Caliente Camp Part 8: Getting Out of Pennsylvania Canyon

While driving through Pennsylvania Canyon last summer, I was keen to find some really good examples of the soft, loose sand we had gotten stuck in 30+ years ago. Well, guess what? The 2005 flooding of the area, along with whatever else had happened to the wash in 30+ years, had firmed up the roadbed. The worst places were loose but not too loose: though the sand pushed me around some, especially in turns, it would have been difficult to get stuck in 2WD, not that I really tried.

The wide, sandy area that snagged our truck in 1978 looked a lot like the picture below, a picture taken more than 1.5 miles downstream from our getting-stuck site. Back then, the central driving area of the wash was all sand, the soft, sandy area was much wider than our truck tracks, and the sand was free of any stabilizing plants. It was the kind of sand that makes walking uphill difficult, and difficulty in walking- whether uphill or down, whether through mud, snow, or sand - is a good sign that one might need 4WD, not that we stopped and checked.

Pennsylvania Canyon still contains considerable sand, but most of it is peripheral to the active channel (AKA main roadbed) and elevated above it - as in this photo where sand piles can be seen on the right, and sand ledges or partially eroded banks can be seen way to the left (click to enlarge). It looks like flash flooding over the years has removed a lot of sand and caused about two to five feet of downcutting.

*** *** *** *** ***

What would Pete and I do, now that one of our two trucks was stuck in the sand? Well, first off, notice that I said, "one of two." We were lucky enough to have two trucks, and one wasn't stuck! Whew!

Floyd was still in sampling mode and making his way slowly down the wash, so Pete and I set about seeing if we could figure out how to get the two-wheel drive truck upstream through the sand. Pete had a great idea: we would go to the prospect area we had checked out earlier and see if we could find some rope. For some unknown reason, our trucks were not equipped with gear for getting unstuck. Maybe we could scrounge something.

We drove up the side drainage in our good, 4WD truck. All we found around the old mining camp was the spool of copper wire we had already noted, no rope. We debated the options. I felt uncomfortable taking what surely must be someone’s wire. We were, after all, not in any kind of dire straits: we had one perfectly good truck. We could drive it back to camp, get towing gear, and come back for the truck. But we were a little worried about wasting too much time or getting in trouble for getting stuck. We took the wire to use in lieu of a tow rope.

Our first couple attempts at towing the 2WD truck with the 4WD truck using the thick copper wire were pretty unsuccessful - we made a few feet each time before the wire stretched thin and broke. So we backed the good, 4WD truck down the wash until its back bumper was right against the front bumper of the bad, 2WD truck, then wrapped the copper wire tight around both bumpers, around and around several times. With the wire wrapped this way, it held as we made it slowly through the sand, until we were finally on solid ground. We still didn’t know if the crippled truck would make it up that last hill below the distant saddle, but we would have to give it a shot. With me driving one truck and Pete driving the other - the bad truck in the rear in case we had to ditch it - we continued up the main canyon, keeping our eyes open for the still sampling Floyd.

After meeting up with Floyd and helping him finish the sampling of his part of Pennsylvania Canyon, we drove both trucks up and over the saddle, down into the northern drainage, past Tepee Rocks, through Caliente, and back to camp. Stuart had walked into camp by the time we got there. We now had a truck that would not go into four-wheel drive, and the nearest Ford dealer was in Ely, a good two to three hours away. That truck sat in the Ely shop for several weeks before the right part arrived - they kept getting the wrong part from Salt Lake City. And it turned out that Stuart had not been at fault that one day in Kane Springs Valley - one hub had been put together backward at the factory, so repair was covered by warrantee.

A northerly view from below Ella Mountain Lookout, looking toward the next camp area near the Nevada-Utah border.

Related Posts listed at The Caliente and Caliente Camp Series.

