Future Stories from the Palmetto Moutains

It's 58 miles to the next gas station at Lida Junction on S.R. 266, looking west.

In later years—in the future of the 1976 "present" of these ongoing thesis-hunt stories—I made my way back into the Palmetto-Magruder area barely a handful of times. Once, while taking a back way into Death Valley in the fall of 1986, we made some stops between Lida Junction and Lida to find some blackbrush. This notably unsuccessful endeavor was instigated by a palynologist—he preferred the pronunciation "pollenologist"—who swore he would surely be able to show us some fine examples of the cryptic bush (cryptic to us). At the time, however, most of the bushes lacked leaves (it was fall, or extra dry, or both), and while many had the dark grayish woody stems and trunks reportedly diagnostic of blackbrush, it was nigh impossible to tell one bush from another. Our palynologist couldn't positively identify a single bush! I’ve consequently never been able to ID the plant.

Corral near the junction of SRs 266 and 174, the road to Gold Point. Halogetin in the foreground, unidentified scrub beyond the fences. 

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And now I'm going to deviate from my usual format to tell a story that may or may not have occurred in the Palmetto Mountains, one which I am assured by a certain geo-type, who may or may not have been present, not only did not occur, but could not possibly have occurred. Some details may or may not have been changed in this retelling. Any similarities to certain Former Mining Company trips made in the area during the mid- to late 1980s are unquestionably coincidental.

There were four of us geo-types, four geos on a 2-truck expedition into an area of old mining prospects on the south side of an east-west-trending mountain range in a relatively arid area. The sun was high in the sky, as it often is at about midday. The white Chevy pickup (this part is clear in my mind) was ahead of me, going more slowly than would have been comfortable in my company truck, which was a half-ton, 4WD Ford pickup, probably an '85. The Ford could take the deep washboard that was pervasively present through the area at higher speeds than the Chevy because of its better sway bars and other off-road accoutrements. (I know, I know; this sounds like a trite Chevy-Ford rivalry.) Consequently, I was staying a ways back, letting "the guys" go ahead. (In my truck, we were two youngish women, both geologists.)

And now we come to the controversial part of this possibly apocryphal story.

The two ahead of us—those two in that white Chevy pickup, the truck that also lacked enough gumption to go up hills in anything higher than middle gear (I won't mention here its barely SFW nickname)—took off on a hummocky-looking, powdery-textured two-track that was running straight up a steep hill. I won’t exaggerate and say this was the steepest dirt road I’d ever seen (or driven on), but something about it, besides my aversion to being right behind someone on a dirt road—ugh, the dust!—made me stay at the bottom of the hill while I watched them ascend steeply and make a sharp, overly banked turn to the right.

Up ahead in the distance, they stopped. By now we could either barely see them, or they were beyond our sight. We, who had stayed below, walked on up: it wouldn't be that far to the next prospect, and we wanted to check out the road. Oh, look! Beyond the curve the road cuts straight across the hill at a complete sidehill! Any forward or backward movement and the rear end will slide out! (The rear end is usually the part to go first; a complete roll down the side of the mountain is less common).

Disclaimer: The driver of the white truck maintains that there was no sidehill too steep for the truck at this particular locale (which I remember as being in the Palmetto Mountains), and that there was no winching uphill to a Joshua tree in progress when I showed up on foot (and no winching to any Joshua tree ever, anywhere). And the usual statement—pictures, or it didn't happen—could apply. There definitely were no pictures.

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I’ll stop for now, not to leave anyone hanging or anything, and will come back to the Palmettos once more, with some roadside geology.

Related Posts:
Thesis: Finding an Area
Finding a Thesis: Battle Mountain to Austin to Gabbs
Finding a Thesis: Pole Line Road
Finding a Thesis: Pole Line to Belmont
Finding a Thesis: Klondyke District
Finding a Thesis: A Joshua Tree Aside
Finding a Thesis: Into the Palmetto Mountains
Finding a Thesis: Farther into the Palmetto Mountains
Finding a Thesis: A Bit O' Geology in the Palmetto Mountains

Field Trip Report: Locked Out while Looking at Breccia

It was about a million years ago during the first couple years of my field geology experience, probably toward the end of a summer or maybe it was early fall. A field trip was concocted to show some of the immediate mucky muck types around a property I'd come to call my own — a huge claim block centered on one of the major Tertiary calderas (Tertiary then, Paleogene now) of central Nevada — although I wasn't on the ground or anywhere near it when the discovery was made (nor was I there when the caldera formed way back in the early Oligocene). The guys (all guys except for me) were mucky mucks to me at the time, although at least a few of them probably didn't think of themselves that way: my boss, my boss's boss, and some new guy with distinct mucky muck potential who would later go on to run exploration departments and such.

