Twelve Months of LFD (2016)

I'm doing the year-end meme wherein I compile the first sentence of the first post of every month. Meme rules are as follows, as per DrugMonkey:

Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

I also add the first photo from the same first post. Previous takes on this Twelve Month meme at LFD were posted for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2015.

Aaand...here's the year 2016 for LFD:

January:

I've gathered up a collection of rocks to see which ones will float and which ones will sink.

February:

After checking out the southern route to Mineral Ridge while on my 1976 thesis quest, I headed north out of Silver Peak on then Highway 47 (now S.R. 265), carefully measuring the miles to the left-hand turnoff.

March:

With Mineral Ridge in my rear-view mirror, I stopped briefly at the basalt cinder cone, The Crater, which is located right on the side of the road just a few miles north of Silver Peak.

April:

From the vantage point of the end of the last post, a little southwest of Luning, Nevada, I turned around and pointed my camera northeast across Soda Spring Valley ... and paused to think back to the late 1980s, when we in the Western District of Former Mining Company had finally taken over exploration of the Walker Lane, which until then had been a mostly unexplored part of the Nevada District.

May:
I'm not sure how I got started on checking different words and concepts on Google Books Ngram Viewer yesterday, although my "History" tab suggests to me that it might have been related to some reading I was doing on science fiction.

June:

I collected this hand sample from the Original Bullfrog mine, Nye County, Nevada, sometime back in the mid to late 1980s when doing recon in the area, then cut and polished it—probably with a company saw and grinding wheel.

July:

We're now about two thirds of the way up the hill toward Red Pass on the Titus Canyon road, a one-way road that runs approximately east to west from Nevada into California, starting not far south of the ghost town of Rhyolite.

August:

There I was, preparing a few photos for posting in the ongoing Death Valley Trip – Titus Canyon series, doing my usual thing of marking up photos in MS Paint (I'm too cheap to buy any real photo programs), when I figured that I must have something around the house that might work better than either dragging the cursor across the screen with my trackpad or dragging my finger across the computer's touch screen.

September:

Now we'll leave the parking area near the Leadfield sign and, as I promised last time, we’ll walk out to what I’ve been referring to as the “far west cabin," although maybe that should really be "far northwest cabin."

October:

At the end of our last post—the one about the non-fold—we came into Titus Canyon proper and were looking at this view, down the canyon and to the west

November:

Just a bit of stibnite for your #MineralMonday.

December:

When I drove to the area on the south side of the Whipple Mountains where I ended up camping amidst downpours and nearby lightning, I thought I'd grab a few photos of the Colorado River Aqueduct, which passes through just north of CA Highway 62 on its way to the greater L.A. area, but an RVer was camped just beyond the aqueduct overpass, so I blew it off until I left.

Titus Canyon: The Klare Spring Breccia

Klare Spring in Titus Canyon is well known as a petroglyph site (with a sign and everything); it is less well known as a breccia site and as a place to view the low-angle normal faults of the Titus Canyon fault zone (TCFZ). MOH and I were both immediately attracted to the breccia, and then—after examining it closely—we turned our attention to the various petroglyphs. (If you want petroglyphs, go here, here, or here, or to other Google-able websites.)

The breccia is the orange-brown mass of rock that MOH is inspecting intently. It's composed largely of fragments of Carrara Formation (Єc), with a few scattered chunks of gray limestone, which are presumably from either the Carrara Formation or the tectonically higher Bonanza King Formation (Єb). The upper strand of the Titus Canyon fault zone (TCFZ) cuts above the breccia, somewhere between my Єc and Єb labels, possibly at the base of the first cliff, or possibly behind and above that cliff. Rocks in this lower part look brecciated to me, but I didn't scramble up the slope to see them in person.

In fact, here are some of my ideas about the placement of the upper strand (or multiple upper strands?) of the TCFZ.

An image from Google Earth approximating the first photos.

I wasn't sure whether the two very large angular fragments of gray limestone, including the block festooned with petroglyphs, were an actual part of the tectonic breccia, or whether they had at some point slid down the cliffs and been cemented in place by the waters of Klare Spring.

