Northumberland via old Highway 8A

Before I get very far into this blog post, I have to say that the Blogger interface, with its recent "upgrade," now sucks due to sudden changes in the way the HTML works. First off, the code for each photo is different than it used to be, such that I have to go back to older posts to duplicate spacing at the top, bottom, and left margins. I mean, I guess if I was 100% prolific with HTML, I wouldn't have to do that, but every time they’ve done one of their upgrades, I’ve had to modify the way I enlarge the photos to the right size, and have to recreate or copy the HTML that controls the way my photos display—and quite frankly I do give a damn!

Back to our trip. As I mentioned earlier, it was hot, so I didn't stop very often on my trip down old Highway 8A (now S.R. 305) from Battle Mountain to Highway 50 near Austin, en route to the Northumberland caldera. I did, however, make a point to stop at an old stone house along the Reese River—possibly the original Walters Ranch, though the USGS map shows the ranch down in the green valley closer to the river.

The old place is holding together fairly well, though it looked a little more rundown than the last time I stopped.

A closer view of the entry area, with quite a bit of carved graffiti.

An old rusty stove sits in the ruins of the old stone house, below the caved-in roof and amidst the partly discombobulated walls (stove = dark patch in lower right of photo).

The roof has slumped more than the last time I stopped, which might have been as long ago as 2012. The meadow beyond—the valley of the Reese River between the Ravenswood mountain range on the west and low hills that lie more or less between the Shoshone and Toiyabe Ranges on the east—is often quite green; here it's looking a tad dried out.

At 12:29 pm, toward the end of my little stop, it was 96°F.

A little farther south I drove past the location where FMOH and I canoed meanders of the Reese River back in 2006. This time, the meanders were choked with dark green sedge and the river was too narrow for a canoe. 

My next stop was Austin, for gas. I prefer to be fully fueled when traveling the back roads of Nevada. After fueling up, it was up and over Austin Summit on Highway 50, then up to Bob Scott Summit, where I stopped briefly for a pit stop and to consider Bob Scott as a campsite. But no, I wanted to keep going. Scattered clouds hovered overhead, and a light sprinkle hit the windshield. At 1:20 pm the temp was 84°F.

Beyond Bob Scott, it was downhill to the turn off on old 8A (now S.R. 376) into Big Smoky Valley. I thought about the old camp on Bowman Creek as a possible camping location, but blew that off. I was shortly at the turnoff to Northumberland Canyon.

In this photo, taken just past the turnoff from pavement, Northumberland Canyon is almost 12 miles across Big Smoky Valley as the crow flies. The mountain range that we're looking at, on the east side of the valley, is the Toquima Range; the singular mountain to the right is Mount Jefferson, third most prominent peak in Nevada. I've been to about 11,400 ft near the North Summit. The South Summit reaches 11,941 ft.

I arrived at the western mouth to West Northumberland Canyon at about 2:30 pm and pulled off on a side road where I had a relatively elevated view of Big Smoky Valley and the Toiyabe Range beyond. A low area in the mountain range (just left of center in the photo above) marks the drainage basin of Kingston Creek. The tiny town of Kingston sits on Kingston Creek, right at the range front. Bunker Hill, the rounded peak right of the low spot, reaches 11,473 feet in elevation.

* * * * *

2:45pm: It's now 92°F. I just walked a short ways up the dirt road behind the Jeep, thinking I'd check the road to the range front, but I gave that up for the heat. Instead, I'm sitting next to the Jeep in a lawn chair, enjoying the view. A few clouds overhead look threatening—possible T-storms. I won't cross the flash-flood prone Northumberland Canyon dry wash until...well, hopefully the clouds will dissipate. The crossing right now would be perfectly fine, but if the canyon floods, I'd be stranded on the other side. A long time ago, there was a road across Big Smoky Valley going back to 8A north of Kingston, providing a possible escape route if stranded; I have no idea if that road exists anymore.

There was a huge wipe out of a flash flood in West and East Northumberland Canyons back in 1979. Heavy barite ore from the small mine on the west side of Northumberland Pass was washed down canyon, as was a USFS truck. Fortunately no one was inside the truck.

Back in 1978, in the reddish hills across the dry wash of West Northumberland Canyon (behind the Jeep in the photo above, or somewhere in the low part of the reddish hills in the photo below) I left a standard Estwing rock hammer leaned against an outcrop of tuff as scale for a photo. I've looked for the hammer a couple times, both before and after the mega flash flood of 1979. I suppose it's part of the drainage, downstream somewhere. But who knows? Maybe it's still there, leaning against the outcrop.

The reddish brown tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, 31.4 Ma, overlies whitish volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks that include Ts6, an air-fall tuff related to the tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, and Ts5, 4, and 3—and possibly Ts2 and 1—which are all intracaldera sediments deposited after the partial collapse of the ~32 Ma Northumberland caldera and before deposition of Ts6.