Caliente Camp Part 7: Getting Stuck in Pennsylvania Canyon

Shortly after the first truck misadventure of 1978 - with the helicopter still out of commision - four of us took off in two trucks for a kind of piggyback form of recon. From Caliente, we drove east up Clover Creek, entered Barnes Canyon from the north, drove past Tepee Rocks, then eventually crossed over into the south end of the large Ash Canyon drainage at the place I lost my way while driving through last summer. We finally arrived at a well-remembered saddle, the divide between the north-draining Ash Canyon and the the southwest-draining Pennsylvania Canyon.

From the saddle at the north end of the drainage, we looked down Pennsylvania Canyon toward the Meadow Valley Mountains beyond Elgin. We couldn't really see the day’s work laid out in front of us because a bend in the canyon blocked our view, but we could see a long ways.

We dropped Floyd off at the saddle - he would sample his way down Pennsylvania Canyon on foot, about 4 miles of drainage. We then drove down the steep upper part of the canyon in two trucks, into the main part of the canyon, heading toward a juncture where the remaining three of us would split up. This juncture was the turnoff I looked for but didn't find last summer, the place where the main road leaves the canyon. From there, Stuart and I would walk and sample one drainage each; these were between 2 and 3 miles in length and drained toward toward the main road south of camp. Pete would take one truck toward camp, sampling along the way; he would then pick Stuart and I up later in the day. We would leave the second truck in the main wash of Pennsylvania Canyon close to the point where the three of us split up, and Floyd would pick it up and drive it to camp at the end of his day.

On our way down the canyon, the three of us turned up a side canyon to look at some prospects. We dinked around a couple old mining cabins, inspecting them inside and out, a required exploration pastime. One shack showed signs of fairly recent use, signs that were verified by dates on the most recent newspaper and a wall calendar. We took mental note of all the miscellaneous supplies and gear strewn here and there, and found a large spool of shiny-new, thick copper wire. Then we moved on, making our way to the point where we would part ways.

Is it the hill in the foreground, or the hill going out of the next wash?

We left the truck for Floyd in the main wash, that large sandy area in the foreground of the Google Earth image, and then we drove up the side road in the truck Stuart and I had used the day before. Either right at the turn out of the wash or a short way in, we came to a steep hill that the truck couldn't climb. Our driver, Pete, backed down, Stuart and I got out, and Pete tried running the truck at the hill to get up as much speed as possible. The back tires spun: the truck clearly wasn’t in four-wheel drive, even though the transfer case was in 4H and the hubs had been rotated from free to locked. After several attempts and some miscellaneous head-scratching, we finally determined that the driver’s side hub really wasn’t in the locked position; not only that, we couldn't persuade it to go in, even with the judicious use of a rock hammer or two. The truck didn't have operable 4WD.

After we discussed our options, Stuart eagerly went on ahead to traverse and sample his drainage, starting from the bottom of the hill instead of the more convenient, and half-mile-away, top of the hill. Pete and I were left to deal with two trucks, one that had a useful 4WD option, and one that didn't. We turned the funky truck around and started back up the main road in the wide and sandy Pennsylvania Canyon dry wash. Maybe we could trade trucks and leave Floyd with this one; afterall, he wouldn't need 4WD to get back to our starting point at the saddle.

Uh, no. As soon as we got very far into the sand of the sand wash - soft, roiled sand had constituted the road for the last hundred yards at least - we were stuck. Both trucks had come down through the sand just fine. The damaged truck had come down in two-wheel drive without operable four-wheel drive - it would not make the return journey upstream through the sand.

To be continued...

NOTE: Most names in these stories have been changed, on the advice of dubious council consulted friends and colleagues, to protect the innocent other geologists and related field-demented posers.

Caliente Camp: Part 6

Our truck mishaps in the summer of 1978 were fairly rare, but they began while we were still at the Caliente camp. [Caliente Camp series; Caliente Camp Continued: Part 5.] The first incident didn't seem like a big deal. The helicopter was down for a few days after one of our many fuel-filter problems, so we did some ground reconnaissance by truck.

Click image to enlarge.

That day, Stuart and I had driven southwest along the Kane Springs Wash dirt road to take some samples in Kane Springs Valley. We were on dirt roads most of the day, crossing the coalescing alluvial fans coming out of the Delamar Mountains and driving up to the foot of the mountains to take samples.

