Looking east across the Great Salt Lake Desert toward Granite Peak from the vicinity of Dead Cedar Wash. March 3, 2010.
The first trip began early in the morning on ALT Highway 93 as I headed north toward Wendover, Nevada. The sun had barely risen, and reflections from the desert were a bright red orange.
The second trip ended with MOH and I driving past the same spot early in the evening of April 3, 2011, almost exactly 13 months later.
Silver Island Mountains and Bonneville Salt Flats. March 3, 2010.
On the first trip, I stopped at the southernmost rest stop near the Salduro siding, where an elevated viewing area provided me this view of the Silver Island Mountains north of the east and westbound lanes of I-80. The Bonneville Salt Flats were full of water when I passed by the first time; they were salty and mostly dry earlier this month, as seen in the first photo of
my last post, and in the zoomed in version below.
Silver Island Mountains and Bonneville Salt Flats. April 3, 2011.
The Silver Island Mountains show some of the lower shorelines of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville: several old beaches near Silver Island Pass are highlighted by early morning shadows on the right; two wave-cut notches are almost hidden in shadow on the left. The snow-capped peaks are probably the Pilot Mountains. March 3, 2010.
The angle's a little different, but that's salt out in front of Tetzlaff Peak, the highest peak in the foreground, and maybe a bit of water or a thin mirage near the far edge of the flats. Those are the same low hills near Silver Island Pass on the right side of the photo, the same Bonneville shorelines and notches cutting the angular hillslopes as in the previous, somewhat zoomed in photo. April 3, 2011.
In March of last year, after leaving the Salduro rest stop and heading toward the SLC airport, I drove by the place where water of the Great Salt Lake was over the road in the spring following or during the El Niño of 1982-1983 (May, 1983). I thought the water looked kind of high, although I'm not well versed in its normal yearly fluctuations. I was about two and a half miles west of Burmeister and the Tooele-Grantsville exit on I-80 (
MSRMaps location), looking toward the Oquirrh Mountains when I took the first picture (above) on March 3, 2010.
Strangely enough, the water once again looked high to me when we passed through early this month, and indeed it was higher: a year and one month after the first trip, spring runoff from the Wasatch Mountains (and other ranges) may have been in full swing. The second photo (above), from April 2, 2011, shows the exact same fence posts as the first, due to extreme luck and clever cropping.
For the first trip I arrived at the SLC airport and went off to Alaska. On the second trip, MOH and I arrived in Ogden and, before re-crossing the desert on our return trip, we visited a brewpub, dinosaur park, and very cool canyon.
The second trip ended with MOH and I driving past the same spot early in the evening of April 3, 2011, almost exactly 13 months later.
The angle's a little different, but that's salt out in front of Tetzlaff Peak, the highest peak in the foreground, and maybe a bit of water or a thin mirage near the far edge of the flats. Those are the same low hills near Silver Island Pass on the right side of the photo, the same Bonneville shorelines and notches cutting the angular hillslopes as in the previous, somewhat zoomed in photo. April 3, 2011.
In March of last year, after leaving the Salduro rest stop and heading toward the SLC airport, I drove by the place where water of the Great Salt Lake was over the road in the spring following or during the El Niño of 1982-1983 (May, 1983). I thought the water looked kind of high, although I'm not well versed in its normal yearly fluctuations. I was about two and a half miles west of Burmeister and the Tooele-Grantsville exit on I-80 (MSRMaps location), looking toward the Oquirrh Mountains when I took the first picture (above) on March 3, 2010.
Strangely enough, the water once again looked high to me when we passed through early this month, and indeed it was higher: a year and one month after the first trip, spring runoff from the Wasatch Mountains (and other ranges) may have been in full swing. The second photo (above), from April 2, 2011, shows the exact same fence posts as the first, due to extreme luck and clever cropping.
I don’t know why I am up so late, but I’m going to have to give it up and get to bed so I can log, log, log tomorrow. Today’s afternoon excursion out to the drill site was brrr-ey cold. It felt so warm stepping outside the office door—the sun was out, bright and shiny, the wind was almost calm with no hint of blowing snow, and so I went to the field without extra layering. I left behind my lined overpants, left my fleece vest rolled up in my pack, and put on knitted wool gloves. It was freezing in the shade of the already-going-down sun: going down behind one of the nearby hills. The wind was blowing moderately, not as strong as it was two days ago, but still, enough to cause one to really think about hypothermia and frost bite and how fast you can get too cold when the wind chill is probably zero or 10 below (Fahrenheit, that is). Maybe I’ll say more about logging, logging, logging later this week (and maybe not).
The lake is lower than it was during the 1983 Cordilleran Section meeting of the GSA, when the lake level rose rapidly, threatening to cover I-80 in a few places. That year, enough water was coming out of the Wasatch via City Creek that a main street in Salt Lake City (State Street) was sandbagged and allowed to become the State Street River. That same year, floods in the Mojave Desert of CA caused numerous road washouts, and mud was unusually common in a few places. Slide Mountain near Reno, NV, slid for the first time in many years. El Niño had struck heavily that year, and water was everywhere.
