Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part4

And now we’ll say goodbye to the Smoke Creek Desert, which we saw on the last leg of this cross-country journey, and make our way south for a very short distance, where we’ll turn off the road skirting the entire west side of the desert, and head west up Smoke Creek. Photos you’ll see in this blog post are from three different trips taken between the Smoke Creek Desert and Highway 395 during May through August of 2006, 2014, and 2015. Which means that although we’re returning to my June 15, 2018 trip from Winnemucca to Susanville, which began here,I didn’t take any photos during this section of the 2018 trip.

Immediately upon leaving the great tufa mounds of the last post, we come to a hill with a view of distant trees that are growing along lower Smoke Creek. The sign indicates our upcoming turn onto the Smoke Creek Road. The smaller, hand-painted white sign says “Smoke Creek Road,” so we know we’re on the right track. (Photo: 17May2014.)

On the left side of the road, just as we turn right, a bullet-ridden sign points south toward Sutcliffe, a small town on the west side of Pyramid Lake several miles beyond our turn. This will be our last view of the Smoke Creek playa and the Fox Range to the east. (Photo: 14Jun2006.)

We’re now heading about due west toward the valley of Smoke Creek. In this area, a lot of the creeks and canyons are named on USGS topo maps, but very few of the hills are. As an example, the highest point on the volcanic-covered hills above is merely marked with an X and the elevation 6186 feet, along with a small triangle for a survey point with the name Smoke. (Photo: 17May2014.)

Smoke Creek Road

US 395 Jct 30

Litchfield 39

Susanville 55

(miles)

The basaltic hills, and the sagebrush in the foreground, were fairly green in mid-June of 2006. The buff-colored hills are underlain by Lake Lahontan lake deposits, possibly the Sehoo Formation, which are inset into the older, Miocene basalts. (Photo: 14Jun2006.)

We’re about to round the bend and drop in the valley of Smoke Creek. (Photo: 17May2014.)

Here you can possibly get a better idea of the younger lake sediments being inset into the canyon, such that although the buff-colored deposits are lower in elevation than the reddish brown basalt flows, they are not underlying them in a stratigraphic sense. This hill also shows the first example of Lake Lahontan tufa plastered on basalt (pale brown tufa on dark brown basalt in the upper left part of the photo). (Photo: 17May2014.)

The older sediments that underlie the basalt have been baked to a bright red color in this view not far up the canyon. (Photo: 14Jun2006.)

And there’s more! A large mass of light brownish tufa sits atop vaguely spheroidally weathering dark brown basalt. For locations of these photos, check out the map linked near the end of the post. (This and next photos from 15Aug2015.)

Less than a half mile from the sharp turn near the west end of the canyon, we come upon the “Cave in Smoke Creek Canyon,” which is along the Nobles Trail section of the California Trail.

“There is a cave ... in this canon, the entrance of which will admit a man on horseback several of the company having entered on horseback but I do not think that they saw much for it was dark as pitch in the cave” – Mary C. Fish, Sep 7 1860

The signs along the various trails are maintained by Trails West. A photo tour of the trail can be found on their website here.

Our first view of the mouth of the cave, as seen when coming in from the east.

A closer view.

The cave with wild roses in bloom. (This and next photos from 17May2014.)

The cave has plenty of room overhead, and people obviously camp within. The roof is darkened by soot from many fires over the many years.

The view from the cave.

Across the creek from the cave, I spotted a cinnamon teal

to be continued...

Google Maps location map.

Related Posts:
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 3
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 2
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1
Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur
Blue Mountain (2012)
Pulpit Rock (2012)
Smoke in the Black Rock & Smoke Creek Deserts (2102)
Where in the West: Black Rock Desert (2008)
Where in the West - June: A Second Look (2008)
Where in the West - June (2008)
Name That Place (2008)

Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 3

Black Rock Desert

Well, here we are again, traveling from Winnemucca, NV, to Highway 395 north of Susanville, CA, and we’ve just made it to the west end of the Jungo Road where it intersects with NV S.R. 447 (formerly S.R. 34) just south of Gerlach. You’ve probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much recently. I'm not really sure why. Sometimes the work I do takes the writing right out of me, partly because I do enough writing many days that I'm totally done with that by the end of the day; also, I don't really have much time after work before I have to do dinner, then get ready for bed—at least if I want to get enough sleep, which I do want (I don't always succeed). Another thing contributing to the recent spate of sparse blogging—besides taking care of personal things that have been taking a lot out of my energy during my days off—is that my writing effort during the fall and winter months has been going toward writing bits of fiction (a novel?), which I've been working on intermittently during the last two years.

Anyway, all of that—work, trying to get enough sleep, personal issues, and writing fictional to non-fictional stories—has placed blogging low on the list.