Stuart drove. We got out at a particularly tough-looking creek crossing to put the hubs in so we would be in four-wheel drive. To put the hubs in, each geologist jumps out quickly while the truck is in neutral with the engine running and the parking brake on and rotates his or her hub from “Free” into “Locked.”

FULL STOP. -- DO NOT TRY THAT AT HOME OR ANYWHERE. -- It is now required that you put the clutch in, brake, put the truck in gear, turn the engine off, put the parking brake on, get out, and immediately chock your tires. Of course, you don't have to get out to put hubs in anymore, unless you have an antiquated or old-fashioned truck. These were the days of manual hubs. Later, with more experience, I would have put the hubs in much earlier, soon after crossing onto dirt, but at the time, we discussed when to put the hubs in at some length - Stuart did not want to put them in early, preferring, I guess, to tough it out.

Click image to enlarge.

So there we were, at our creek crosssing. Maybe we were on this unlikely looking road on our way to Kane Springs. (And maybe we were on some other alluvial fan entirely. Not trying to be vague - I didn't check these roads out, and don't know if I'd recognize the place anyway.) We discussed putting the hubs in, decided to do it, did our routine of getting out and rotating the hubs, and then jumped back in the truck. I thought the truck acted as though it was still in two-wheel drive; Stuart was sure it was in 4WD. As we conversed some more, it became clear that Stuart thought he had memorized the hub rotation direction and had concluded, without looking at the hubs, that his side was already in 4WD.

Later in the day, it became clear that we had driven around for some time with his hub out and mine in, not the way a manual-hub truck is supposed to be operated. As soon as we discovered this error, we made sure the hubs were in identical positions - and because we were nearing the end of the day, we took both hubs out and drove back to camp. Stuart insisted on not reporting this incident - he was sure his mistake was of no import.

That was the first truck mishap, the minor one that occurred in Kane Springs Valley. The next one took place in Pennsylvania Canyon.

To be continued...

NOTE: Most names in these stories have been changed, on the advice of dubious council consulted friends and colleagues, to protect the innocent other geologists and related field-demented posers.

Pennsylvania Canyon: Into the Canyon

After a long hiatus in this continuing story about Caliente, Meadow Valley Wash, and related places [Caliente series], I'm finally getting back to the fork in the road at the base of the Ella Mountain Lookout. Which way will I be going? I'll turn left, into Pennsylvania Canyon on the road with the warning sign that says "Road Damaged Ahead."
When I dropped over the saddle into the Pennsylvania Canyon drainage on the damaged road to Elgin, I finally did feel like I dropped into another world, a world of lower elevation, of rockier, steeper, sandier, and more washed-out roads, but also a world that was partly in another time zone, another dimension. I dropped farther and farther into the past as I went lower and lower into Pennsylvania Canyon.

I descended into some nether world that was neither here nor there, really. The sand wasn't as sandy or as roily from truck traffic as it had been 30+ years before, and the steep upper part of the road was seemingly steeper. The steep part was most assuredly rockier and had seen only minimal maintenance for at least a few years, possibly several.

The hillsides had been burned by fire, probably twice - once in a fairly distant past after my last visit in June, 1978, and again in some more recent time, perhaps during the last decade.

Pennsylvania Canyon hugs the west edge of the Clover Mountains Wilderness Area (did not exist back then) in the upper and lower parts of the canyon.

The trees I didn't recognize at first - the ones in the upper elevations near the lookout and the saddle - were Ponderosa pines. These were growing alongside sagebrush, manzanita, piñon pine, and Gambel oaks. Rabbit brush was growing primarily in the disturbed area on the side of the road.

The road was, indeed, damaged in places. The photo below shows a washed-out section not far below the upper steep area. The dirt and soil are a chocolaty brown color remembered from long ago.

Below the washout shown in the previous photo, the road is primarily in the wash. That washout, and the re-routing of the road into the wash, happened quite a while back judging by tracks and the general state of erosion. The current route occasionally goes onto the mostly eroded old road, which can be seen in the photo above to the right of the wash road. Much of our 1978 travel in this section may have been on the old road; I don't remember any old washouts.