Angular fragments of the Carrara Formation are healed by travertine.

The waters of Klare Spring emerge from the lower strand of the Titus Canyon fault zone, just down-canyon from the petroglyph site. The lower strand has placed this fractured, shattered, and brecciated Carrara Formation over the older Wood Canyon Formation (ZЄw, see next photo set).

Looking up canyon past Klare Spring.

I happened to shoot this pic looking eastward, back toward Klare Spring from a couple hundred yards down canyon. Once again, I had fortuitously grabbed a view of the TCFZ, this time including the lower strand that runs right through Klare Spring, and also including the upper strand (although the exact location is of that strand(s) is imprecise).

The same view with some geologic labels, including a few question marks.

The faults up the canyon (on the right) were seen in more detail in an earlier post; basically, we're looking at the upper strand of the TCFZ, which has placed the Bonanza King (Єb) over the Carrara (Єc) and some possible breccia (labeled "?"). Klare Spring is past the white car in the lower left of the photo. The lower strand of the TCFZ, which runs right through Klare Spring according to many, places the pale orange brecciated Carrara (Єc bx) over the reddish brown rocks of the Wood Canyon Formation (ZЄw). I've labeled the Bonanza King where I'm sure of it (Єb), and have left the first light gray cliff above the Єc breccia as "?". These lower cliffs, held up by rocks that appear brecciated in the first set of photos, might be composed of Carrara or Bonanza King, or even some tectonic jumble of both.

And so, we've left Klare Spring, and will continue our way down the canyon...

Location map

Related Posts:
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Tan Mountain
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Up and over White Pass
The Approach to Titus Canyon: To Red Pass
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Just Below Red Pass
A Hike at Red Pass, Titus Canyon Road, Death Valley, CA
Titus Canyon Road: A Little History and a Few Maps
Down into Titus Canyon: We Leave Red Pass Behind (Finally!)
Scribbles
Titus Canyon: The Upper Part of Lost Canyon
Leadfield: Scams with a Side of Geology
Leadfield: Views from Old Mine Buildings
Leadfield: Geology...and a Cactus...on the Way Back to the Parking Area
Almost Titus Canyon: Is This a Fold? And... Apparent Dip with Post-it® Notes
Titus Canyon: The TCFZ, the FCFZ, and a few Other Faults
Titus Canyon: Another Look at the Titus Canyon Fault and A Scramble
Titus Canyon: We Make Our Way Toward Klare Spring

Titus Canyon: We Make Our Way Toward Klare Spring

We're making our way down Titus Canyon toward Klare Spring, an obligatory petroglyph stop about two miles below Leadfield. On this rather short leg of our journey, we'll be seeing a hodgepodge of photos from two trips taken in two separate years, all shot within a short distance of each other not far upstream from the spring. The canyon distance of the views that our photos will show, upstream to downstream, will be about two miles (3.2 km).

Our first photo set looks back to the east. You do remember that last time, before we stopped for our little hike scramble, we had looked to the south and had seen what I think is the main strand of the Titus Canyon fault zone. We can see this same fault exposure from our current stopping point just north of a shadowy cliff. The mile-distant fault is placing Bonanza King Formation dolomite (Єb) of the upper plate over Carrara Formation (Єc) limestone and a bit of Zabriskie Quartzite of the lower plate (we can't see the Zabriskie from this angle). I’ve sketched the main strand of the Titus Canyon fault zone (TCFZ) in hachured dark blue.

As explained previously, that fault appears to wrap around to become what I've drawn in as the same fault strand, high on the cliffs in the upper right. I've postulated a lower strand, drawn in hachured bright blue. The exact position of the proposed fault is questionable, possibly higher on the hill than I've shown it, as is the formation contained within in the resulting "middle plate," which I've shown as Bonanza King. In this first photo, taken in late February of this year, things look pretty brown, because spring has just barely arrived.

The cliffs on the side of the road are captivating in that they look iron stained and possibly brecciated. I think they make a great backdrop to a photo that's very similar to the first one, but which was taken on a green spring day in early May, 2009. The creosote was in bloom, and so were some cacti and other wildflowers.

