#fieldworkfail BINGO

This space has been fairly quiet this year, and while I'd like to blame my lack of posting on work, the truth is that most of the blame falls on ye olde personal life, which has been in a dumpster since early November. But rather than going into the sordid details here, I'm going to post on something that was big on Twitter a couple months ago, thereby continuing my present trend of running behind (on the blog — thankfully not elsewhere).

Yes, that's it: #fieldworkfail BINGO. I present an unadorned, unplayed BINGO card:

It was Kat Black who presented this Bingo card to fieldwork-Twitter (largely but not entirely composed of biologists and geologists of various flavors), back on the 30th of March. Most of the entire ensuing Twitter convo can be read here (though I don't know how long Twitter-search keeps things available, so maybe the link will fail in the future).

Thinking about my field work history in some detail, I created this BINGO card from my experiences. As you can see, I did get a BINGO. Without the free space in the middle, though, I wouldn't have made it.

By way of a little explanation, I've added a few details in the next version of the same Bingo card:

You might notice that I replaced "Animal attack" with "Plant attack" and added an extra mark. While I've been stared at closely by 3 to 4 coyotes at once and also by a protective stallion once or twice —  the former causing me to unnecessarily grab my rock hammer and the latter causing me to give up on that canyon for that day —  I've never been attacked. I have, however, been mercilessly attacked by wild cholla balls, which definitely have a mind of their own and can be quite persistent in trying to attach themselves to parts of your body, especially feet and legs.

(I've had a few close encounters with wild cats — mountain lions, bobcats, and a possible jaguar — and I've come closer than I prefer to snakes several times, and closer than they prefer judging by their rattles or swift slitherings away from me — but these were merely close encounters, with none of them resulting in anything resembling an attack.)

In my line of work, especially when doing mineral exploration recon, a moderately routine hazard not listed would be getting shot at or being run off a property with a gun, which has happened to me once (American Girl), maybe twice or thrice —  although the second time was unclear and so probably doesn't count (Old Woman Mountains), and the third time was merely a threat without any visible gun brandishment (Tumco). In addition, there can be various helicopter-related hazards, the least hazardous of which might be being left out by the helicopter pilot, who for various reasons, including forgetting part of the crew (me!), might not pick you up —  a story that was told in brief here.

Close Encounters: Coyote on the Summit; Coyotes in a Wash

Coyote appears near the top of the summit.

I have to admit, I rarely have had a camera handy when I've come close to coyotes out in the field—or, rather, when they have come close to me. And I didn't have one this time, either: these are MOH's pictures of one healthy-looking coyote near the top of our current hiking hill in the Sonoma Range.

Coyote moves on down the ridgeline.

Most of the times I've seen coyotes up close and personal, they have come to investigate me rather than the other way around. Once, I looked up from taking a stream sediment sample in the middle of nowhere somewhere north or northeast of Hot Creek Canyon in south-central Nevada, and three coyotes were standing 20 feet from me across the dry wash, staring at me. Maybe they were wondering what I was doing out there, as I sometimes did when the temperatures approached or exceeded 100° F. All my stuff was in the shade of a fairly tall tree (by Nevada standards, that's any tree you can't jump over). The coyotes were just barely out of the bushes and small trees on the other side of the wash.

I stared back at them. We held a mutual staring contest while I considered whether they were dangerous. Were they rabid? No, they looked plenty healthy, of average size. Two may have been smaller than the one, possibly it was a small family or pack. Were they considering me as a possible dinner? I have no idea, but I considered my options, then carefully bent over and grabbed my two and a half pound sledge, which was leaning against my pack.

They still hadn't moved. I moved the hammer into a more threatening position and walked toward them. As I stepped from the shade into the sun, they quickly disappeared into the brush. I never saw them again, but as I walked down the wash toward my helicopter pick-up point awaiting me at the end of the day, I wondered whether they had followed me, and I turned around to look back more than once.

Left Behind: Pink Point

It's rare that I haven't brought too much back from the field, rather than too little, so I had to think hard about the question for this month's Accretionary Wedge:

What do you regret leaving behind at a geological locality?

and I'm not sure that what and where I left this one thing qualifies as terribly geological.

