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

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

Meadow Valley Wash: the Narrows

More than a week ago, I left you with this enigma of an outcrop, which occurs at the base of some tall, brownish cliffs at the south end of Rainbow Canyon in Meadow Valley Wash. As seen before, the cliffs show crude columnar jointing. Columnar jointing is often well developed in basalt flows, and similar horizontal joints can occur in basalt dikes.

We are in Nevada, however, where anything goes!
Taking a closer look at the exposure at the base of one of the cliffs, we see a reddish gray rock with some kind of bedding or flow foliation. My finger is pointing at a lithic fragment.
Just beyond the lithic fragment, we see a large, light gray, somewhat flattened pumice fragment. The layering in the rock, which is not really bedding, is from welding of this relatively crystal-rich, rhyolitic ash-flow tuff. The texture is known as eutaxitic, and it is the result of compaction during cooling and welding of the tuff. In this case, the tuff is moderately to strongly welded, not strongly enough to show consistent or strong fiamme as Andrew shows here.
Looking straight up from the base of the cliff, we get this view. The rocks generally become lighter toward the top of the cliff and above our view, with welding decreasing gradually in intensity. The lighter color of the upper part of the tuff can be seen best in my first picture of these cliffs, from my first post on our 1978 camp in Meadow Valley Wash. In that month-ago post, when I described the rocks at the base of these cliffs, I answered last week's question!
Large boulders of the lighter-colored, upper part of this ash-flow tuff have broken off and fallen from the top of the cliffs, and can be accessed easily along Highway 317. The upper part of the tuff - as seen in these roadside boulders - is moderately welded and shows compaction foliation (flattened pumice). The pinkish gray rock in my hand is a piece of this same tuff. Some of the larger boulders that fell from the upper part of the cliffs can be seen in the next photo.
Columnar jointing is fairly common in the more strongly welded portions of some ash-flow tuff formations in Nevada; they are often dark brown, dark reddish brown, or dark orangish brown. These columnar-jointed welded tuffs can be confused with basalt from a distance - and the two rock types can even be confused up close if you haven't broken open a rock or two. After gaining some experience with this phenomenon, you may become confident enough to pronounce some dark volcanic columns capping a distant hill as either ash-flow tuff or basalt - but without having seen geologic maps of the area or walked over to the outcrop, even an experienced person can get it wrong.
This ash-flow tuff is called Tt4 on this map. Tt4, which lumps several ash-flow tuff formations, is described here as including "poorly to densely welded, crystal poor, bimodal high-silica rhyolite and peralkaline ash-flow tuff and related airfall tuffs; gray, red, tan, and brown." The tuff in our cliffs is probably the 14.0 Ma tuff of Etna or the 12.6(?) to 11.4(?) Ma Ox Valley Tuff - dates are from Rowley et al, 1995.
The Ox Valley Tuff is "a light-gray, crystal-poor, poorly to densely welded, high-silica rhyolite ash-flow tuff whose outflow consists in most places of one to four cooling units that generally total less than 40 m thick but may be as thick as 130 m" (Rowley et al, 1995). Note that this description of "crystal-poor" doesn't match our earlier crystal-rich pronouncement. The description goes on to say that the Ox Valley Tuff contains 30 to 40% phenocrysts, which seems more than crystal-poor to me, but phenocryst percentage in an ash-flow tuff varies with degree of welding, and we are looking at a relatively densely welded part of this unit. The most abundant phenocrysts in the Ox Valley Tuff are sanidine and quartz. Plagioclase, amphibole, and clinopyroxene were noted in decreasing abundance, with trace to minor biotite.
About 75 m of tuff is exposed at our location, from the base of the cliffs to the base of the overlying basalt flows. With the base of the tuff not exposed - or with it exposed in the canyon somewhere to the north - the tuff may be as thick as 100 m or more in this general area.
After dinking around at the base of these spectacular cliffs, I turned my sights on the trees lining Meadow Valley Wash and scared up a deer.
I walked over to the running creek and got my feet wet once again.
After cooling off in the shade, I turned back toward the cliffs, which stand like sentinels over the partly washed out road.
I then headed back to my truck to continue my drive north in Rainbow Canyon, north toward Caliente.


Some References:
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.

Friday Field Photos: The Narrows

Here we're coming into the brownish cliff area on Highway 317, which I mentioned in my last post about Meadow Valley Wash - these are the rocks below the dark basalt flows.
They show a columnar fracture pattern...
...and tower over my truck.
I wonder what these rocks are? The short weed-like plants (less than a foot high) are offered for scale - that's all you get for now!

Meadow Valley Wash: Elgin to the Narrows

Elgin's main feature is the Elgin Schoolhouse State Historic Site, which is closed until Highway 317 can be reconstructed, maybe sometime in 2010 or 2011.