One band of wild horses ran from my truck approach - a caution I haven't seen in our so-called wild bands in more than 20 years, a caution possibly bred of the poor road condition and the apparent lack of much human traffic in the canyon. One pass up or down the road by a 4-wheeler-type ATV created the only recent tracks I could see.

At 12:20, having started into the canyon at 11:15, I came to this washout in the lower canyon - located here, just north of the central 4400 contour, where the section line parallels a side canyon going off to the east - almost three miles south of the sandy turnoff I had been looking for. The turnoff I didn't find - east of hill 5547 and south of a 5200 contour - would have taken me to Elgin on what used to be the main road. There is one fresh ATV track in this washed out part of the canyon.

After duly examining the washout generated by this side canyon, I turned around to head back toward the Ella Mountain Lookout.

At 12:40, I pulled over and had lunch in the middle of the wash, in the shade of a juniper tree.

I came to the steep and rocky part of the road at about 1:35 pm, having once again missed the sandy turnoff from long ago. I didn't get photos of this steep part when going into the canyon: I was too busy looking for potential turnaround points in case the road suddenly dropped off into nothing. After all, it was supposed to be damaged!

- Where was the road damaged? I saw "Road Damaged Ahead" signs on both the northeast entrance near the lookout and the southwest entrance near Elgin. I think the damage was on the section between the canyon and Elgin, beyond the sandy turnoff I didn't find, though maybe the signs referred to the washed out lower canyon. Really, though, the upper section of the road just below the saddle was enough to give me pause when driving into the canyon. I drove cautiously, all the while considering the possibility of having to back up should there be a washout below me. Would there be a turnaround point ahead? A washout? Theoretically one can back out of anything one can get into, but when going downhill, that theory does not always apply. Gravity helps you while going down; it will hinder you if you try to back up. So I was cautious. I went downhill slowly, straining my eyes while trying to see through and around bushes that nearly blocked my view. -

Coming back out - and on the farthest reaches in, almost eight miles from the lookout and about four miles from Elgin - the heat and rocks and endless nature of the canyon defeated me, made me irritable at roads gone bad: roads poorly maintained for lack of required claim assessment work, roads inverted in their nature by being worse in the upper stretches, and better in the lower, than they had been in the past.

And so, feeling defeated, I left - slowly but surely, using 4WD on lengths of road that didn't need more than 2WD in the past, and using 2WD where 4WD had been required. I left, and looking once again back down the canyon from the last saddle overlook, I did see, finally, that maybe I had just left some in-between world, half here and now, half there and then.

As usual, the road back, at least from the lookout to Caliente - those last 25 miles or so - was shorter on the way out than on the way in, though not necessarily smoother.

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

Pennsylvania Canyon: Getting There

I’ve already written a little about trying to get into Pennsylvania Canyon – the site of a long-ago truck mishap – on the first day of my most recent Caliente expedition. I had first tried getting in from Elgin, but only half-heartedly - because I’d never been on that part of the road, because the road looked lousy, and because the sign said “Road Damaged Ahead.” Later that first day, after a few other escapades, I drove part way up the road to the Ella Mountain Lookout, which is the other way in to Pennsylvania Canyon.
On that first day, I made it past Tepee Rocks, to this sign: Ella Mountain Lookout, 10.
And then I went beyond that to this burned area, where I realized the rest of the way would be too long for a late afternoon drive. Ella Mountain Lookout can be seen as a couple tiny-looking towers on the left edge of the photo, on the distant hill between the two charred branches.

The second day, I dedicated myself to getting into Pennsylvania Canyon by way of the Ella Mountain Lookout road. I made it to the Ella Mountain Lookout 10 sign at 9:30, to the burn at 9:40. The roads were long, and the way in was briefly obscured by faulty memory and a lack of good topo maps. About 6 miles in from the sign that said 10 miles, I came to a T in the road - a T I wasn't expecting, a T with no sign. I turned the right way, at first - to the west - but not believing the lookout road could deteriorate so rapidly, I turned around, went back to the T, and drove east.
After going way too many miles the wrong way, going lower and lower in elevation and farther and farther away, I found a place to turn around - lo and behold, one where I could still see the lookout in the distance to the west, one where bands of sage sparrows were chip, chipping and flying from bush to bush.

