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.

Well, it's been so long...

It's been a long time—almost a year—since my last real post, the actual last post being a road song with brief blurb. And even though it's been a year, I haven't really started what would be the last in a series of posts reporting on a trip from Winnemucca to northeastern California, with geology and other points of interest along the route. It's been hard getting to that last post and to a few side posts along the route that would be possible if I would just maintain a bit of focus. And the stumbling block is basically that I'm not traveling that way anymore, at least not routinely: I don't live at that end of the road. Yeah, "the lake" is a thing of the past (which is really sad, especially given the exceptional heat that the summer of 2020 has brought to the northern Nevada area where I currently live).

Anyway, that's a roundabout way of getting around to saying...it's been a long time since I visited the Northumberland caldera in central Nevada. The current isolation of living by myself, social distancing to the extent of hardly seeing anyone who doesn't happen to be in line behind me at the supermarket, and WFH—which I've been able to do so far for exactly two months since leaving "the field" of northeastern Nevada—was starting to drive me nuts, as it does periodically, and I wanted to get away.

Unfortunately, it's been very hot here in northern Nevada (and elsewhere in Nevada, and in many other parts of the west), so though I contemplated going on a brief camping trip, it seemed too hot for that (did I mention the heat?), and the upper campground at Wheeler Peak is closed for renovations (I consider the lower camps to be both too hot and too crowded). So, with the highest, coolest camp in Nevada out of the question, I opted for a central Nevada area that I've been familiar with since 1978: the Northumberland caldera.

Yeah I thought, maybe I'll camp in the highlands, up in the piñon-juniper, but I was unsure of any specific places up there so was sure I'd opt for the more familiar lowlands. Eventually, after much dithering accompanied by equally much grousing about the heat and why it's not a great time to go camping, all the while and nevertheless preparing, then reverting to no it's too hot, then more prepping, then etcetera, off I went.

The trip was a reprise of many, and because of the heat (the highs were around 100°F) I made few stops on my way out to an old drill site atop a location in the northern part of the caldera that we at NEC (Northern Exploration Company) called "The Hot Spot."

The Hot Spot (photo above) is a fairly small mound-like outcrop of welded ash-flow tuff (tuff of Hoodoo Canyon) mineralized with carnotite replacing feldspar sites. At least I think it's carnotite. Maybe it's autunite. That mineralogic tidbit is somewhat blurred by time. I didn't break a single rock out there this time, so didn't check the uranium mineralogy. I did, however, collect a couple nice hand samples of Ts2 and Ts3, formations within the intracaldera sedimentary package.

Anyway, I ended up at the Hot Spot, spent an overly heated night camping in the back of the Jeep, and then I returned via a slightly different route the next day, a partial reprise of trips made in the region as recently as 2012, a time which seems almost as long ago as those first days in 1978.

Friday from the Road: The Road to Gabbs

Before going off onto another part of the old story, here are a few more pictures from the road to Gabbs, that is, from Middlegate Junction at Highway 50 south to Gabbs on S.R. 361.

This particular stretch of highway is unusual for Nevada because it passes into three counties in short succession, although not all the way through any of them. The road starts in one county, passes through another, and then passes into yet a third – an unusual feat given the relatively large to huge size of most Nevada counties.
Leaving Old Middlegate Station at 1:30 pm that spring day two years ago, I came to this first county sign 20 minutes later at almost exactly 1:50 pm. I was about to enter Mineral County, having driven about 15.7 miles on S.R. 361.
The sign on the other side of the road facing back to the north indicates that I just came through Churchill County.
A little short of five minutes later, I arrived in Nye County, the largest county in Nevada – and third largest county in the U.S., not counting boroughs in Alaska.
About 10 or 15 minutes later, a side road heading east toward Lodi Valley came into view. Lodi Valley runs north-south between the Lodi Hills in the left middle ground and the Paradise Range in the background.