I'm not sure what rock formation is exposed in this almost-always shadowed cliff. It might be Carrara, as labeled, or it might be Bonanza King.

MOH and I wandered around this area quite a bit, checking out the wildflowers.

Here we are, a little to the north of the last spot, along an old wash channel paralleling the road, still looking to the east. 

The same photo with geologic labeling by moi.
(H/t to Dana Hunter for the "moi.")

What are we seeing here? Well, we're looking at the main strand of the TCFZ on the cliff in the distance to the east, as before, but here I've postulated an offsetting high-angle normal fault, down-to-the-north, and drawn it in with lighter blue. As for the cliffy areas north and south of the wash and road (left and right, respectively), I'm unsure of the exact location of the Titus Canyon fault. On the left, there is definite Єc in the lower cliffs, some unknown in a slope and cliffy area above that (labeled Єc?), and definite Єb near the top of the cliff (unlabeled! who let that slip by?).

Looking back to the first photo set, there’s a huge alluvial fan coming off the higher cliffs south of the road. On our most recent trip through the canyon in early 2016, I became fascinated by the massive alluvial fans within this part of the Grapevine Mountains. It looked like one hell of a lot of erosion to me—and probably all taking place fairly rapidly and fairly recently when the Grapevine Mountains were uplifted radically in the late late Cenozoic—and so I took a number of photos of fans, some that looked active, like this one, and others that looked older.

A steep side canyon area south of the road has filled with coarse alluvial debris, forming an alluvial fan complex.

A closer view of part of the alluvial fan.

A Google Earth image of the fan complex. North is not up! The magenta line on the right is the main strand of the TCFZ (extrapolated); the magenta line on the left is possibly the lower strand in this area.

Then I looked off to the northwest and took this photo after spotting the reddish alluvial fan remnant seemingly stranded high on the active fan slopes:

A reddish color in alluvium is often indicative of an older age. Rocks above the fan are all Bonanza King Formation.

I have a hard time comprehending the amount of uplift required, possibly in pulses, to create the alluvial record that can be seen within and on the edge of the mountains in the Death Valley area.

Google Earth image of our second fan complex; magenta lines are related to my idea(s) of the TCFZ.

A little bit of alluvial air-photo mapping.

The current wash (above) is obvious. What I've labeled as 'terrace 1' can be seen in the last photo as the alluvium in front of the alluvial ledge in the lower part of the photo, the alluvium I was standing on when I took that photo. Beyond that, we have the larger fan complex, including the reddish fan in the photo, which I've labeled. I couldn’t decide where to mark the lower boundaries of that reddish fan. Anyone up for some mapping?

I then turned to the west, zooming in to see what I thought might be some reddish talus, possibly small alluvial fans, high on the slope.

Reddish talus high on the slope below dark gray and reddish outcrops of the Bonanza King Formation.

It turns out that this photo shows two mapped strands of the TCFZ, although the exact location of both is somewhat in question.

Here is my best guess of the geology, taken from Niemi (2012) and Google Earth air-photo interpretation.

The mapped upper strand of the TCFZ has placed younger Bonanza King Formation rocks (Єb) over older Carrara Formation (Єc), with the Єc forming what is here a middle plate, while the mapped lower strand has placed the Carrara over the even older Wood Canyon Formation (ZЄw).

Meanwhile, back on the lower slopes:

Bloomin’ cactus!

The barrels are leaning strongly to the south. They grow faster on the shady side, causing them to lean over, giving them the nickname “compass cactus.”

These leafy green plants were everywhere.

Barrel cactus, yellow wildflowers, and ephedra (the olive green plant behind the barrel clump).

Here’s another view of the same plants, with dolomite of the Bonanza King Formation as a backdrop. The ledge on the left might be the location of the upper strand of the TCFZ, just above Klare Spring.

And that puts us in a good position to move on to Klare Spring.