Elgin, NV is little more than a road junction and railroad siding, with a few nearby ranches. To get to Elgin, you drive south from Caliente on Highway 317 through Rainbow Canyon, then past the End of the Rainbow Canyon Ranch on the west side of the road, then east onto dirt at the Elgin turnoff. The paved Highway 317 continues south about a half mile past the Elgin turnoff, then it turns to dirt and becomes the Kane Springs Wash road. You can also come to Elgin from the south on the Meadow Valley Wash dirt road.

After driving north from the Cottonwood Canyon area, I made a short side trip a couple miles down the Kane Springs Wash road, but then blew off that portion of my explorations into the past in favor of Elgin and the more scenic Rainbow Canyon.

At Elgin, I turned east into the hills, thinking I could get into Pennsylvania Canyon, the site of some old exploration shenanigans, from the west. The sign says, "Road Damaged Ahead." At a V in the road just past the sign, I took the left turn, which is shown on old maps as the main road into Pennsylvania Canyon. The road immediately steepened and went around a curve. When I peered around the curve, I could see two more curves ahead, on a road with more curves and switchbacks than can be counted on two hands.

The road looked damaged to me - lumpy and sloping irregularly off to both sides. I would have had to walk every single bit of the part of the road I could see, and probably much of road that I couldn't see, before being sure that I wouldn't have to back down around one or more curves if the road was completely washed out with no turn-around spots. Backing around curves isn't an impossible task, but it is one best done with a spotter, especially if the road is lousy. I backed up, backing around the first curve, turned around near the V in the road, and drove back to Elgin. I then headed north on 317 toward Rainbow Canyon.
Highway 317 is marked at its north and south ends by signs like this one. Essentially, the road is subject to flash floods for 21 miles of its 21.5-mile length.
The flash flood sign was immediately followed by a closed sign. This closed sign is mimicked by a similar sign near the north end of the highway, near Caliente. The road wasn't closed by being blockaded, but in places it is practically wiped out, which happened during the 2005 flood. Locals say that the road hasn't been repaired since, though it looks like some dirt has been pushed around here and there.
Rainbow Canyon's south end begins at this narrowing of the Meadow Valley Wash canyon, where some dark volcanic flows dip slightly to the south or southeast.
These are those same dark flows in the foreground cliffs on the left. They consist of fine-grained to vesicular basalt or basaltic andesite. I call this part of Rainbow Canyon "the narrows," although I find no reference to that name on any map - it's either a local name, our old field name, or a name that stuck in my mind from somewhere else. Ahead, beyond the dark cliffs on the side of the road, you can see some lighter, brownish rocks underneath three dark flows of this same basalt. We'll look at those lower cliffs later.

Meadow Valley Wash: Cottonwood Canyon to Elgin

I did a lot of driving around during the two field days I was in the Caliente area, and one thing I did was to drive south on Highway 317, which goes one-half mile south of the turnoff to Elgin, NV. At Elgin, I turned and drove south on dirt toward Carp until I came to Cottonwood Canyon, shown here looking under the railroad bridge that crosses the canyon.

Cottonwood Canyon is part of a large drainage system that heads in the Clover Mountains at least 14 miles upstream from its mouth, and about 6 to 8 miles east to northeast of our 1978 camp area. Upstream from its drainage mouth, Cottonwoood Canyon becomes Pine Creek, which becomes Ash Creek on one of its major side branches. Ash Creek heads in the mountains just east of Ella Mountain Lookout. Pine Creek heads in the mountains just south of the lookout.

I did at least two helicopter-assisted traverses in this drainage, way back when. The first one involved being let off by the helicopter in the wrong place, which meant that we didn't know where we were for some time. It was one of our first drainage traverses of the summer. S and I walked the flowing stream together, thinking we knew where we were, until we finally came to a particularly stunning landmark - a major bend in the drainage - which was where we were supposed to have been let off. That was the last time I relied on the helicopter pilot to tell me where I was, even though he was an exceptionally good helicopter pilot.

Prior to finding out where we really were, while in the higher reaches of the drainage, S and I drank some of the water. It was flowing along pretty good and was nice and cold. I don't recommend drinking random creek, river, or spring water in Nevada: cows are ubiquitous even if you haven't seen them. Fortunately we felt no ill effects.
The lower part of Cottonwood Canyon consists mostly of a wide sand and gravel wash. Besides doing that one traverse farther up the drainage, later in the summer I walked the lower part of Cottonwood Canyon. The sandy parts of the wash were soft and hard to walk through, even though I was walking downstream. Because I was low on water before I came in sight of the bridge, I practised some Rules of the Desert while walking, by wandering back and forth between anything that even hinted at shade. Or maybe I wandered due to incipient heat exhaustion! The last little bit of shade, besides shade under rocky overhangs on the sides of the canyon, had probably been a mile or more above the end of the wash.
This view, looking under the railroad bridge at the main canyon of Meadow Valley Wash, would have meant that I'd made it to the pickup point. I have no idea how long I had to wait there - maybe a truck had been left for me, maybe not.
While in the area, I thought I would drive down to Carp, but Cottonwood Canyon was it. Maybe the heat of the day was getting to me. So, after spending a little time in the Cottonwood Canyon area, I turned around and drove north toward Elgin and Caliente.
On my way to Elgin, I of course took a few pictures, mostly of the volcanic rocks forming the canyon walls. Above, a thick ash-flow-tuff sequence is seen looking north up the Meadow Valley Wash road from Cottonwood Canyon, with my truck for scale.
Meadow Valley Wash is a great place to see varied and variegated volcanic rocks, including a lot of ash-flow sheets that erupted from the Caliente caldera complex and the Kane Springs Wash caldera. In the photo above, one can imagine that there is a fault offset of units going up the steep drainage in the center of the photo, with the offset appearing greater upward. The angle of the photo isn't great, and one has to contend with palaeo-topography, like old caldera walls and such, which may have created local unconformities.
I can no longer identify any particular tuff units or volcanic formations - except in a general way and in my first map area. The rocks are, nevertheless, locally stunning and fun to view. (See the last link for a few geologic references.)