The Lodi Hills was the site of my first submittal evaluation back in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Whether the submittal was for uranium or gold is something I no longer remember. I do remember a large quantity of quartz vein material, both lying around as float and jutting out as outcrop. I also remember something about barely making it uphill through newly fallen snow.
I drove off the road a little ways to get a good look at the nicely graded gravel road into Lodi Valley – okay, it's a little bit washboarded, but doesn't look too bad .
Just past that turn-off, the main part of the Downeyville mining district comes into view to the east. Downeyville is an old silver-lead-zinc-gold district, which had more zinc production than anything else, though the historic records are spotty. It's also an old ghost town. Directions and a couple pictures here.
About 29 miles south of Highway 50, one of the several signs for Ione that you can see scattered here and there around west-central Nevada comes into view, pointing off to the east. If you turn onto the side road, you'll be on S.R. 844, the Ione Road, formerly known as S.R. 91. Follow the road and you'll go over Brunton Pass, down into Ione Valley, and from there onward to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, and then north to Ione. Gas is not necessarily available in Ione, check local sources or fill up in Middlegate or Gabbs.
Then, at 2:15 pm, almost 31 miles and less than an hour from Highway 50 – and closer to a half hour not counting photo stops – I arrived at the signs for north Gabbs.

An aside: There are lots of signs pointing toward Ione in central and west-central Nevada. Generally, the town seems to be about 20 to 50 miles from wherever you happen to be. I'm not sure I've ever been there, although I've been as close as Berlin-Ichthyosaur. Maybe someday I'll do a post about the many roads to Ione and the many signs pointing the way. I'll have to do a lot more sign collecting and backroad travel to get them all.

The Unlikely Gradational Stratigraphy

I described the problem briefly in my last post about drilling at the Northumberland caldera: the volcanic formations and intracaldera units of waterlaid volcaniclastic and volcanic deposits — from the post-caldera Hoodoo Tuff, down into the intracaldera sediments, then into the caldera-forming Northumberland Tuff below — had sharp to relatively sharp contacts in the field. The chip boards from the previous year's drilling, however, showed gradational contacts from top to bottom — with Hoodoo Tuff chips present from the top all the way down, with chips of the uppermost unit 6 of the intracaldera sediments present from the beginning of unit 6 all the way down into unit 2 and below that into the Northumberland Tuff, and so on. At first examination of the chip boards, I simply didn't know what to make of the apparent change from sharp to gradational contacts, and thought that possibly it was the result of sloppy chip-board construction. Upon close examination, however, I finally realized that there were rock types from the top of the hole present all the way down to the bottom of the hole.

This kind of contamination is usually bad for sampling and assaying, but because we were looking for uranium, we were relying almost completely on a calibrated gamma-ray probe and not planning to do much assaying. Still, I wondered why the drilling was resulting in such strong contamination. The conventional answer, so to speak, was that we were using conventional rotary drilling, not reverse-circulation rotary drilling. Conventional rotary can easily result in contamination because the rock chips from the bottom of the drill hole come up the outside of the drill stem, and can pluck chips and material from rocks and formations above the bottom of the hole, all the way to the top. Reverse-circulation rotary drilling prevents this by having the chips go up the inner tube inside the drill rods, where the chips can have no contact with other rocks the drill has already drilled through.

I arrived on the Northumberland caldera drilling project, somewhere southeast of Austin, Nevada, and generally due east of Kingston Canyon — where I happened to be staying in a company-rented tiny cabin — in the fall of 1979. At first, we had a couple core rigs and one rotary rig running. I asked the rotary drillers how they usually did the sampling, and they told me that they usually laid out piles of chips and ground up rock for every 5-foot interval, in a nice line on the ground. Having been told to "ask the drillers," I thought, okay — odd, perhaps, but okay. After they laid out the chips in these nice, neat little piles, I was supposed to put them into the sample bags that I'd labeled. ("Hole 1, 0-5" or something like that; maybe we had a scheme, it's not one I remember.)

Now it's kind of awkward, even under the best of circumstances, to grab handfuls of piled, ground-up rock and somehow get them into 7 x 12½ white sample bags — and these weren't the best of circumstances. When I came back early the next morning to start bagging up samples from the first drill hole, I found the mounds of chips frozen into solid, cone-shaped piles, with the piles frozen to the ground. At first I kind of freaked, like OMG I should have done this yesterday, I am so screwed, etcetera. Yeah, the sun melted them later on — way after noon — but this sample-layout method really put a kink in things (at least for me). It was fall, and temperatures were prone to drop below freezing at night in the high valleys of central Nevada, suggesting that chip freezing would be an everyday occurrence.