One day, while in the middle of our 1978 helicopter camp in Hot Creek Canyon (camp #3, not yet blogged), I was let off by the helicopter in the early morning on the top of a drainage — a fairly typical thing for days when the helicopter was in camp. That particular morning, there was no good place near the top of the drainage to be let out, and so the pilot put one skid on a rock outcrop jutting 10 or 20 feet up in the air, a rocky mass all surrounded by dense juniper and piñon. He told me to hop out on the downhill side. (We hadn't really gotten any hover-exit training the way Indiana Meg did; our pilot seemingly expected us to know everything he learned over his many years in Vietnam and Alaska.)

I looked, and sure enough it was somehow possible; after I threw my pack into the brush below me, I managed to get myself onto the skid. Maybe it was only 5 feet down, but it was the hairiest "landing" save one other that I can recall.

The rest of the day was somewhat standard save for three things.

(1) I found a large pink projectile point in the middle of the drainage I was walking down, a drainage that had obviously seen some flooding in the last 1 to 5 years. The point was possibly made of Ivanhoe "chert" (more precisely opalite or silicified tuff) from the Tosawihi Quarries of northern Nevada, a large series of rock quarries made by ancient to nearly present-day native Americans in the Ivanhoe mercury-gold district north of Battle Mountain. I had been trained by my archaeological contacts to leave things like this in place, but I debated a long time before complying and moving downstream. GPS didn't exist back then, so I carefully spotted the location on my 7.5' topo map, planning to report the location later to the NAS or BLM. The problem with this approach is that the point was an anomaly: it was probably washed downstream in the most recent flash flood and would probably end up being buried by the next. I should have picked it up, marked the location on the map, and turned it in to a museum or some other appropriate outfit.

That's the thing I regret leaving in the field.

(2) A second fairly unusual thing happened that day when I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake. It was by no means the first rattler I'd seen that summer, but it was the closest I had come to one without being warned. I was walking rather quickly downhill through some trees, having bypassed part of the drainage because of dense vegetation. I stepped, and in mid-step I saw the rattlesnake just as it saw me. I sidled rapidly to the right while it slithered rapidly to the left. It had absolutely no interest in making a stand, which is what I've found to be the case in most of my rattlesnake encounters. Needless to say my adrenalin shot up.

(3) Later that day, after having walked and sampled the entire drainage down to the range front, I picked out a likely helicopter landing spot on the upper part of the alluvial fan. The sun was hot. The willows, or some other large, clumpy masses of sticks with minimal leaves, were not casting any shadows worth using, and trees were lacking. I took my flannel shirt (worn in early morning when the temperatures were sometimes chilly) out of my backpack, placed it half over a sagebrush and half over my head and face, and lay down under the shade I had just created.

I think that the only reason I recall the last bit is because of the three earlier unusual events and because it was possibly the first time I created shade in the desert that way. The trunk of a juniper tree would have been most welcome.

---

For the record, I also regret leaving behind one or two boxes of jasperoid from my thesis area in the yard or shed of a house I moved away from in 1979 or 1980. As far as I know, samples of that jasperoid no longer exist, certainly there are no more outcrops of it.

Related Posts:
A Few Rules of the Desert
The Caliente Series & Caliente Camp Series

Backroads: The Lower Part of Ophir Canyon, central Nevada

MOH and I began our recent trip up and over Ophir Summit by turning off Highway 50 onto old Highway 8A, now known as S.R. 376. We were headed west, toward Middlegate, we had my truck and not the Prius, and we had at least a half day to spare. Additionally, the weather was clear with no rain or snow expected. We’d have to see about snow on the high passes when we got there. Austin Summit was clear, the pass between Kingston Canyon and Big Creek looked clear, and some north slopes above 9500 feet had light snow left from a week or two prior.

We drove south into Big Smoky Valley, down 8A's long straight stretch, into Nye County, past the first curve in the road, and then past at least two more curves, until we finally saw the sign for Ophir Canyon about 34 miles south of U.S. 50.
I've been thinking about Ophir Canyon for a long time, perhaps since the first time I went up that road 32 years ago this month in October, 1978. That was the day after our newbie helicopter pilot forgot to pick me up—we were camped on Bowman Creek while mapping the Northumberland caldera. Driving up Ophir Canyon was our way of avoiding flying with that pilot ever again (for other reasons besides being left out all night).