2:53 pm: I've frequented this valley, these parts, since before 1978. In fact, the first time I camped in the area was up on Pete's Summit in 1976, after seeing the Ordovician graptolites in the Vinini Formation while on a grad school field trip. It's my country, I feel, and if I had a house up here on this pediment, I'd sit outside and stare at the basin, the way I did back in 1979-81 when the company put me up in a small cabin above Kingston. There's usually no no one around for miles, for at least ten to fifteen miles. The view is awesome.

It's 4:27 pm now, and I've crossed the wash and moved to the site we used to call the Hot Spot, so named for it's anomalous gamma radiation and U3O8 minerals. From the camp I've chosen, I can look northwest toward Kingston Canyon, east into Hoodoo Canyon, and south toward Northumberland Canyon. The wind is coming in from the northwest, and it's 91° F in my little camp. It's five hours to sunset according to the hand method, though at five hours away, the method is grossly inaccurate.

4:51 pm: I'm cracking an All Day IPA. Until the sun is lower, I won't set up camp more than I have already, which is only to remove the ice boxes, the water cooler, and folding chair. I'm somewhat low on ice, and the beer isn't the coldest beer in the world, but it's refreshing. And now the sun has come out from behind those formerly threatening clouds, so I've moved into the shade of the Jeep. A tree would be nice!

* * * * *

As the sun got lower, I drank my cool beers and had a minimalist dinner of chips and dip. The sun finally went behind the clouds hovering over the Toiyabe Range. I watched the sunset colors change, took many photos, marveled at the yellow-orange crepuscular rays, took more photos, and basked in the quietude of the area.

Virga and a cliff of Northumberland Tuff glow reddish orange.

I had another beer or two and took more photos. At some point, the sun went down, but with the Toiyabes in the way and no connection for my cell phone, I could only estimate the time of actual sunset, guessing it to be about 8:05 pm. According to SunCalc, the sun set at 8:10 pm at my campsite. The hand method referenced earlier gave a time of about 9:25 pm—off by almost an hour and a half! (It's more accurate within one to three hours of sunset, especially when there aren't any mountain ranges looming above the true horizon.)

By 8:43 pm, I had my headlamp on, using the red light setting. It was way warm for sleeping, but I didn't check the temperature by turning on the Jeep. Overall, it felt strange to be camped there in the middle of nowhere during the middle of a summer heat wave. And for some reason, I felt creeped out by a long ago memory of a lone mountain lion in the Toquimas, so I didn't want to sleep outside the Jeep, making for a night that was hotter than necessary. Eventually, I slept, albeit restlessly.

High Water Across the West: The Truckee River

Returning once again to my spring mini-series about all the rivers and lakes that are at higher levels than I've seen in quite awhile (most recent post), I decided this time to show a few pics of the Truckee River, which I drive by quite frequently. Actually, I drive by four times a month unless I happen to bypass Reno by taking another route: 1) across the Black Rock Desert, 2) via Wadsworth to Pyramid Lake and northward (this route is currently impassable because spring floods washed out the road), or 3) over the mountains from the Pyramid Lake highway to Highway 395 (when having to turn around because the preferred road was washed out north of Sutcliffe).

The first photo was taken at a scenic overlook near Patrick along I-80, looking to the southeast. The river is high between us and the dark brown mass of intrusive dacite that forms a synform known as Giant's Throne (you can read a little about this feature here or purchase the field guide here).

Here (above), from the same location, I zoomed in on the river just south of I-80. The trees were just getting their spring leaves and were bright yellowish green.

After a bit, I pulled off at the westernmost Fernley exit and drove south into Wadsworth, a small town along old highway 40 (which is not signed 40 anywhere in Nevada, afaik). These photos, above and below, were taken at a bridge over the Truckee in the eastern part of Wadsworth.

I zoomed in on the water roiling downstream from a cottonwood tree sitting farther out in the water than usual.

I couldn't resist a photo of this old church. Once upon a time, while in high school or early college, I painted a watercolor of a similar church located back east in northern Virginia. I'm still fascinated by the style — not sure why.

Unlike some other rivers in the west, the Truckee was nowhere near impacting the old highway 40 bridge from below.

The railroad bridge spans the Truckee less than 50 meters away from the highway bridge.

For some reason, this view looking downstream reminded me of swamps in southeast. Maybe it's just the way the trees were sitting out in the river.

While down on the river between the two bridges, I grabbed one more shot of trees out in the river. And after standing there for a few minutes, I remembered I had to get back on the freeway. 😢

All photos were taken on 14May2017. The river is still high.

High Water Across the West: Rye Patch Dam and the Humboldt Sink

Rye Patch Dam on April 19th. The water in Rye Patch Reservoir is high, but not at the high water mark that can be seen just past the spillway.

I'm moving slowly on this mini-series about the Humboldt River while working essentially 12-hour days and while (hopefully) recovering from some long-lasting bug I caught on the road or out in Elko more than two months ago. Also, my current work schedule of  9 to 10 days in a row gives me 2 to 3 days off that don't involve driving, so my off days tend to be filled with chores and not that much writing. Anyhoo, there I was traveling south on I-80 past the big bend at Humboldt Station, where I had stopped to take a few photos of the water in the Pitt-Taylor Reservoirs, when I decided—rather spontaneously—to drive down to Rye Patch Dam. As you can see from the first photo, the reservoir is high, but not quite to the high water mark.