I talked to the drillers and asked them if they could just put the samples into the bag instead of piling them up so neatly on the ground. They hemmed and hawed, indicating that they didn't *do* that. I told them we'd have to figure something out, because their on-the-ground method wasn't going to work unless my company was willing to wait around for next summer to get the samples. They finally agreed. I don't remember that it was hard to convince them, and I don't know whether they'd *done* that before, or were just trying to slip something by me. I have seen piles of chips lying out in nice lines as recently as 2005.

Okay, that problem is solved: the drillers are putting the samples in the bag. I'm numbering the bags — which is still a common but not always thing for a geo or tech to take care of — but they are sampling! Yay!

Now, let's watch what they are actually doing. On a conventional rotary rig, one that happened to not to have any kind of sampler or cyclone or splitter, the chips come up the outside of the drill pipe and just pile up on the ground around the hole. The drillers drill 20 feet of steel down at a time: that's the length of each piece of pipe. Every five feet, the helper (only driller and helper on the rig in 1979, not a third person for sampling) sticks a shovel into that pile and puts the stuff into one pre-labeled sample bag.

The pile around the drill hole just stays there, always being contributed to by more stuff coming up the outside of the pipe. Every now and then, when the pile is deemed too large by the driller, the helper pushes some of it aside with the shovel. I watch this process for a short while (having not seen it the day before), and eventually, between rods, tell them about the problem: every single rock type that has been drilled is still lying there in that pile every time the helper sticks a shovel into it to get the next 5-foot sample. Oh sure, the bulk of what goes into his shovel is the most recent stuff that came out of the hole — the stuff on the top of the pile — but not entirely. No wonder the formations glued to the chip boards from the previous year looked gradational.

I point out to them that they are taking a sample of everything that's come out of the hole for the last couple hundred feet, not just the last five. No, they insist that it's just most recent stuff, they are careful and just getting what is near the top. I tell them that it isn't really working that way, though, even if they think it is, and that I'd like them to clear away — with the shovel — that pile every five feet.

Well, no, they can't do that, they are on a footage contract and that would slow them down, having to stop every five feet to clear the pile away. They would be glad to clear the pile away every rod — every 20 feet. I tell them I really can't tell what the rocks are with all that stuff mixed together (although I sorta can, and the down-hole logs are diagnostic for many of the intracaldera contacts), and I tell them that the assaying will totally suck (although maybe we won't be assaying much of anything — and we didn't say "totally" like that back then, and maybe I used another cuss word, and maybe I hadn't fully developed my talking-to-drillers attitude or technique, which includes just the right cuss words at just the right time).

They finally agree that the helper can take a sample with the shovel, put the sample in the bag, then clear away all the rock debris that's piled up during five feet of drilling. It's not perfect, because the drill keeps drilling — or maybe it stops like it should, but I lost that bit of detail somewhere between then and now — but it's so much better, and the not-supposed-to-be-gradational contacts return to the clean sharpness that we'd mapped in the field.

And that's why you should never ask the drillers how to do the sampling.

And that's why it's a good idea to answer a young geologist's nagging questions, even if they seem really dumb to you.

And that's why you should have an hourly contract rather than a footage contract with your drillers: then you can slow them down anytime you want, and they can't bitch about it. (They might still bitch some, because a good driller wants to make footage, but a good driller should also recognize the importance of the sample he's getting.)

Caliente Camp Part 7: Getting Stuck in Pennsylvania Canyon

Shortly after the first truck misadventure of 1978 - with the helicopter still out of commision - four of us took off in two trucks for a kind of piggyback form of recon. From Caliente, we drove east up Clover Creek, entered Barnes Canyon from the north, drove past Tepee Rocks, then eventually crossed over into the south end of the large Ash Canyon drainage at the place I lost my way while driving through last summer. We finally arrived at a well-remembered saddle, the divide between the north-draining Ash Canyon and the the southwest-draining Pennsylvania Canyon.

From the saddle at the north end of the drainage, we looked down Pennsylvania Canyon toward the Meadow Valley Mountains beyond Elgin. We couldn't really see the day’s work laid out in front of us because a bend in the canyon blocked our view, but we could see a long ways.