Ophir Canyon, above, begins at its partly-in-shadow mouth on the left side of the photo, then goes through steep and rocky terrain to the summit in the far background, the sloping saddle left of the far peaks, also on the left side of the photo. That’s a climb from about 6250 feet at the range front to 10,109 at Ophir Summit. The lowest point on the Big Smoky Valley basin floor is at about 5450 feet.
I’ve long remembered the Ophir Canyon road as steep, rocky, and overhung where the road is cut into the hillside. It has, however, been my experience over these many years that most roads improve with time: my memory of roads traveled during my first years out in the desert has exaggerated any steepness and rockiness, and has generally made the roads worse than they really were. I was more impressed with these early roads, having fewer extreme roads to compare them to, and my 4WD driving skills have improved.

It's possible that I’ve been up the Ophir Canyon road once or twice since my initial encounter with it in 1978—but I don't clearly remember those trips, if they existed, and I do remember that first time, it being so intricately associated with unexpectedly staying out one cold October night.

So, with all these considerations, I was expecting the road to be less difficult than I remembered, less intense, less steep and rocky: a relative walk in the park. (It wasn’t less of anything.)
When we drove up to the mouth of Ophir Canyon, I immediately noticed that two signs were missing, signs I’d photographed during my earlier visit in October, 2008. You can see the post for the second sign behind a bush on the right side of the road, just where it narrows down in preparation for dropping into the canyon. I couldn’t recall what the missing signs said. (The first missing sign was shown on my last blog post.)

The second missing sign (left, photo from 2008) said, “Warning: Flash Flood Area.” Fortunately, there were only a few wisps of high cirrus scattered in the visible part of the western sky. The lower part of the sign said, and may still say, no cars, no 2WD trucks, and jeeps with tops down not recommended. One spot the size of a warning sticker is blank, as though some other warning is missing—perhaps one that says no long-bed 4WD trucks.

I’d have to agree with the warnings on this sign, and with the earlier sign, "Narrow Steep Road." Narrow: yes. Steep: yes. Road: maybe. Jeep trail would be a more accurate description of most of the road through Ophir Canyon, and on the South Toiyabe Peak, Nevada, 7.5 minute topo map, the road up Ophir Canyon is marked as a jeep trail, rather than a double-dashed dirt road, from about 1.5 miles into the canyon to within a mile of the summit. (Google Maps route through Ophir Canyon.)
Much of the Ophir Canyon road is overhung by alders, willows, and other road-encroaching brush. That’s why you shouldn’t go up in a topless jeep.

The lower part of the road requires crossing Ophir Creek about seventy-million times: six crossings are shown on old and new maps between the canyon mouth and the ghost town of Ophir, with most crossings being steep going into the creek and steep coming out. Crossings are usually narrowed and partially obscurred by willows and other brushy trees, and rocks are often scattered randomly here and there—the kind of rocks you don't want to hit with your transfer case, tie rods, or differentials, the kind of rocks you can't really see once past a certain point because they are hidden by the hood of your truck.
This is the best picture we got of a creek crossing—it’s not one of the rockiest or nastiest crossings; it’s probably the first. All creek crossings were successfully excecuted without scraping rocks even though my half-ton Chevy pickup truck has stock tires, tires that really should be one size taller for this kind of backcountry travel. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]
The lower part of the road requires constant rock watching and dodging, and I managed to hit fairly good once, somewhere near the center of my truck, possibly on the transfer case bash plate. While driving, you need a good memory for rock placement, otherwise it seems as though they move between the time you last saw them—the time when you made the decision to ease by or over on the right or left—and the time when they disappeared from view behind the hood. It probably doesn't help being short while driving through these kind of rocks. But really, the thing that would be best would be one tire size taller—or a shorter wheelbase. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]

We didn't get any pictures of the really rocky parts of the road. These parts were too attention demanding for me to feel comfortable stopping. I had the truck in Low Range most of the time because of the steep rockiness. I used low low on many occasions.
Here's a nice view of Mt. Jefferson, third highest peak in Nevada, taken on the uphill side of one of the creek crossings. All creek crossings had little pullouts on one side or the other, pullouts that allowed stopping and pulling off the road in case other traffic was passing by. Fortunately, we saw no one. The off chance of meeting someone coming down the hill while we were going up kept me quite vigilant, even though rules say the driver going uphill has the right of way. [Photo © 2010 by MOH.]

