Update from the Lake: Wintry Days

During the recent holidays, I was fortunate enough to spend a few days at my favorite northern CA lake. I was unfortunate enough to be "mildly" ill during that time, recovering from an unknown malady that caused upper and lower respiratory distress, inflammation, infection—whatever—something that the local clinic (in my northern NV home area) did not bother to test for, but gave me two anti-inflammatory medicines, Z-pak and prednisone (Z-pak is primarily an anti-biotic, but who knows if I needed one).

While recovering, mostly by relaxing in front of a wood cook stove, I took a few walks down to the local beach area, where spring water enters the lake.

So, let's go for a walk or two.

Christmas day, it was sunny but occasionally foggy.

The lake has a little picnic area, though it was a little cold for just sitting around.

Nice lake view, looking south toward the dam, which is not in view.

A few days later, I made another hike down to the lake. It was a gray, cloudy day. A bright white line on the shore across the lake stood out, creating a little bit of lighting drama.

Down on the rocky shore, water from a spring feeds into the lake, causing a bit of green—probably algae.

A few old stumps from when trees were cut before the reservoir was filled, back in 1914, are scattered about. Most of the present-day lake bottom consisted of meadow and marshland before filling, so tree stumps exist only along some shores.

The last photo looks west, down the rocky shoreline. Rocks consist primarily of rounded and partly rounded basalt cobbles and boulders, derived from the dominant bedrock of the area: basalt not far below the soil of the surrounding forest. Snow line here is below the high water mark, which is probably about 5 feet below the lowest pine tree, just below the upper concrete slab (concrete?). That is, when the lake is full, you can walk along the shore by moving from boulder to boulder, to do a little fishing (although technically, any land above the high water mark outside the beach area is private land).

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: A Hike to Pleistocene Shorelines

On the second day of our road trip (which began here), we left Yerington at a reasonable though not early hour, knowing full well we'd make Beatty by dinner time.

About an hour later, after reaching the Alt-95–95 junction near Schurz and while still approaching Walker Lake, we found an opportunity to stretch our legs and see some geology in the process. We pulled into a side road leading to a gravel pit...and noticed a dirt road heading straight for some terraces, which I think are either tufa-cemented Lake Lahontan shorelines or a fault scarp.

These are some relatively low hills along the range front in the northern Wassuk Range.

But then we found the old highway, which was built above a historic highstand of Walker Lake—one that must have been at about 4060 feet, below Walker Lake's historic highstand that occurred in 1868 and was between 4089 and 4108 feet—and we left the gravel pit, driving north and looking for a dirt road to take us to the range front.

Here we're looking NNE along the old highway, toward some brightly colored, possibly hydrothermally altered rocks in the northern Wassuk Range.

Oh yeah, I'm a sucker for old roads!

We found a dirt road, one heading toward the canyon way to the left (below). Our goal? The Lake Lahontan shorelines and apparent Lake Lahontan high strandline on the rounded hill near the left.

We're looking southwesterly toward the range front.

A zoomed view of what look like shorelines. One range-front fault may be at the base of the slopes at the bottom of the photo. It's unclear to me from Google Earth how faults and shorelines are interacting.

The same range front and shorelines, looking more to the northwest.

Hike, hike, hike...hike, hike, hike. After about 15 minutes, I arrived at a boulder-strewn shoulder just below what I think is the highest Pleistocene shoreline.

We're looking west toward Reese River Canyon (not the same Reese River as in central Nevada). The canyon looks worthy of future explorations.

Now I'm standing on, as near as I can tell, the highest Lake Lahontan shoreline, looking to the south.

What's that across the dry wash?

Zoomed in, we can see a contact: poorly sorted Quaternary deposits above orange-brown hydrothermally altered rocks.

Is that a fault? Is it a sedimentary contact, either related to fan material being deposited along the range front or a wave-planed shore? I can't answer that question without going back to investigate.

MOH went on ahead to the top of the hill.

The highest ancient shoreline (Sehoo age) looked to me to be at the flat area I was standing on, just about at the often reported elevation of 1332 m (4370 feet), although the next slight break in slope—the change in color just below MOH—coincides with a strandline reported elsewhere of 1338-39 m (about 4390-4393 feet).