We dropped Floyd off at the saddle - he would sample his way down Pennsylvania Canyon on foot, about 4 miles of drainage. We then drove down the steep upper part of the canyon in two trucks, into the main part of the canyon, heading toward a juncture where the remaining three of us would split up. This juncture was the turnoff I looked for but didn't find last summer, the place where the main road leaves the canyon. From there, Stuart and I would walk and sample one drainage each; these were between 2 and 3 miles in length and drained toward toward the main road south of camp. Pete would take one truck toward camp, sampling along the way; he would then pick Stuart and I up later in the day. We would leave the second truck in the main wash of Pennsylvania Canyon close to the point where the three of us split up, and Floyd would pick it up and drive it to camp at the end of his day.

On our way down the canyon, the three of us turned up a side canyon to look at some prospects. We dinked around a couple old mining cabins, inspecting them inside and out, a required exploration pastime. One shack showed signs of fairly recent use, signs that were verified by dates on the most recent newspaper and a wall calendar. We took mental note of all the miscellaneous supplies and gear strewn here and there, and found a large spool of shiny-new, thick copper wire. Then we moved on, making our way to the point where we would part ways.

Is it the hill in the foreground, or the hill going out of the next wash?

We left the truck for Floyd in the main wash, that large sandy area in the foreground of the Google Earth image, and then we drove up the side road in the truck Stuart and I had used the day before. Either right at the turn out of the wash or a short way in, we came to a steep hill that the truck couldn't climb. Our driver, Pete, backed down, Stuart and I got out, and Pete tried running the truck at the hill to get up as much speed as possible. The back tires spun: the truck clearly wasn’t in four-wheel drive, even though the transfer case was in 4H and the hubs had been rotated from free to locked. After several attempts and some miscellaneous head-scratching, we finally determined that the driver’s side hub really wasn’t in the locked position; not only that, we couldn't persuade it to go in, even with the judicious use of a rock hammer or two. The truck didn't have operable 4WD.

After we discussed our options, Stuart eagerly went on ahead to traverse and sample his drainage, starting from the bottom of the hill instead of the more convenient, and half-mile-away, top of the hill. Pete and I were left to deal with two trucks, one that had a useful 4WD option, and one that didn't. We turned the funky truck around and started back up the main road in the wide and sandy Pennsylvania Canyon dry wash. Maybe we could trade trucks and leave Floyd with this one; afterall, he wouldn't need 4WD to get back to our starting point at the saddle.

Uh, no. As soon as we got very far into the sand of the sand wash - soft, roiled sand had constituted the road for the last hundred yards at least - we were stuck. Both trucks had come down through the sand just fine. The damaged truck had come down in two-wheel drive without operable four-wheel drive - it would not make the return journey upstream through the sand.

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.

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

Friday - Back from the Road

Yes, we are finally back at our little house, back from being gone for a whole two weeks, traveling back and forth between Reno and the lake - back and forth, back and forth - more times than I care to mention. We stopped in Middlegate on our return; hence the photo, looking to the east through the window and screen door of Middlegate Station toward Middlegate The Place. My mind feels just about as clear as the hills and mountains look.
The night before, Middlegate The Place, with the Shoe Tree visible through the notch, looked serene in the evening light, as the sun went down and turned the Desatoya Mountains red.
Looking the other way, West Gate showed no sign of it's usual windmill, which was still lying on the ground waiting for repairs when we drove through.

Care to make a phone call?

We had great burgers, decent to good beers, and played a few uninspired games of pool. The usual Middlegate drama was taking place in the bar, though we heard only bits and pieces, off and on.

I'm in some kind of muddle-headed state and somewhat incapacitated regarding decisions about travel - which courses and field trips should I take, what stops along the way should I make. I'm travel-worn and peopled out. (People-worn and traveled out?)

Above: Tangled, prickly, but still blooming (Russian thistle AKA tumbleweed ).

Prior to leaving two weeks ago, I had plans to visit yet another past field area in the next couple or three days, then non-finalized plans for side trips on the way to and from the coming GSA meeting. I have, today, been wondering about changing my GSA plans (once again) in order to make it to a poorly scheduled SEG field workshop on uranium deposits in Albuquerque, which would mean flying to Portland instead of driving, would mean leaving GSA two days early because the course overlaps with the meeting even though they call it "post-meeting," and would mean flying from Portland to Albuquerque and then flying back to some possibly nearby (or not) western airport.