There are really no turnarounds in this lower part of the canyon, although it's possible that the little pullouts at each creek crossing might have allowed for very tight, multi-point turning to go back downhill. At one point (the second, third, or fourth crossing), I considered turning back, not remembering that the road had so many crossings, was so tight and overgrown, and was so rocky and steep, and because it was taking much longer than planned and the sun was getting lower and lower. I'm not sure if turning around would have been possible in a full-length pickup—this is where having a real jeep would have been ideal. I suspect that a jeep—or anything with a shorter wheelbase than my truck—would have been able to turn around.
The fall colors, seen in an in-your-face sort of way at times, were out in full force in the lower part of the canyon.
Then, about 30 minutes after entering the canyon mouth—30 minutes of not-quite knuckle-biting concentration—we arrived at a nice wide spot in the canyon, a wide spot where the old-timers built the town of Ophir. This location was chosen partly because of its proximity to the old silver workings, and partly—no doubt—because the canyon is fairly wide and relatively flat, level ground being a commondity in short supply. One could turn around at Ophir, and I suspect that many people have.

Back in '78, it's entirely possible that we took a side cut instead of driving most of the lower canyon, a narrow side road which goes up to some of the canyon-mouth workings, and which avoids the many creek crossings in the lower canyon. That road would have come back into the canyon just below the town of Ophir. I have no idea what the side road is like today, though it's shown as a jeep trail on the old map (MSRMaps).

So much for the first part of the canyon—the passable part.

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.

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: 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!

Our Camp in Meadow Valley Wash

While out and about on that recent trip I mentioned in an earlier post, I hunted and searched for the site of a long-ago helicopter camp in the Rainbow Canyon part of Meadow Valley Wash south of Caliente, Nevada. The hunting and searching was conducted through the window of a Prius, while the Prius driver dodged small and large holes in the road, skirted undercut edges of pavement where the river had nearly wiped out the road in the 2005 flood, and made seemingly endless passages back and forth from pavement to dirt and dirt to pavement, especially in narrow parts of the road that are now essentially one laned.

Pavement fragments from the originally two-laned road now in flood deposits on the side of the road.

A narrow part of the road in the gorge or narrows part of the canyon north of Elgin. Lower steep cliffs are in strongly welded ash-flow tuff.

Caliente camp, looking north up Rainbow Canyon.

Caliente camp - which I think I found, see this MSRMaps map location - was the site of our first base of operation in the summer of 1978. That first year - the first year of two years of helicopter-supported uranium recon - we had two camp groups of four summer geologists each, and the group I was in camped in four locations: Caliente, Deer Lodge, Hot Creek, and Bowman Creek.

The camps were helicopter camps in the sense that we used helicopters for airborne radiometric surveys and to get to our remote field locations. All camps were accessible by 4-wheel-drive. Two of our camps, Hot Creek and Bowman Creek, were along or below creeks with usable running water; two, Caliente and Deer Lodge, were not, and for those we hauled water in large tanks that fit in the back of our half-ton and 3/4-ton pickup trucks. I'd call the usable water "potable," but that implies that it was good enough for drinking without any treatment, and almost all our water was treated with the addition of chlorine bleach.

Our main jobs, as young and budding geologists, were collecting stream sediment samples, taking scintillometer readings, making sketch maps of the drainages we traversed, and mapping occasional areas of interest, over which we had staked claims. Our more detailed maps, still considered recon maps, were at a scale of 1:24,000.

The view from my tent door looked something like this - provided that I really found the right location after 30-plus years of floods.

Camp sat at the base of a 1000-foot-high cliff on an alluvial ledge perched over the flowing water of Meadow Valley Wash. Our camp equipment - tents, trucks, trailers, shower, and outhouse - were scattered amongst the cottonwood trees, facing toward the cliff and away from the paved road, the train tracks, the creek, and the opposite cliff wall, all of which were crammed into that narrow gorge. We were hidden from casual view by cottonwood and willow thickets.