And, hey, we'll get to Elgin soon!

Caliente Camp: Some More Exploration

This most recent time that I visited Caliente, I did some more looking around the long-ago campsite from 1978. I wanted to make sure that I'd found the right site, and I wanted to take more pictures.

The mostly paved Meadow Valley Wash road, Highway 317, isn’t in the same location as shown on old topo maps of the area, and Meadow Valley Wash may not be following the same channel it followed in 1978. The original Elgin, NE, Nev., 7.5 minute topo map, which covered our camp area no matter where it was located, was dated 1969; it was "photoinspected" in 1980 with no changes noted even though the road had moved prior to 1978. Consequently, I’m not entirely sure I found the right location, but after checking out two more possibilities, I’m almost sure. (This site has some downloadable zip files of pertinent USGS topo maps if you are interested.)

In order to more fully evaluate the area, I drove the old camp road - which is the only road shown on the old topo map - south of camp to an unnamed drainage. I then walked the area south of that drainage. Later, I drove south on the main road and checked out an area where Meadow Valley Wash may have washed out some land sometime in the last 30 years (or even before then). With all this additional exploration, I still may have missed the area, but I don't think so. Air-photo sets from 1978 or thereabouts would be helpful.
This area, south of the unnamed drainage, has a good, wide ledge above the river, which we could have camped on - but the view seems wrong, the drainage has a road in it - and I don’t remember a side road that close to camp - and the area is overgrown with cottonwood trees, willows, and high brush. I decided against it.
I then went farther south to an area where Google Earth shows three wash channels, including the active one - see the upper center part of the above GE image. The active channel is against the far east wall of the canyon, where there is a raised ledge above the river, and where the main road is shown on the old topo map.
I crossed the creek here, after walking across two sandy, brushy, and tree-infested unused wash channels. I took off my socks, rolled up my pant legs, and walked through the creek (river?) in my field sandals. Later, having not put my socks back on, and having not rolled my pant legs back down, my legs were all scratched up from all the underbrush, and my feet felt a little misused. Boots or tennies would have been a better choice. I should have at least put my socks back on or rolled down the pant legs!
This is what the canyon looks like, looking south from the ledge where the old road used to be, with the train tracks visible on the west side of the canyon. The ledge continues to the south towards the reddish cut behind the large, square boulder on the left. This ledge is not presently accessible by vehicle at all, has been covered by huge boulders that have rolled down from the cliffs above, and is higher above Meadow Valley Wash than our camp was. The cliffs behind the ledge are steeper than any camp cliffs I remember. It's possible, however, that I looked too far to the south and should have walked farther to the north, but I'm not going back anytime soon.
Because of the relative inaccessibility of the east side of the canyon in this area, and because of the dense tree cover along the active channel in general, I saw and heard lots of wildlife, mostly deer and birds.
Walking back to my truck, after crossing Meadow Valley Wash again, I spied this ground squirrel sitting on a boulder of ash-flow tuff.
So, back we go again to what I think is the most likely camp location. I arrived there fairly early in the morning, and this is what our view would have been near the north end of our camp area. Of course the cliffs of poorly to strongly welded ash-flow tuff look familiar - I have now been there twice in the last month!
While the sun rose behind the cliffs, I putzed around here and there, walking back and forth and side to side in the wide area that was our camp, hoping that I might find some historical remains. I found signs of washouts and multiple realignments of the old road. Back in 1978, we had accessed the camp from the south end; the area I’ve homed in on is now accessed from the north end. The southern access route may have been in the location of that unnamed drainage mentioned earlier.
The railroad tracks and railroad bridge are accessible from the north end of camp, so I walked over and took a few pictures.
The view looking north along the tracks toward the reddish hills across the canyon from my first map area seemed vaguely familiar. Possibly I’ve been here before! If not, then I experienced a random feeling of déjà vu, rather than a meaningful one.
Here's the railroad bridge from the north looking south, with our camp area on the left (east) side of the photo.
After spending some time on the tracks, I turned and walked back toward camp...

...to be continued.