Location map

Related Posts:
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Tan Mountain
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Up and over White Pass
The Approach to Titus Canyon: To Red Pass
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Just Below Red Pass
A Hike at Red Pass, Titus Canyon Road, Death Valley, CA
Titus Canyon Road: A Little History and a Few Maps
Down into Titus Canyon: We Leave Red Pass Behind (Finally!)
Scribbles
Titus Canyon: The Upper Part of Lost Canyon
Leadfield: Scams with a Side of Geology
Leadfield: Views from Old Mine Buildings
Leadfield: Geology...and a Cactus...on the Way Back to the Parking Area
Almost Titus Canyon: Is This a Fold? And... Apparent Dip with Post-it® Notes
Titus Canyon: The TCFZ, the FCFZ, and a few Other Faults
Titus Canyon: Another Look at the Titus Canyon Fault and A Scramble

Titus Canyon: Another Look at the Titus Canyon Fault and A Scramble

In late February of this year, MOH and I were intent on getting down the Titus Canyon road to see the superbloom in Death Valley, which was going great guns down near Badwater. We nevertheless stopped for a hike not far downstream from the photo in my last post.

A few wildflowers bloom in front of an orange-brown outcrop of Carrara Formation limestone.

Before hiking some really steep cliffs on the north canyon wall, I looked to the south to grab a few geological photos, not realizing that besides the nice example of dipping beds, I was seeing a good example of one splay of the Titus Canyon fault zone (TCFZ).

Beds on the south wall of the canyon are dipping in a northerly direction.

In the labeled view below, we see the approximate line of one splay of the TCFZ. It has crossed the wash left of the photo (and in front of us in last week’s photo); it goes up, over, and back behind the foreground rocks (the arrow pointing the way); and it eventually wraps around to hook up with the low-angle fault on the more distant, shadowed hill. This interpretation of the location of a main splay of the TCFZ is from Reynolds, as seen in Lengner and Troxel (2008), and is also an extrapolation from Niemi’s 2012 map.

A splay of the younger-on-older TCFZ can be seen here in hachured dark blue. It is placing the younger Bonanza King Formation (Єb) above the older Carrara Formation (Єc) and even older Zabriskie Quartzite (Єz).

Disclaimers: My placement of the fault is approximate, the foreground part of the fault might be modified by a high-angle normal fault, and the cliff and hills labeled Єz may include some faulted-in Єc.

I’ve zoomed in here, just so we can see the fault exposure a little better.

The rocks above the nicely bedded section on the right (Єc) look chaotically fractured and possibly brecciated. I read somewhere that the Fe-oxide staining of the rocks is typical of the damage zone along the fault. An unpublished map that was available from NPS in 2016, has a mélange unit devoted to certain parts of the TCFZ damage zone. That unit (TfxT; description no longer available) is reported to be particularly pronounced along the westernmost portion of the TCFZ.

MOH and I had stopped at this particular point in order to go on a smallish hike—well, we actually stopped to investigate a dry waterfall, and that investigation turned into a scramble (probably Class 3).

We’re looking up a side drainage on the steep north side of Titus Canyon. The overexposed white areas are limestone that has been scoured and polished by running water and entrained debris.

It turns out that this is a decent location to view the Titus Canyon fault.

The Titus Canyon fault places the Bonanza King (Єb) over the Carrara (Єc). It is mostly (or entirely) behind the lower cliffs on the right side of the photo.

And now, for a little map comparison, before we scramble up the slickrock.

A bit of Niemi’s map, from Leadfield to Klare Spring. The UTM grid lines are spaced 1 km (1000 m; 3281 ft) apart.

A similar bit of Google Earth (GE), uncorrected for any possible skewness in orientation. The TCFZ is in magenta; other normal faults are in blue and dark blue; the Zabriskie Quartzite (Єz) is outlined in red

My interpretation of the location of the TCFZ north of the canyon is based largely on a single photo in Lengner and Troxel (2008; their Figure 6.17, p. 114).

How do these maps line up?

I’ve managed to overlay a transparent version of Niemi’s map on top of the Google Earth image.