Looking to the north, we can see this same break in slope (the one I was standing on), with some ancient shorelines below it (especially to the far right). Note the change in color—green above to yellow below.

The yellowish or straw-colored areas along the break in slope are from a closely spaced, dried-out plant, probably Halogeton.

Done with my brief shoreline study, I walk back down to the bouldery shoulder, thinking that I'll eventually examine the intriguing contact across the wash.

First, I'm distracted by the granitic boulders. This one has a nice pegmatite dike cutting across, weathering out in relief.

Then I'm distracted by these little wildflowers growing on, near, and all around the granite boulders.

This is some kind of filaree or storksbill, probably Erodium cicutarium.

A lizard!

A bee!

Perhaps I got carried away (and didn't get to the contact across the wash) because this was the first wildflower spot of the trip.

The bouldery slope seen from below.

I turned my sights to the east, to the western range front of the Gillis Range, where I could see more ancient Lahontan shorelines.

This part of the Gillis Range is called the Agai Pah Hills.

Back at the Jeep, I looked off to the northeast, to a broad, flat area really out in the middle of nowhere.

I decided to test out my 300mm zoom (450mm in 35mm equivalent). The closer, rocky hills don't have a place name on USGS maps. Red Ridge is the name of the lower hills beyond that; the mountains beyond are the Sand Springs Range, south of Fairview Peak.

We continued on our way, southward toward Hawthorne, Mina, Coaldale, Tonopah, and Beatty.

Location map

Related Posts (in order of posting):
Death Valley, "Super" Blooms, Turtlebacks, and Detachments
Death Valley Trip, Part 2: More of the Badwater Turtleback Fault
Death Valley Trip, Part 3: Northward, and over Daylight Pass
Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Wave Clouds beyond the Sierra

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Wave Clouds beyond the Sierra

Our trip began like this, although I didn't get any photos the first day, as we drove south, then east, then south again under fabulous wave clouds. It began with a bit of a rumble: The Jeep went into a noisy, rattling shimmy upon reaching 45 mph, and we had to pull into a tire shop. We got the tires balanced, ate lunch at a local diner—a lunch that included two large, old fashioned chocolate milk shakes—and went on.

We drove south with the high wind aloft evidenced by continuous and co-mingling stacks of wave clouds coming off the long linear range to the west. The waves were stacked almost indefinitely out over the Honey Lake basin and beyond, where they were coalescing into a high, thick stratus layer.

Approaching the first Red Rock turnoff, with Peavine not yet in view, the lenticulars came into their own, at first disintegrating from a near mass into many wispy and shredded lenses, and then turning into three or more parallel roads in the sky: the primary wave off the Sierra Nevada and the Carson Range, the secondary wave perfectly parallel to the first and a little ways off to the east, and the tertiary and quaternary waves ... well, they were there, but they were beginning to merge together, or to merge with the primary and secondary waves off the Virginia Range—close in they would appear as individual sets of stacked waves, farther out they would pile up against each other in a kind of jumbled mass, and even farther still they would metamorphose into a fluffy, wavy blanket.

The way it looked, sans color, when we began our trip down to Death Valley, looking south near Reno or Carson, 27Feb2016.

A couple times, as we drove south and then east, I reached a state of mind that I first noticed a long time ago when flying in some airplane: In this case, sitting in a Jeep while effortlessly driving, I seemed to be standing still while the mountains, clouds, roadcuts, and other drivers moved—instead—around me, as though I was in the middle of some 3-dimensional movie with the props being rapidly changed for my benefit. When I feel this way in an airliner, it seems as though I'm not going anywhere; instead, I'm just in some giant, crowded box, and people outside, who I can't see, are somehow shaking the box to simulate vibrations and turbulence, while they also somehow roll a scenery tape by my window. Before I got on the plane, the props (buildings, streets, people, everything) made the place look like Reno; by the time I got off, all the props had been changed to make it look like Alaska (they changed the buildings, streets, and people, and added steeper mountains and maybe some snow).

At Dayton, we drove under the secondary wave off the Carson Range, which was now a vivid, grayed yellow, almost the color I associate with incipient funnel clouds.

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The cloud overhead was colored something like this.