Or, instead of that, I could go to an expensive field course on copper deposits in Arizona, which conveniently follows - by several days so as not to be too crowded in time and place - the Northwest Mining Association Convention in December. The copper course is run by people who know what they are doing. (Not that the uranium course isn't, mind you.) I'll probably do the latter (copper). I'd need to sign up for the uranium course today; I'll need to sign up for the copper course by next weekend. Besides, the price of copper is holding; the price of uranium isn't.

The sign said Middlegate, but where were we, really?

While crossing Eighmile Flat on our way to Middlegate, we were approached rapidly from behind by two flashing, wailing, Churchill County sheriff vehicles. They beat us to Middlegate by several minutes. Why were they there? Does anyone really know? Hopefully the answer will not be found in Stephen King's Desperation, which I am currently reading.

Other questions need to be answered - will I stay one night with a cousin on my way up to Portland? Will I spend more than one night at the lake on the way? Will I make an Oregon detour on my way back? Or should I just blow all that off and fly up to Alaska for about a week. Maybe I'll just stay here and stare at a wall until I regain some internal mental composure.

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.

Map Area in Meadow Valley Wash

We - MOH and I - recently returned from a trip that took us to points south. It was kind of a quick trip, but we did manage to drive by the first area I ever mapped professionally, back in the uranium exploration days of the late 1970's.

This first map area is in Meadow Valley Wash, about 19 km (12 miles) south of Caliente, Nevada, just north of the Boyd railroad siding (general location map). Meadow Valley Wash is a river most of its 177 km or 110 miles (length according to Wikipedia), especially south from Panaca. I saw intermittent stream symbols on the map only intermittently (ha!) in the area northeast of Panaca. It's headwaters are in the White Rock Mountains and Wilson Creek Range on the Nevada-Utah border northeast of Panaca. From Panaca it then flows mostly southward towards the Colorado River, via the Muddy River, which it enters near Moapa, Nevada. The Muddy River flows into northern Lake Mead.

Meadow Valley Wash is prone to flooding. One recent big flood was in 2005. The shapes of things have changed since the last time I was in the area 31 years ago. The river channel has moved around some in the Rainbow Canyon area between Caliente and Elgin; some old roads or river crossings appear to be gone.

And now I've gotten away from the main point of this post, which was my first professional mapping experience. We were in the area to look for uranium in the Tertiary volcanic rocks in the area of the Caliente caldera complex, and also in and near the younger Kane Springs Wash caldera to the south and southwest.

The altered and strongly hematite-goethite±jarosite-stained zone - that mass of light orange to red-orange to red-brown rocks in the photo above - is part of a rhyolite flow, dome, and dike complex probably associated with the formation of the Caliente caldera. The altered rhyolitic rocks - which overlie altered older andesite flows and flow breccias, and underlie mostly unaltered younger ash-flow tuff units in the map area - gave a strong radiometric anomaly, which ultimately proved to be due to high thorium (and at least normally high potassium) rather than from high uranium. We thoroughly mapped and sampled the area of interest and took a lot of ground scintillometer readings. Our scintillometers read in α (alpha), β (beta), γ (gamma), and Total Counts, and looked something like the scintillometer in this picture.

Continued at Our Camp in Meadow Valley Wash.


Some References:
Harding, A.E., Scott, R.B., Mehnert, H.H., and Snee, L.W., 1995, Evidence of the Kane Springs Wash Caldera in the Meadow Valley Mountains, Southeastern Nevada: in Scott, R.B. and Swadley, WC, eds., Geologic Studies in the Basin and Range - Colorado Plateau transition in southeastern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona, 1992, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 2056-E, p. 131-179.

Page, W.R., Dixon, G.L., Rowley, P.D., and Brickey, D.W., 2005, Geologic map of parts of the Colorado, White River, and Death Valley groundwater flow systems, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona: NBMG Map 150, map and text.

Rowley, P.D., Nealey, L.D., Unruh, D.M., Snee, L.W., Mehnert, H.H., Anderson, R.E., and Gromme, C.S., 1995, Stratigraphy of Miocene ash-flow tuffs in and near the Caliente caldera complex, southeastern Nevada and southwestern Utah: in Scott, R.B. and Swadley, WC, eds., Geologic Studies in the Basin and Range - Colorado Plateau transition in southeastern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona, 1992, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 2056-B, p. 43-88.