Rye Patch Reservoir and Majuba Hill.

Here we're looking just west of north across a shallows, and we can see Majuba Hill just right of center in the distance. The main, deeper part of the reservoir is long and linear where it follows a canyon cut by the river into Lake Lahontan sediments.

The same view in June, 2016, from Google Earth.

A few Western Grebes swim in the shallows.

A closer view of one grebe.

I couldn't resist this view of the Humboldt Range.

Snow-capped Star Peak hides behind clouds. The Cordex Pit of the Florida Canyon Mine operations might be barely visible below Star Peak.

After my brief sojourn at the Rye Patch Dam overlook, I proceeded back to the interstate, speeding ever southward and then southwestward as the road made another broad bend near Lovelock. I was shocked at what I saw when I drove past Granite Point.

The Humboldt Sink had water in it!

At first, I thought it might be a mirage, and although these photos don't really do justice to it, it was indeed water, a small lake that has persisted, at least through my last drive by the area a week ago on June 11th.

A closer view of the Humboldt Sink and the West Humboldt Range.

And that's all for now, time for work! I've got a few pictures of even more water from another trip, but I can't promise when I'll get to it!

High Water Across the West: The Humboldt River at Winnemucca and Humboldt Station

When I started putting these photos together—while thinking about our last post about the Humboldt River in Carlin Canyon—I somehow (and quite erroneously) figured I could throw a whole bunch of high-water Humboldt River photos together in one blog post. The thing is, I have way too many, from several different localities and a few different days, and I hope to collect a few more before the water ebbs. So for today, we'll stick with these two spots, which I visited while driving I-80 from Elko to Reno on April 19th. The first shot looks westward toward Blue Mountain from the westbound exit onto West Winnemucca Blvd (exit 176).

The flooding in Winnemucca was really quite extensive when I drove through on April 11th (no photos) and then again on the 19th: several backyards and a few basements or first floors of houses near the defunct "Barrick Arms Apartments" were under water. The water had receded incompletely when I saw it last (May 28th).

These first pics show the Humboldt River's floodplain looking more like a marshy lake than it's usual dry self. Water level was slightly lower on April 19th than when I first saw it on the 11th.

Here's a phone-camera panorama, with Blue Mountain way off on the left and Winnemucca Mountain taking up the right half of the photo.

This Google Maps Street View image, a flashback to 2011, shows a more typical appearance of the same panorama, albeit from October rather than spring.

And just because, I've included a picture centered on Winnemucca Mountain. It's a prominent feature and a landmark for miles and miles. If you look closely, you'll see the two-toned "W" painted on its southeastern slope.

On that same day (the 19th), I pulled off I-80 at Humboldt House (exit 138, marked "Humboldt") and drove old Highway 40 back toward Imlay.

I crudely spliced together two or three photos looking northwest across what I thought was Rye Patch Reservoir.

It turns out that the entirety of the water seen in these photos is contained within the Upper and Lower Pitt-Taylor Reservoirs.

Here we see Majuba Hill behind blue water in the Lower Pitt-Taylor Reservoir. The light beige horizontal line between the water and Majuba are bluffs underlain by Lake Lahontan's Sehoo Formation. A narrow part of Rye Patch Reservoir proper runs between us and those bluffs, but we can't really see it, even though the water is running high.

Here we can see both the Lower and Upper Pitt-Taylor Reservoirs. The Lower is closest to us; the Upper is beyond the horizontal pale beige line separating the two bodies of water. The wide upper part of Rye Patch Reservoir lies not far beyond the Upper Pitt-Taylor, hidden from us by some irregular low hills. Off in the distance, we're looking at pointed, snow-covered King Lear Peak, part of the Jackson Mountains. The 8923-foot-high peak (2720 m) is about 45 miles away.

High Water Across the West: The Humboldt River in Carlin Canyon — With the Carlin Canyon Unconformity!

Well, there we have it: the Carlin Canyon unconformity with the Humboldt River running nearly bankfull on April 11th of this year.

Looking downstream, back toward the tunnels, we're actually still looking at the unconformity, but it's cropping out poorly on the slope below the tilted limestone beds of the Pennsylvanian-Permian Strathearn Formation.

I went ahead and cropped the best photo I took so we could zoom in on the unconformity in it's classic exposure, and then drew a line right along the contact.

The Strathearn lies unconformably over the near-vertical (to locally overturned) Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Diamond Peak Formation, which is sometimes mapped as the equivalent Tonka Formation in this area.

Zoom in on this feature with a GigaPan by Ron Schott. And if you click the Google Earth link below his GigaPan, you can view the feature *and* the GigaPan in Google Earth!

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

Talus, shorelines, and fall colors.

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

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

Looking SSE from the historic marker pullout.

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

I love the lone Cottonwood in this photo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the photos! 😊

Horizontal Lahontan shorelines and vertical basaltic talus stripes.

Some of the same talus stripes in Google Earth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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