I placed my tent as far away as I could from the center of camp, a center marked by a 55-gallon drum-turned-into-wood-stove, which we used for heat on chilly early mornings before the helicopter took us to the heads of various drainages. Camp was arranged in one long line, from the shower at the north end to my tent at the south. In between were L's trailer, the mess tent, a propane refrigerator, the heating drum, G’s trailer, the cook's tent, L’s tent, G’s tent, two tents for three other early-starting summer geologists, a tent for the helicopter pilot and fuel man, the helicopter, fuel truck, and our brand new 1978 Ford 4-wheel-drive pickups. The outhouse - not in the same line as the main part of camp - was up the hill a ways, amid the privacy of sagebrush and purple sage, it's open door facing toward the nearby cliff.

L and G were our two bosses, the head boss and a sub-boss of the Western District of Northern Exploration Company, NEC, a U.S. branch of a major Canadian mining company (not the real company name). L's trailer was the larger of two field trailers that we used that summer, one trailer for each of our two recon camps. At Caliente camp, we used L's trailer for cooking, storage of supplies and maps, and as a small field office. Each afternoon before dinner, we plotted sample locations, lines from our helicopter-borne radiometric surveys, and any mapping we had completed on clean, unfolded 7.5-minute topographic maps. G's trailer, the smaller of our two trailers, would be used the same way when we later split our gradually growing group into two camps.

The main road, paved and graveled, ducks under the railroad tracks where it leaves the camp area and heads north toward Caliente.

Continued at Caliente Camp: Some more Exploration and Caliente Camp Continued: Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and others.

Bowman Creek: Getting There

Bowman Creek, on the eastern slope of the Toiyabe Range in central Nevada: where we will be going next.

For topo maps of the Bowman Creek area: TerraServer [now MSR Maps] seems to have a glitch between the small-scale map and a more detailed large-scale map, though their interface works fine at all scales if you look at the air-photo, and you can slowly page through the Bowman Creek area in detail from the large-scale map (that is, the intermediate-scale maps supposedly of that area show some other area in central Nevada).
As you drive south on old Highway 8A (S. R. 376), past Kingston Canyon, on your way to Tonopah, long before you come to Ophir Creek you'll see this little green sign marking the main road in to Bowman Creek.
Don't turn there - actually, it's probably a good place to turn, and I'll have to try this road on the north side of the creek some day and see where it goes - instead keep driving a bit until you go past the first turn in one of the longest straight stretches of paved road in Nevada.
Turn here! This is the old road in, the one that goes up the alluvial fan on the south side of the creek to a long-ago campsite.
As I drove up the fan on the road we used back in the summer of 1978, I realized that I'd forgotten about the spring the road went by. If you click to enlarge, you can see that someone has actually built a house on top of the spring mound, a great spot with a great view of Big Smoky Valley. I was a bit surprised by this, and initially took a wrong turn. Stay right, not left, to bypass the house and private plot of land. Follow my tracks, if they are still there.

As you drive up the fan closer to Bowman Creek, the road will go to the base of the spring mound (an eroded fault scarp that forms part of the Toiyabe Range fault zone) and then will turn to the north to go around.
Above, a Google Earth image showing the Toiyabe Range fault zone (yellow lines), the spring with house symbol, Bowman Creek with fish symbol (good trout), and old camp with helicopter symbol (click to enlarge). The old RO Ranch is in the lower right corner.
Because it was fall when I visited, the colors of sagebrush still in bloom, faded rabbitbrush, willows and other water-loving plants were absolutely stunning - so naturally I spent some time taking a few photos. The photo above looks westerly, toward the range front.
This photo looks southwest, and you can see some of the particularly craggy ridges of the Toiyabe Range, which is one of Nevada's highest mountain range.
The big picture, with the house on the spring hidden from view.
After winding around a bit, the road goes past another house that wasn't there back then, and climbs up toward our old campsite. From the spring onward, this road was, in places, steep, rocky, and made of powdery dust that hid all the rocks. Rocks would jump out from beneath the dust and bash unsuspecting transfer cases and differentials. And even if you thought you memorized the locations of the rocks, the truck ahead of you - whoever had passed over the road last - was sure to have knocked a few rocks around or dug out a new one. The more we drove on the road, the worse it got. It's now much better, and maybe doesn't follow the exact same path as it did.
Ah, the creek: cold, running water. You can catch grasshoppers in the tall rushes and grasses on the other side of the creek and bait your hook, if you want. Some of the pools are big enough at least to sit in, and briskly cold for cooling off in summer heat.