Mountain Mahogany and Rhyolite

The mountain mahogony, this particular one first seen here, is a wonderful tree common at higher elevations in Nevada and other parts of the intermountain west, often in areas just below tree line. It's plant-association range in Nevada is from the upper sagebrush zone into the piñon-juniper zone to just below tree line, sometimes with limber pine and other high-elevation trees. Elevation range in Nevada is commonly from 1200 to 2700 m (3900 to 8850 ft), but it can be found as high as 3050 m (10,000 ft).

I first really noticed mountain mahogany while working out in the field one summer in the Deer Lodge or Stateline mining district, a silver-gold district located on the Nevada-Utah state line, due east of Pioche. At Stateline, silver and gold occur in quartz veins in Tertiary volcanic rocks - rhyolite and andesite - and particular quartz veins in the area contained the first chlorargyrite I ever saw in real life, outside a mineral collections or museums. Chlorargyrite, sometimes called cerargyrite, is a somewhat rare silver-chloride mineral formed through supergene processes.

It was still early in the summer when we arrived, having moved north from our previous camp south of Caliente. A crew-leader had already found some uranium and the company had already staked a small number of claims. I was briefly involved in the claim staking, which meant I was running lines in rocky terrain through dense underbrush that was composed mainly of mountain mahogany bushes and trees, although I didn't know it at the time because I was so involved in keeping the lines straight with Brunton compass foresights and backsights. Later, a real claim staking crew came in and re-surveyed our claims while staking more.

The uranium occurence was found from the air, by helicopter, using a spectrometer that measured U, Th, K, and total counts. The occurrence was centered on one claim owned by an individual prospector, with the anomalous uranium contained in a mysterious high-level, quartz-eye rhyolite intruding a Tertiary volcanic pile of ash-flow tuffs and flow-dome complexes. The intrusive was limited in its known surface extent, and we wanted to find more of it.

We set about geologic mapping, four young geologists driving to the property from camp every day in one half-ton, four-wheel-drive pickup, over rocky dirt roads that made our front-seat crowding almost unbearable. Sometimes we could get a Las Vegas rock-and-roll radio station part way up the mountain for driving entertainment, sometimes not.

The mountain mahoganies were concentrated especially on a northwest- to north-trending ridge line just barely inside the Nevada border. I especially remember the long, north-trending part of the ridge, where the patches of mountain mahogany seemed especially dense, and where the ridge was underlain by flow-banded rhyolite weathering into thin, shaly-looking chips.

I walked up and down and across that ridge numerous times, around and under many scrubby to standing-tall mountain mahoganies, over and across outcrops and subcrops of pinkish rhyolite. I developed an association between the scent of mountain mahogany - distinctive everywhere across its range - and flow-banded rhyolite. For years, anytime I would catch that scent on the wind, especially on hot summer days, I'd automatically start looking for rhyolite. I wonder if the same thing would happen now, if I went back to the source of the association, back to that long ridge high above Deer Lodge Canyon.

Some References:
Stotebury, H. W., 1921, Report on the Stateline Mining District, Iron Co., Utah, Lincoln, Co., Nevada: scanned by Nevada Bureua of Mines and Geology, 9 pages.

The Uranium Occurrence:
260. Peak claims (nos. 1-1 2)
Location: T. 1 N., R. 71 E.; near the summit of the high peak at the head of Deer Lodge Canyon.
Development: Bulldozer cuts.
Radioactivity: Background = 0.02 mR/hr.; High = 0.20 mR/hr. One sample contained 0.58 percent cU30s (but only 0.12 percent eU308).
Geology: Autunite and torbernite occur in 1- to 2-inch siliceous stringers in a white to gray rhyolite flow. Some iron-oxide staining [hematite] is present.
References: U. S. Atomic Energy Comm. Prelim. Reconn. Rept. 3535; Tschanz and Pampeyan, 1969.

from Garside, L. J., 1973, Radioactive mineral occurrences in Nevada: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Bull. 81, page 73.