I’ve corrected a bit of Niemi’s map where I think the labeling and coloring of a portion of Bonanza King Formation (his Єpb, my Єb) and Titus Canyon Formation (EOgtc) was accidentally switched. The overlay is not perfect: The programs I used (Word and Paint) are really not designed for precision. Nevertheless, we see some correlation between the two maps. Interestingly, the place where the two maps show the most divergence is right where Lengner and Troxel have their photo (where my magenta line does a lot of contortions). As far as ground checking of this TCFZ-modified Єb-Єc contact, it’s difficult to impossible to walk up to the fault in most places—at least not without using real climbing techniques or hanging oneself out of a helicopter on a rope!

Now we’ll get on with our hike!

A small pool of water at the base of the lower chute.

We've now walked over to the base of the waterfall, where...we find some water!

For scale, I offer a fly on the far right.

The fly is sunning itself on polished Carrara Formation, which consists here of blue-gray limestone with orange claystone partings and wavy bedding.

I’ve now scrambled up to a ledge and am looking up the Carrara cliff to the jagged outcrops of Bonanza King Formation (Єb) beyond.

The faults drawn in are mostly hidden from view by the jutting lower cliff of Carrara Formation (Єc). The TCFZ, in hachured dark blue, is offset by a high-angle normal fault in lighter blue.

I love barrel cacti!

I’ve now scrambled even higher, to stand below a second polished chute.

The third polished chute, even higher, is above a large, dry plunge pool.

This is as high as I got on this dry falls. MOH went up higher, probably to the TCFZ. I didn’t know there was a fault up there, or I might have been tempted to try to climb higher, even though I was about at the edge of my free-climbing competence. I scrambled back down and eventually found myself overlooking the first waterhole.

I stand on a ledge above the first pothole.

Right after taking this photo, I was maneuvering across a jutting portion of tear-a-pants limestone when I lost all but one point of contact and tumbled down toward the overhang above the pothole. I managed to recover on a smallish ledge. I was okay, but it really was close. That’s probably the last bit of free-climbing I’ll do! The DSLR fell also, hitting the rock I landed on, and somehow, it was also okay! (I was surprised. Possibly this is a testimony to Nikon.)

Our next stop will be a little farther downstream, closer to Klare Spring.

A Few References:
Lengner, K., and Troxel, B.W., 2008, Death Valley's Titus Canyon & Leadfield ghost town: Deep Enough Press, 175 p.

National Park Service (NPS) Geologic Resources Inventory (GRI) program, 20141114, Unpublished Digital Geologic Map of Death Valley National Park and Vicinity, California and Nevada (NPS, GRD, GRI, DEVA, DEVA digital map) [not available online - this link has info] adapted from a U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map by Workman, J.B., Menges, C.M., Fridrich, C.J., Thompson, R.A. (2014).

Niemi, N.A., 2012, Geologic Map of the Central Grapevine Mountains, Inyo County, California, and Esmeralda and Nye Counties, Nevada [not available online]: Nevada, Geological Society of America Digital Maps and Charts Series, DMC12, 1:48,000, 28 p. text.

Reynolds, M.W., 1969, Stratigraphy and structural geology of the Titus andTitanothere canyons area, Death Valley, California: Berkeley, University of California, Ph.D dissertation, 310 p.

Reynolds, M.W., 1974, Geology of the Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley,California; a summary, in Death Valley region, California and Nevada, Geological Society of America Cordilleran Section, Field Trip 1 Guidebook: Death Valley Publishing Company, Shoshone, California, p. 91-97 [reprinted here].

Location map

Related Posts:
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Tan Mountain
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Up and over White Pass
The Approach to Titus Canyon: To Red Pass
The Approach to Titus Canyon: Just Below Red Pass
A Hike at Red Pass, Titus Canyon Road, Death Valley, CA
Titus Canyon Road: A Little History and a Few Maps
Down into Titus Canyon: We Leave Red Pass Behind (Finally!)
Scribbles
Titus Canyon: The Upper Part of Lost Canyon
Leadfield: Scams with a Side of Geology
Leadfield: Views from Old Mine Buildings
Leadfield: Geology...and a Cactus...on the Way Back to the Parking Area
Almost Titus Canyon: Is This a Fold? And... Apparent Dip with Post-it® Notes
Titus Canyon: The TCFZ, the FCFZ, and a few Other Faults

Revised slightly 15Jun2019 for broken or dead links.