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)

From the Road: Talus Stripes and Shorelines along the Truckee River

Talus, shorelines, and fall colors.

It was a late fall day, and I stopped along Route 447 to see if I could get close to some of the brilliantly colored trees along the Truckee River a few miles north of Wadsworth. I didn't end up finding a good spot for pics of fall colors—other than maybe this one taken down near the Numana Hatchery—but I did find lots of wonderful talus stripes and some Lake Lahontan shorelines.

At two stops a little farther to the north, at and near the junction of 447 with Chicken Road and at the Historic Marker 448 pullout, I grabbed a hodgepodge of photos.

Looking SSE from the historic marker pullout.

These two photos look south-southeastward along the Truckee River toward distant Fernley. A good portion of the river in this area runs parallel or sub-parallel to Walker Lane strike-slip faults. Wadsworth Amphitheater, which shows up in the Google Earth images we'll see in a minute, is not visible from any of our photo sites; it's an amphitheater-shaped topographic feature cut into Lake Lahontan sediments right along the east bank of the Truckee, beyond the dark basaltic hills on the right side of these two photos (east side of the Truckee).

I love the lone Cottonwood in this photo.

I went ahead and drew a few lines on Google Earth, then I rotated the resulting images to two different orientations so we could see a little more of the terrain. Be sure to check the north arrow in the upper right! The linears I drew are parallel or sub-parallel to the trend of the Walker Lane. You might be able to pick out a few more in the images (or go to Google Earth and looking around a bit).

The Walker Lane—on Google Earth (G.E.)and on other aerial representations such as air photos—shows up best at very small scales; that is, if we zoom way out and observe the area from way above, we can see the trend of the Walker Lane better than if we zoom way in, like we've done here. Nevertheless, individual strike-slip faults have been identified throughout the Walker Lane, and a few of these occur right in this area.

The A is centered on Wadsworth Amphitheater. The purple camera icon shows the location of the first photo.

The next G.E. image zooms in to the area we can see in the photos. I've got all three photo locations turned on, the A for Wadsworth Amphitheater, and my drawn-in linears. These linears aren't necessarily faults, although I'm pretty sure the one on the far left is. Unfortunately, because I currently have a very lousy internet setup (thanks Frontier!), I can't load very many research web pages. Google works well—and Blogger is a Google product—so I can blog even with 25 to 100% packet loss (it's 50% this very moment). And because Google Earth is a Google product, it's working for me also! (But I can't routinely access my non-Google email.)

Back to the faults and linears. I do know from personal experience that Walker Lane structures pass through the Lake Lahontan sediments in the area where the Truckee is running in a particularly linear fashion. I know this from some work I did a long time ago with J.O. Davis, who was studying Lake Lahontan and using tephra beds to date various aspects of the stratigraphy. The two linears or faults in the lower right of the image cross through the area where I've seen older Lake Lahontan sediments faulted and highly contorted by the major structures that pass through the area. I can't say that my particular linears are right on the major structures, and I can see other possible lineaments.

UPDATE 3Feb2017: I now have good internet back, and I've been able to compare my "map" to a geologic map of the area (Bell, Garside, and House, 2005). My linear passing through the hatchery location (below) is spot on for their most prominent fault, which was mapped as a dominantly extensional fault.

A zoomed in G.E. view of the area.

Not sure why, but I prefer to spell amphitheater with an "re" at the end: amphitheatre. I also have a hard time sticking the first "h" into the word!

I sure wish Frontier was a better internet service provider! (I never had this kind of semi-routine trouble with AT&T in eastern and northern Nevada; their every-day speeds were faster, and service was (generally) provided more quickly.

Back to the photos! 😊

Horizontal Lahontan shorelines and vertical basaltic talus stripes.

Some of the same talus stripes in Google Earth.

This photo shows a juxtaposition of talus stripes, faint shorelines, and layered Lahontan sediments.

On this trip, I focused mostly on trying to get good photos of the talus, because that's really what caught my eye. I later noticed that a few shots showed the Lake Lahontan sediments fairly well.

White, gray, greenish gray, and pinkish layers of the Eetza Alloformation.

While driving through the area, I'd been assuming that the prominently exposed white units were part of the Sehoo Alloformation. I was wrong! The Sehoo is barely identifiable in this zoomed in photo, and it's the older Eetza that is most conspicuous. In fact, the Sehoo here is mapped as gravelly beach deposits, so it mostly comprises the dark gray or brownish gray layered deposits above the whitish units.

Note: I usually use "formation" when talking about the subdivisions within the Lake Lahontan section, but "alloformation" is technically correct. In explanation, Bell et al (2005) say this, "Lake Lahontan and related subaerial deposits were considered lithostratigraphic units in the early studies of Morrison and were designated as formations. With the revision of the North American Stratigraphic Code in 1983, new allostratigraphic and pedostratigraphic unit definitions were added which allowed the definition of time-transgressive, lithology-independent rock units and soils."

Qsm = middle member of the Sehoo Alloformation; Qe = Eetza Alloformation.

After taking all these photos, it was time to move on, so I looked to the north, in the direction I'd be heading.

What I saw was more talus, more shorelines, and more Lahontan sediments. (And some fall colors.)

Selected Reference:
Bell, J.W., Garside, L.J., and House, P.K., 2005, Geologic map of the Wadsworth Quadrangle, Washoe County, Nevada: Nevada Bur Mines and Geology Map 153.