More Deer Lodge Photos

In the Field

What is my favorite place to do field work? That's the subject of the November Accretionary Wedge (#14), which is being hosted by Dave Schumaker at Geology News.

I'm a little like Chris Rowan, I suppose, in that I'm not sure I really have a favorite field area - unless the entire Mojave Desert might count as a field area, or the entire state of Nevada, or... Well, you get the idea. So, my favorite field area is probably whichever one I happen to be working on when I'm out in the field.

The photo above shows some tree-covered to not-so-tree-covered hills in the center or north-center of the Northumberland caldera. The photo, which looks west towards the east front of the Toiyabe Range, was taken from the western approach to the Northumberland Mine, a closed-down gold mine at the top of Northumberland Pass, and the view is just a little to the south of West Northumberland Canyon. The highest peak in the caldera part of the photo, hides the area I got stuck out in one night back in the late 70's. Yeah, maybe that shouldn't make this a favorite area!

I spent a lot of time here, first doing some stream-sediment and rock sampling, walking around here and there, mostly from the tops of drainages to the bottoms, looking for high scintillometer readings to indicate the presence of uranium. Later, I spent quite a bit of time mapping parts of the caldera: the northern, central, and southern parts - bits and pieces, here and there, a lot of interesting rocks, formations, faults, ring-fractures, flow-domes, slide blocks, and rocks younger and older than the caldera itself. After that, I was given a fairly large budget for the time, and we started drilling like crazy, at one time having 3 core rigs and 1 or 2 rotary rigs drilling at once (way too many at once, but fortunately 2 were about to leave). That was the first year.

The place sticks in my mind partly because I spent so much time there, from 1978 through 1981, but also because of the people I worked with, the size and fascinating geology of the area, and all the stories that go with the area. I will be writing more!

Above, you can see another view of the northern part of the caldera. This photo takes off just to the right (or north) of the first photo, and continues north, where the tuff of Hoodoo Canyon takes over, covering the Northumberland Tuff. The view looks west, like the first one, across Big Smoky Valley to the east front of the Toiyabe Range, and our first-year camp at Bowman Creek can be picked out beneath the roundish, partly snow-covered mountain just a little bit right of center (and way southeast of Nome - oh, that's an unrelated song!).

Accretionary Wedge #14: Favorite Places for Field Work

Friday Field Photos #3

The road in: the Northumberland Mine Road

Just a few quick photos from my first drilling project. Above, the photo shows the long, somewhat winding road in to Northumberland Canyon, which heads east off of old Highway 8A (now Nevada S.R. 376) a couple miles south of the turn off to Bowman Creek, and which goes through the north part of the Northumberland caldera.
Drill site number one is on top of the orange-colored hill. The old Bowman Creek camp is way in the distance across Big Smoky Valley, on the east flank of the Toiyabe Range, just behind the left part of the orange hill.
Drill site number two is at near the base of the white, tuffaceous cliff on an inconspicuous flat area above the bushes. The white cliff is just below the vitrophyre (not basal but close to it) of the Tertiary tuff of Hoodoo Canyon, the orange-brown welded ash-flow tuff forming the top of the hill. The same volcanic formation makes up the orange hill in the second photo.

These drill sites, and many others, were drilled a long time ago by a company that doesn't exist in the same form that it existed in back then. Back then, well that was the late 1970's, and we were drilling for uranium in the second uranium boom. (There have been, so far, exactly three uranium booms - not sure how the current one is doing.) We drilled with conventional, non-RC rotary rigs (and core rigs) in the days before reverse-circulation rotary rigs were standard on exploration drilling programs. Sampling was not considered a problem because we probed the holes with a down-the-hole logging tool that measured gamma and total counts, and also gave us a bunch of electric readings (S.P., resistivity, and conductivity, I think). The down-the-hole logs were almost enough to do the intracaldera stratigraphy without even looking at the rocks, once I had looked at the rocks and logs long enough to figure out what the Hay they meant.

Ah, those were the days? First drilling program, not knowing a darn thing about anything! But we did dance next to the drill rig; I'm not sure I could really put a picture of that up here, though! Nowadays, dancing would be considered unsafe, and we would be considered almost too young. Maybe I can dig up a photo of a late night by the fire: drilling went into a very cold, icy, but mostly snow-free December.