Now I'll upload the photos for this post, and we'll go from there. Just like a real journey, we’ll see how far we get!

Smoke Creek Desert

At the end of the last post, we'd driven quickly through Gerlach and had reached the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert. I hadn't taken any photos while zipping through Gerlach, but I often stop, and I've even stayed overnight at least twice. So let's backtrack before moving on.

Gerlach is a small town that brags of several mottoes, including "Center of the Known Universe," "Where the Pavement Ends and the West Begins" and "The Time That Town Forgot." More can be seen on the town sign, above, or in this nicely enlarged version of the sign by the RGJ. As indicated by the sign, Gerlach is technically pronounced Grr-lack rather than the Grr-lock one hears so commonly these days. I shot these photos of Gerlach on a trip that FMOH and I took back in the spring of 2014. Like the June, 2018, trip that we—you and I—are reprising, he and I had just come into town from Winnemucca on the Jungo Road. We were bringing the motorcycle back from Nevada, mirroring this trip taking it out to Nevada.

While in town, we did the usual thing of stopping to eat at Bruno's Country Club, probably getting Bruno's Famous Homemade Ravioli. By 2014, Bruno was no longer making his ravs personally, so I don't think they were quite as authentic, nor were they quite as good.

Unlike many trips, this time we stopped at the bar for a couple beers; we weren't driving on that afternoon or evening, but were, rather, staying at Bruno's Motel. Bruno Selmi, the Basque owner of the cafe, bar, motel, and only gas station in town, died in May of 2017—he can be seen in the photo above the bar (the older man on the right).

After checking in to our room at the motel—and after duly going back to the bar to get a second room when the first smelled either of gas or dead mouse—we wandered out onto the far western edge of the Black Rock Desert, where we had a view somewhat atypical of most views of the desert. This section of the Black Rock is a section you don’t want to drive into: it’s usually muddy, and it’s very possible that you’ll get stuck. The getting stuck part typically happens at night when an unsuspecting traveler, one who is already out on the desert somewhere to the east, decides to get off the desert—and instead of driving to the usual take-out spot north of town, sets their sights on the lights of Gerlach and makes a beeline for town. The next thing our unsuspecting—or willfully ignorant—traveler knows, they are stuck, possibly axle deep, in the mud at the west end of the main section of the Black Rock Desert. Fortunately for them, they aren’t far from Bruno’s gas station. Maybe someone will risk a vehicle to come and pull them out!

It’s possible one could wend their way through the merely salty white section of desert to the pavement on the east edge of Gerlach, at least in the drier years, but I don’t recommend trying it. I personally know at least one person who tried this one night back in the 1980s; the getting stuck was epic.

The next morning after breakfast, FMOH and I headed west.

Now let’s get back to my June 2018 trip, which I was taking all by myself (cue pint-sized pity party). I had just made it to the northwest side of the Smoke Creek Desert and had taken the photo seen earlier and in my last post.

A ways farther down the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert, I pulled over for a quick examination of some tufa. There are many spots to see tufa domes, mounds, and hills along the west side of the Smoke Creek Desert; this mound, Hill 4081, was a new one to me.

I climbed up through the cheatgrass and scattered tansy-mustard tumbleweed and looked around. Here we’re looking off to the northeast, more or less back toward the Junction of C.R. 447 and the Smoke Creek Desert Road. The Granite Range, unsurprisingly underlain by granite, rises steeply beyond the distant Smoke Creek Desert playa. The foreground is green because...water. It’s a wet part of the basin, possibly because of the entry of perennial Smoke Creek into the desert just south of where we’re standing. It’s also more elevated than the playa, and covered with grass (at least cheat grass) and various scrub.

I love tufa mounds, so I stood looking around for a few minutes, taking lots of photos. This photo looks off more to the north. The distant bluish hills just right of the tufa dome are part of the Buffalo Hills, which are underlain by a pile of volcanic rocks.

More tufa! More volcanic rocks! The hills in shadow between the tufa masses are some volcanic flows forming the eastern foothills of Burro Mountain.

From this point on Hill 4081, I got back on the Smoke Creek Desert Road, went south a short distance, and then turned west on what Washoe County considers the continuation of the Smoke Creek Desert Road, and what Google Maps refers to as the Smoke Creek Road: a dirt road that heads west up Smoke Creek.

to be continued...

Google Maps location map.

Related Posts:
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 2
Winnemucca to Hwy 395 north of Susanville, Part 1
Things You Find in the Field: Sulfur at Sulphur
Blue Mountain (2012)
Pulpit Rock (2012)
Smoke in the Black Rock & Smoke Creek Deserts (2102)
Where in the West: Black Rock Desert (2008)
Where in the West - June: A Second Look (2008)
Where in the West - June (2008)
Name That Place (2008)