A few tiny sprinkles hit the windshield of the Jeep, barely dusting it. The stacked lenticulars to the southeast, out over the Pine Nuts and beyond the river route to Ft. Churchill and Weeks, turned bright golden yellow, then faded to soft peach mixed with salmon, then faded even more to a soft pink. The distant hills past Talapoosa turned bright pink, lit by the last bit of alpenglow.

The river route from Dayton to Weeks (Weeks is the spot where the Carson meets Alt-95). The map is courtesy USGS. We didn't take the route, though it can be a nice drive. It can also be long and washboardy and is best driven during the day (unless you know the road).

Dark colors took over the skies as we turned SE onto the Ramsey-Weeks cutoff, and darkness set in. We drove into headlights, coming finally to a town we hadn't intended to stay in (we thought we would reach Tonopah the first night, but our delay at the tire shop changed our expectations). We had an average Mexican dinner, accompanied by exceptionally hot salsa and lackluster margaritas. We found a nice, cheap room and settled in for the night.

You can see the first part of our trip on this map, although the default view will change with more recent posts, so you might have to page around to find the first, northern leg. The two photos were taken at Honey Lake rest stop on 3Mar2016.

Related Posts (in order of posting):
Death Valley, "Super" Blooms, Turtlebacks, and Detachments
Death Valley Trip, Part 2: More of the Badwater Turtleback Fault
Death Valley Trip, Part 3: Northward, and over Daylight Pass

My "New" Toy

Yes, that's an 18-200 mm zoom.

This isn't really a new camera, but it's new to me. It's old, probably from 2006 or 2007. I inherited it from Alaska Al. You saw some of my first photos from this DSLR a couple weeks ago.

I struggle some with accurate color balance when posting on the web. Cameras in general don't shoot accurate color by themselves, hence enhancement or editing. Hence white and gray cards, e.g., this one. Maybe I'll get one. (Any white balance setting on a digital camera is a type of programming—except, perhaps, the PRE or custom setting. Any choice you make is, imo, a type of editing.)

So far with this camera, I've been using auto white balance (AWB), although I know the camera will shoot warm under indoor lighting, and so it will usually require a change to tungsten or something else when indoors. With AWB, the color on the LCD screen has, so far, fairly well matched the color of what I see when shooting, or maybe it's too reddish or bluish on occasion. Of course, when using a DSLR one can't actually see anything on the LCD screen until after taking a shot, because the process of DSLR is different, and one looks into the viewfinder to see exactly what the camera is seeing.

These first pictures below were taken from 395 north of Reno on a fairly gray day. I've enhanced the photos such that they look to me the way they looked on the LCD screen, although they are all probably off, in color, by a hair. I think the next picture could be slightly yellower, but my opinion of it seems to vary depending on what I looked at last.

Sunlight hitting the west part of Seven Lakes Mountain, the part that's in California.

The next photo was shot from a moving vehicle with ISO 800 (not really fast enough for the conditions) at 200 mm zoom (35mm equivalent of 300mm). It was slightly unsharp, though not from the motion; I've since modified the D80's sharpness settings. I've cropped the photo slightly to suit my idea of best composition (hence, it's been enlarged very slightly).

Some rocky crags on Petersen Mountain (MyTopo location).

Petersen Mountain, on the crest of the range not far to the right of the photo, is the site of active quartz crystal mining.

Petersen Mountain from a little farther south.

The photo was taken from about here (Google Maps location), looking southeast toward the high point of the Petersen Mountain (range): Petersen Mountain (summit).

And here's a shot of one of the northern peaks on Peavine, looking southeast from about the stateline near Bordertown.

The camera shows quite a bit of vignetting at 200 mm.

I have, in the meantime, taken a lot of nice photos, particularly some zoomed-in photos of birds. But I'm still figuring out the many settings and possibilities, and am finding the color a little odd in shadowy settings.

Aerial Views of Two Northwest Volcanoes

My first view of Mt. Rainier out the window on New Year's Day was quite colorful, but the high-order rainbow effect of alternating pinks and greens was due to refraction, from shooting sideways through the Bombadier Q400's window toward the front of the plane.

I waited until Rainier moved fully into view for the next shot:

Photo looking almost due east.