Old Junk in Ophir Canyon

Okay, so yesterday's post was really a lead in and good excuse to get to one of exploration's finest perquisites, that of being able to wander around old mining districts and check out everything left behind by previous operations, sometimes going back to the late 1800's.

The miscellaneous piles of junk and still-standing or semi-standing parts of mills and old buildings that I found at the mouth of Ophir Canyon is supposedly part of the old Warfield-Ophir group of claims (any current claims may have different names by now), according to Kleinhampl and Ziony, 1984. The area was worked for tungsten (and molybdenum?) in the past, with the most recent mining efforts possibly being from the mid-1970's, but reports and locations are unclear.

The main part of the Ophir or Twin River silver-tungsten-gold mining district, at the old townsite of Ophir, AKA Toiyabe City, is farther up the canyon and is also well worth visiting.

This appears to be a fly wheel flat pulley, possibly from a crusher. If anyone can identify this equipment more completely, please let me know. I just like the shapes and colors, and didn't spend a lot of time - this time - looking for manufacturers' names and dates.
Yellow-painted meal framework and grating, with pipes and wires.
And old dump truck or haul truck, filled with rock. Is it scheelite ore?
A nicely colorful metal roof on an otherwise falling down shack. Photos of this cabin from about 2002, when it was still standing, along with photos of the entire equipment setup, can be seen here, near the bottom of their webpage.
Falling down cabin, with the metal roof being much sturdier than the rest of the building. A low part of the Toquima Range can be seen in the background: Moore's Creek to Dry Canyon to Road Canyon (or Charnock Pass) - a scenic, volcanic-rock ridden way into Monitor Valley.
Here's a view of the northern and central Northumberland caldera, which erupted the Northumberland Tuff about 32 million years ago. Also seen in the view is the area in which I stayed out all night once, just south (right) of Wildcat Peak, the pointed peak on the horizon, and the tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, a bit to the north (left) of that peak.
Another view of the central part of the Northumberland caldera, through more metal frameworks.
I've retreated now to my parking area, near the creek seen in yesterday's post, giving yet another view of the central and northern part of the Northumberland caldera, across the vast expanse of Big Smoky Valley.
And here, on a ledge where possibly some old buildings once stood, one can see across the valley to the southeast, getting a good view of Mt. Jefferson, which at 11,941 feet is essentially the third highest mountain in Nevada. Mt. Jefferson consists primarily of a huge pile of Tertiary volcanic rocks, mostly moderately to strongly welded ash-flow tuffs, including the tuff of Mt. Jefferson, which erupted from Mt. Jefferson caldera about 26.7 million years ago. Much more detail about the calderas in and around Mt. Jefferson is discussed here.

Mt. Jefferson is a great place to hike up, if you can stand the elevations, and even if you can't. The top, which is not accessible by vehicles, is almost surreal somehow - or maybe I was oxygen starved. It's mostly flat, with little hills of tuff. The Alta Toquima archaeological site sits up there at about 11,000 feet, above tree line.
Driving away from Ophir Canyon, I had a great view of the Round Mountain gold mine to the southwest. Round Mountain has been in operation since the early 1980's 1977.

References:
Kleinhample and Ziony, 1984, Mineral resources of northern Nye County, Nevada, NBMG Bulletin 99B.

McKee, E.H., 1974, Northumberland caldera and Northumberland tuff, in Guidebook to the geology of four Tertiary volcanic centers in central Nevada: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Report 19, p. 35-41.

Thomas, D.H., 1982. The 1981 Alta Toquima Village Project: a preliminary report. Desert Res. Inst. Soc. Sci. Cent. Tech. Rep. 27.