We drove up the main dirt road, with me leading in my burgundy Bronco, a company truck that had been assigned to me that year. At least one other field vehicle was following me, maybe two or three. The truth is, I ran more than one field trip up that same canyon over the course of three or four years, showing various people around the area for various reasons, and the many field trips blend together in my mind. Consequently, I don't remember exactly who was on which field trip, save for a key few people on a few key trips.

I was nervous; maybe the boss was riding with me, perhaps he was in his "Boss Mobile" (not exactly the phrase we used) behind me. I didn't want to go too fast or too slow. I didn't want to hit rocks or ruts, I didn't want to slide sideways around curves or in any other way look like a foolish or inexperienced young geologist.

I slowed down as the caravan I was leading approached our area of particular interest: a volcanic breccia, possibly a breccia pipe. I pulled over to the left side of the road; everyone else pulled in behind me. At that point, we all jumped out of our various vehicles, suited up with Filson vests (if we didn't already have them on), grabbed rock hammers from beneath seats or from backs of trucks, and crossed the main wash northward over to the cliffy bluffs exposing the breccia. It was quite an enlightening field trip for me, with lots of proclamations made about what should be found in breccia pipes as opposed to flow breccias, and gradually some determinations were forthcoming. The matrix of the breccia, highly siliceous, dark, and very fine-grained, was hot when the breccia formed. It had plastered itself onto the breccia fragments such that one could hardly separate fragment from matrix. Some possible sedimentation in the upper part of the main exposure was noted, leading thoughts towards more than one eruptive or explosive event, with some settling downward into the proposed pipe. Flows going outward from the vent or pipe were identified; a thick flow breccia near the vent thinned laterally to one main one and a couple or a few thin ones above it.

Samples were grabbed: hand samples of one of the best breccias in the world (well, in Nevada at least). Everyone wanted a large chunk of the breccia matrix, which contained small chunks of fragments grading downward to rock flour. Large chunks of matrix were hard to come by: all large chunks, when broken, revealed giant fragments only thinly coated with matrix. I'll dig up some pictures sometime, although my memory is much better than the pictures I took a couple years back, or maybe all the best samples are in personal collections made that day, or housed in unknown warehouses.

We walked back to the trucks. Oops! I had left the keys to my Bronco in the ignition and had locked the doors. (Many field trucks are left with keys in ignitions, windows rolled down, and doors unlocked just to prevent this type of occurrence, and because dirt roads in Nevada are generally considered safe, or were back then, from truck stealing.) I was quite flustered and embarrassed, and it looked like the boss thought I was a complete idiot. The new guy, who would become a longtime friend and colleague, and later an exploration manager, immediately started looking around the side of the road and wash area and, voila!, came up with some sturdy wire. Without saying a word, he walked over, bent the wire into the right shape, slipped it under the rubber of the driver's side wind wing, hooked it over the little metal pin that was designed to be used to open and close the wind wing from the inside, and pulled hard. That broke the mechanism that would keep the wind wing shut and in a "locked" position. The door handle or window crank could then be accessed; the the door was unlocked and opened.

Busting the wind wing locking pin made it impossible to get locked out ever again. One or two of the field trip participants admitted it was one of the first thing they would do upon getting a new vehicle: bust the wind wing locking mechanism. We don't have wind wings on trucks anymore for that very reason.

It was a lesson I never forgot: I sometimes busted the wind wing pin on new company trucks preemptively, even though I'm not prone to leaving keys in ignitions, and I always had sturdy wire easily accessible in the back of the truck. And yes, I have used that trick at least one or two other times, whether on my truck or on someone else's.

