and Terranes of the U.S. Cordillera; GSA Field Guide 21 (Munroe and Laabs, 2011)

Road Song: I Can't Drive 55

Sammy Hagar: I Can't Drive 55 (lyrics)
Album: VOA, 1984

MOH turned me on to this song just yesterday (I didn't listen to much besides classic rock and country in the 80s). The song refers to the National Maximum Speed Law (part of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act) enacted in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Nevada got around this law by issuing "wasting energy" tickets of $5 beginning in 1981, and although Wikipedia — and its cited source — states that "troopers were directed not to take the new law as a signal to stop writing tickets," as far as I noticed, speeding tickets were no longer issued for speeds under 70 mph (except perhaps on rare occasions). At 70 mph, you were going 15 miles over the actual speed limit, so you could be given a speeding ticket along with a reckless driving ticket, and on some roads (like the Mount Rose Highway and the Geiger Grade), you could be issued a reckles mountain driving ticket as well (higher fines).