The high peak on the left is Liberty Cap, at 14,112 feet (4301 m); the peak on the right is Point Success, at 14,158 feet (4315 m). The high point of the entire mountain, in the center and back behind the other two, is Columbia Crest, coming in at 14,411 feet (4392 m).

In the view above, we're looking at the head of the South Fork of the Mowich River just left of center in the foreground. The small ice field above and left of the river head is Edmunds Glacier. The shadowed icy mass to the left of Edmunds is the North Mowich Glacier, which is above the North Fork of the Mowich River (mostly out of view).

A radial dike runs from between the two closer and less elevated peaks to the lower right, into what is the headwaters of the North Puyallup River. The landform formed by the radial dike is known as Puyallup Cleaver.

Photo looking a little east of northeast.

Here we're looking almost straight up the andesitic dike that forms Puyallup Cleaver. This dike fed lavas that erupted between 280 and 190 ka (Pringle, 2008). The Puyallup Glacier is to the left (north) of the dike; the Tahoma Glacier is to the right (south). The steep headwall above Puyallup Glacier is called Sunset Ampitheater. Ice in Sunset Ampitheater spills (or flows) into both the Puyallup and the North Mowich Glaciers.

I was on the wrong side of the plane to see Mt. St. Helens, but had this great view of Mt. Adams as the sun went down and the light got pink. Notice the reddish irridescent lenticular cloud off to the side.

Mt. Adams looking almost due east.

Too bad I hadn't thought about my new camera on the Alaska-SeaTac leg of the flight! For some reason, I didn't think about it, and hence only got some not-so-great phone photos.

El Niño Near Long Valley Creek, Lassen County, CA

I've got a few more pictures from that rainy May day, the 21st, when MOH and I were on what was really the first leg of a trip to Colorado and back.

A downpour over unnamed hills just off the north end of the Bald Mountain Range and just south of Beckwourth Pass. Photo taken May 21st, 12:44 pm.

Looking up Dinwiddie Arm (of Long Valley Creek?) into the area of Roberts and Coulee Canyons. Mount Ina Coolbrith, with summit at 8051 ft (2454 m), is the long sloping mountain in the mist; Little Haskell Peak, at 6135 ft (1870 m), is the dark hill on the far left.

More hills in the foreground, more peaks of the Bald Mountain Range in the background, as the downpour continues.

Note in these pictures how green everything already was! It's been a green spring because of the unusually rainy May, though I haven't noticed any particularly unusual areas of high wildflower density. It is starting to brown up now, with the halogeton and tansy mustard being the last to fade to brown, although bushes such as sagebrush, rabbit brush, and fourwing saltbush are still plenty green.

These particular photos are all from Long Valley in Lassen County, and they were taken from the south-bound lanes of Highway 395 between Hallelujah Junction, CA, and Border Town, NV.

Related Posts:
El Niño at Honey Lake
The Beginning of an El Niño Trip: North-Central and Western Nevada

Circle 'Round the Sun in Water Canyon

Yesterday, when out hiking in nearby Water Canyon (before the Super Bowl), MOH and I slowly (at least for me) made our way up a variably steep, grassy to rocky hillside until we came to a large rib of quartzite. While standing there admiring the many geological and other features of the rib (including quartz veins, fractures and joints, bright greenish yellow lichen patches, and packrat middens), I noticed that a nice circle (22° halo) had formed around the sun. I moved into position behind the towering quartzite rib and shot a picture or two. The best one (which is enhanced to match the way it looked on the camera, which is the way it looked IRL except for the high contrast or excessive darkness of the foreground, where my eyes could see better than the camera) is shown above. You can also see just a bit of the bright greenish yellow lichen on the quartzite, barely shining through the camera-darkened foreground.

The lichen, also with a more common dark gray to black or dark brown variety and a pale green variety, can be seen better in this photo showing the same quartzite outcrop, although here I've moved over a little to the right to center the photo on a tall, narrow cleft formed along a couple parallel fractures or joints, possibly a small fault zone.

I immediately walked into the fracture so I could turn around and take this picture looking back to the north. The white bands in the center of the brownish quartzite, slanting shallowly to moderately to the right, are several of a complicated quartz vein set that are no doubt saying something about the stress regime during the time of their formation.