Related Posts:
Friday Field Photos #3
In the Field
Friday Field Photo #4
Drilling Stories: Getting Started at Northumberland
The Unlikely Gradational Stratigraphy

A Bit About License Plates

The Nevada state license plate change in the 1980's (about 1982) took away a key identifying feature from vehicle license plates by removing county identifiers that had been issued on Nevada blue plates starting in 1969. (Judging from some of the plate photos linked to here, there were county designations on Nevada plates prior to 1969, in the 1950s and early 1960s.) Out in the field, it became difficult for exploration geologists to distinguish mining and exploration trucks from local and ranching trucks. Prior to the change, one merely had to note the letters with which the plates started with: for passenger vehicles, “W” meant Washoe County (i.e. Reno and Sparks), where most of the mining and exploration vehicles in Nevada were registered; “LA” meant Lander County, where ranching trucks might be registered; and “C,” and other myriad letters Las Vegas and Clark County used before they ran out of letters and forced Nevada out of the county designation mode, meant... Clark County. Elko County ("EL") was one of those up and coming mining towns at the time (prior to the license plate change), so it had a mix of mostly ranching trucks with a growing number of mining trucks.

Note: County designations by letter for trucks were somewhat different than the car designations I've referred to here (see list below), making things a bit more complicated. I don't know whether light-duty trucks were given truck plates or passenger plates. Reading the NRS is a bit complicated.

In those days, if you came across a Washoe County truck while you were, say, out in the California Coast Ranges — a long way from Highway 8A or Reno — it was easy to deduce that you were dealing with an exploration truck and probably not just some Nevadan on vacation, and likewise, if you ran into a Washoe County truck in Lander County, Nevada, you would be prone to come to the same conclusion. If you encountered a Lander County truck on a dirt road in Lander County, or on almost any dirt road anywhere else in the state, you could be fairly sure you were looking at a truck owned by some rancher.

When plates no longer gave you a clue about where a vehicle had been registered, it was no longer easy to discern what type of individual was driving a particular truck out in the middle of nowhere, and these sorts of clues were considered important. Matters became a little easier later, though, when some western exploration geologists (AKA explorationists) started registering their trucks in Idaho, Montana, or Colorado. In Nevada, Utah, southern California, or Arizona, these foreign trucks were easily recognized as exploration vehicles, except when you happened to also be dealing with winter snowbirds in the Arizona and southern California deserts.

Photos of some early Nevada plates:
Nevada Passenger Plates 1962-1976
Nevada 1976 Page
Nevada Trucks and Commerial Plates

List of County Designator Prefixes:
Churchil: CH, CHA-CHZ; trucks: AA-AZ

Clark: C, CA-CZ, CAA-CZZ, TAA-TZZ; trucks: BA-BZ, YA-YZ

Douglas: DS, DSA-DSZ, DAA-DZZ; trucks: DA-DZ

Elko: EL, ELA-ELZ, EAA-EZZ (except ESA-ESZ, EUA-EUZ); trucks: EA-EZ

Esmeralda: ES, ESA-ESZ; trucks: FA-FZ

Eureka: EU, EUA-EUZ; trucks: GA-GZ

Humboldt: HU, HUA-HUZ; trucks: HA-HZ

Lander: LA, LAA-LZZ; trucks: JA-JZ

Lincoln: LN, LNA-LNZ; trucks: KA-KZ

Lyon: LY, LYA-LYZ, LBB-LZZ; trucks: LB-LZ

Mineral: MN, MNA-MNZ, MAA-MZZ; trucks: MA-MZ

Nye: NY, NYA-NYZ, NAA-NZZ; trucks: NA-NZ

Ormsby, until 1969, Carson City after that: OR, ORA-ORZ, OAA-OZZ; trucks: OA-OZ

Pershing: PE, PEA-PEZ, PAA-PZZ; trucks: PA-PZ

Storey: ST, STA-STZ; trucks: SA-SZ

Washoe: W, WAA-WZZ (except WPA-WPZ), KAA-KZZ; trucks: WA-WZ

White Pine: WP, WPA-WPZ, ZAA-ZZZ; trucks: ZA-ZZ

County designators were initially approved sometime in the 1950s and continued into the early 1980s: see 1956, 1979 and 1981.

Related Posts:
Why Highway 8A?
Single Digit Highways

Caliente Camp Part 8: Getting Out of Pennsylvania Canyon

While driving through Pennsylvania Canyon last summer, I was keen to find some really good examples of the soft, loose sand we had gotten stuck in 30+ years ago. Well, guess what? The 2005 flooding of the area, along with whatever else had happened to the wash in 30+ years, had firmed up the roadbed. The worst places were loose but not too loose: though the sand pushed me around some, especially in turns, it would have been difficult to get stuck in 2WD, not that I really tried.