I turned around at 10:10 am. I went back to the T junction, and kept going west, what had I been thinking!? At that point, the long road got steep and rocky.
I passed the Ella Mountain 3 sign at 10:30 (why hadn't there been a sign at the T, they were everywhere else!), and made it to this rocky turn with a view at 10:40. It was here that I discovered that the rock I’d been bumping my way slowly across was a poorly welded, well-indurated tuff, seen above in the right foreground. I was also reminded of two unexpected trees. See the one on the right, growing on the tuff? That's an oak. What about those tall trees behind it and across the road - aren't they a little tall for piñons?
Yes, it's an oak. The acorns somehow brought back memories of my initial, long-ago surprise at seeing oak trees in Nevada. The tall trees I still didn't recognize.
I’ve now come to a main fork in the road. Ella Mountain is 1 mile to the right, and Elgin - “Road Damaged Ahead" - is 10 miles to the left. The left road is the road into Pennsylvania Canyon. I arrived here at 10:50, and then got underway by 11:15 after taking pictures from the lookout.

Do I seem a little overly time conscious? Well, I was. I hadn't filled the gas tank in Caliente that morning, so I was watching mileage and time carefully so I wouldn't get too far down any one road.

To be continued…

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

Friday Field Photos: Tepee Rocks

More than a month ago, on my Caliente trips, while driving up the washboarded dirt road toward the Ella Mountain Lookout, I came around a corner and spied these unusual rock formations in tuff, formations I had forgotten all about since last seeing them in 1978.
These are the Tepee Rocks, located about 6 miles east-southeast of Caliente. They are a type of rock formation called tent rocks, teepee rocks, or hoodoos, and they have formed here in the tuff of Tepee Rocks (sometimes spelled "tuff of Teepee Rocks"). The tuff of Tepee Rocks is "crystal-poor, poorly welded, low-silica rhyolite ash-flow tuff" with an Ar-Ar age of 17.8 Ma (Rowley et al, 1995). It's about 100 m thick in the Tepee Rocks area.

To get to the Tepee Rocks, you drive east out of Caliente on a mostly dirt and sand road that follows the railroad along Clover Creek (Clover Creek Road). You may not need 4WD, but be prepared for soft sandy areas that appear suddenly and wide creek crossing. Before the Eccles siding, you turn south on the dirt road that goes to Ella Mountain and Fife Flat, among other places.
It can be a bit difficult to get the timing right for best sun-angle on these hoodoos; I made two stabs at it. Morning and afternoon, not too early and not too late, are best.
In this close-up, you can see some holes weathering out in the tuff, forming a small version of what is known as cavernous weathering. Hoodoo formation in general is explained here.
At the Tepee Rocks, the teepees or hoodoos are forming in massive, cavernous-weathering, very light gray to whitish tan tuff below layered, tan to light orange tuff, which may be part of the tuff of Tepee Rocks or may belong to an overlying formation. The layered tuff can be seen in the previous two photos.
A slope just south of the Tepee Rocks shows the massive tuff capped by the upper layered tuff and by overlying talus. Little hoodoos are starting to form as the whitish tan to light gray tuff weathers out from beneath the talus and capping tuff layer.
A few small teepees stick out on the lower part of this slope across the road from the Teepee Rocks. The cliffy formation capping this butte is probably not part of the tuff of Tepee Rocks, based on the description given by Rowley et al (1995).

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.

More Photos of Hoodoos:
Hoodoo, New Mexico at About.com Geology

Time Almost Beyond Imagining: Who Do the Magic that Hoodoo? at Geotripper

Hoodoos Redux: What I'm Reading at Geotripper

Limestone Hoodoos, Bryce Canyon National Park at Rosetta Stones