The wide, sandy area that snagged our truck in 1978 looked a lot like the picture below, a picture taken more than 1.5 miles downstream from our getting-stuck site. Back then, the central driving area of the wash was all sand, the soft, sandy area was much wider than our truck tracks, and the sand was free of any stabilizing plants. It was the kind of sand that makes walking uphill difficult, and difficulty in walking- whether uphill or down, whether through mud, snow, or sand - is a good sign that one might need 4WD, not that we stopped and checked.

Pennsylvania Canyon still contains considerable sand, but most of it is peripheral to the active channel (AKA main roadbed) and elevated above it - as in this photo where sand piles can be seen on the right, and sand ledges or partially eroded banks can be seen way to the left (click to enlarge). It looks like flash flooding over the years has removed a lot of sand and caused about two to five feet of downcutting.

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What would Pete and I do, now that one of our two trucks was stuck in the sand? Well, first off, notice that I said, "one of two." We were lucky enough to have two trucks, and one wasn't stuck! Whew!

Floyd was still in sampling mode and making his way slowly down the wash, so Pete and I set about seeing if we could figure out how to get the two-wheel drive truck upstream through the sand. Pete had a great idea: we would go to the prospect area we had checked out earlier and see if we could find some rope. For some unknown reason, our trucks were not equipped with gear for getting unstuck. Maybe we could scrounge something.

We drove up the side drainage in our good, 4WD truck. All we found around the old mining camp was the spool of copper wire we had already noted, no rope. We debated the options. I felt uncomfortable taking what surely must be someone’s wire. We were, after all, not in any kind of dire straits: we had one perfectly good truck. We could drive it back to camp, get towing gear, and come back for the truck. But we were a little worried about wasting too much time or getting in trouble for getting stuck. We took the wire to use in lieu of a tow rope.

Our first couple attempts at towing the 2WD truck with the 4WD truck using the thick copper wire were pretty unsuccessful - we made a few feet each time before the wire stretched thin and broke. So we backed the good, 4WD truck down the wash until its back bumper was right against the front bumper of the bad, 2WD truck, then wrapped the copper wire tight around both bumpers, around and around several times. With the wire wrapped this way, it held as we made it slowly through the sand, until we were finally on solid ground. We still didn’t know if the crippled truck would make it up that last hill below the distant saddle, but we would have to give it a shot. With me driving one truck and Pete driving the other - the bad truck in the rear in case we had to ditch it - we continued up the main canyon, keeping our eyes open for the still sampling Floyd.

After meeting up with Floyd and helping him finish the sampling of his part of Pennsylvania Canyon, we drove both trucks up and over the saddle, down into the northern drainage, past Tepee Rocks, through Caliente, and back to camp. Stuart had walked into camp by the time we got there. We now had a truck that would not go into four-wheel drive, and the nearest Ford dealer was in Ely, a good two to three hours away. That truck sat in the Ely shop for several weeks before the right part arrived - they kept getting the wrong part from Salt Lake City. And it turned out that Stuart had not been at fault that one day in Kane Springs Valley - one hub had been put together backward at the factory, so repair was covered by warrantee.

A northerly view from below Ella Mountain Lookout, looking toward the next camp area near the Nevada-Utah border.

Related Posts listed at The Caliente and Caliente Camp Series.

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.

A Quick Note Before Work

A quick note for a Saturday morning while I'm having morning coffee: The weather has been pretty good here recently - relatively warm and mostly clear - at least until yesterday afternoon when the wind picked up. Temperatures might be a bit cooler today, with an expected high of 48 degrees F, and a wind advisory has been posted! When it gets windy and dusty at the mine (much of the summer months) the water truck (trucks?) sprays water everywhere - and hopefully not too much so the roads don't become slippery for the huge haul trucks driving around, carrying ore to the crusher and ore piles and waste to the various waste dumps.

We have had dry roads and no mud for at least a couple weeks, but because they sprayed water yesterday, MOH and I now have bits of dried mud -dirt! - scattered through the house from MOH's boots. I didn't get muddy boots because the roads I use weren't sprayed, although that could change if the winds become persistent.

I'm currently working my mostly 10-hour days, leaving for work around 6:30 am, getting back from work by 5:30 pm. MOH is on days right now, which means that we see each other in the mornings and at night. He leaves here at about 5:00 am and returns usually by 6:30 pm. We both are to bed around 8:00, lights out at 9:00, and so my time for blogging and fixing up photos, etc, is seeming a little limited. Oh, well!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. For me, I think it's still Tuesday!