Friday Fault Photos: East Klamath Lake Fault Zone

I'm taking a bit of a backstep in our journeys to and from the Portland GSA meeting - back to the East Klamath Fault Zone because, after all, it's Friday. (Google Maps location of this fault exposure.)

These photos are my attempts at digitizing 35mm slides taken in 1998, by way of holding the slides up to the sky and shooting them with my 10MP digital Cannon. Results: contrasty, strange color balance, a little bit of bluriness, but better than nothing until I get a slide scanner (or take the slides out for a pro job). Ah, but the blues are great! Can't tell what the original film was, probably an Ektachrome of some kind.
Photo from the base of the fault looking northwest across Upper Klamath Lake. The rubbly material in the foreground is rock in the footwall of the fault, basalitic cinders and bombs, possibly brecciated.
The fault! The brownish rocks seemingly piled against the fault on the left side of the photo are what I interpreted to be older colluvium in the hangingwall of the fault.
The fault plane with a short-handled sledge for scale. Fault slickensides and striations are approximately parallel to the hammer handle. (It was very steep up there, and hard to get everything to align perfectly.) A bit of footwall breccia can be seen in the lower left. This photo will not enlarge.
Another photo of grooves on the fault plane, with the same hammer for scale. The hammer handle is roughly parallel to the fault grooves and slickenlines. This photo will also not enlarge.
Another view of the fault plane, this time looking toward the southeast. The fault plane is steeper than this photo suggests; I didn't try rotating it (the photo, not the fault). There were two ages (at least) of colluvium on the slope: the older, poorly sorted, crudely layered, bouldery debris appeared to be in the hangingwall of the fault; the finer-grained, layered material beneath a rabbit brush in the right part of the photo mimicked the current slope and appeared unaffected by the fault.
I encourage you to walk up and look at this for yourself - the views and the fault are both spectacular.

Inside the Interzone

On the fourth day of my journey to the GSA meeting, I made my way to Portland from Eugene via some non-interstate roads that took me through Corvalis, home of The Interzone, Lockwood's favorite coffee shop.
I went inside and met that coffee shop denizen, the geological, political, satirical blogger at Outside the Interzone.

It's a colorful place, bustling with activity. Students and others come and go, and people hang around writing, studying, blogging, and what have you.

Bicycles are everywhere outside, which is a good thing, because if you don't happen to have a university parking sticker, you are unlikely to find a nearby parking space that lasts longer than an hour (or was it two?). I didn't want to feed the meter, because the meter maid was out in full force, looking for people with California plates anyone overstaying their welcome. I parked in three different parking places, the last one being several blocks away.

But don't let that stop you from dropping in: the coffee is good, the company is excellent!
Lockwood was a great host. He immediately bought me an Americano with room for cream, then we both sat at his table with our respective laptops plugged in and open, looked at routes to Portland on Google Maps, chatted, got over-coffeed (I did, anyway), read some blogs, and chatted. As I was leaving, Lockwood gave me a specimen of natrolite in calcite, which I was duly instructed to give to Callan Bentley of NOVA Geoblog when I got to the geoblogger meetup in Portland Monday night (photo here). Mission accomplished!
Yes, I really was there, on the inside, looking outside at the Interzone sign.

Travel Day Three, Part #3: Crater Lake

Moving on with my road trip up to last month's GSA meeting in Portland, my next stop past Annie Creek was Crater Lake itself. The east and south parts of the rim road were closed, but the exit out the north was open (currently all but the entrance from the south to the Rim Visitor Center are closed). I haven't been on the north exit/entrance to the park for a long time, and the sidetrip off Highway 97 added only a few extra miles (although also a couple extra hours!). The gray photo is from the Crater Lake webcam earlier this morning - normally you can see across the lake from this location.

The first five photos were taken from three stops here, which are all very close together on the West Rim Drive.
This is a fairly standard photo of Crater Lake, with Wizard Island in the west part of the lake, and Llao Rock on the crater rim beyond. Wizard Island, an andesitic cinder cone, formed about 7,200 years ago (Bacon, 2008 and Cranson, 2001/2002).
Llao Rock, the massive cliff on the crater rim behind Wizard Island, is a rhyodacitic dome, with a flow beneath the clouds to the right, that erupted about 200 years before the climactic eruption of Mt. Mazama. The whitish layer beneath Llao rock is an air-fall ash and pumice layer from an eruption just prior to formation of Llao Rock. That explosive eruption about 200 years prior to the climactic eruption produced a widespread ash bed found in northern Washington, southeastern Oregon, and western Nevada, where it was called the Tsoyawata Bed by J. O. Davis before it had been correlated back to its source at Crater Lake (Davis, 1977; Davis, 1978; Bacon, 1983; Davis, 1985).
As usual, the water of Crater Lake was exceptionally blue.
If you make it to Crater Lake when most of the roads are open, be sure to take the boat tour out to Wizard Island (the hike down - and then back up - the crater rim to the Cleetwood Cove boat dock is steep and rocky). After landing at Wizard Island, you can climb the cone to the top, where the trees are fascinating, and where you can also see the cinder cone crater. Then you can get a later boat back to the Cleetwood Trail.
This photo looks across the lake at the west side of Wizard Island, where an andesitic flow reaches toward the west crater wall. The Devil's Backbone can be seen across the flow on the rim beyond, just right of the low mass of trees. This is an andesite dike - the andesite of Devil's Backbone - going up the crater wall (enlarge photo - the upper part of the dike appears to be in shadow). The dike cut through the older rocks about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago (Bacon, 2008).
At stop three (centered here on Google Maps), I looked across the lake toward Cloudcap, which is mostly in the clouds, and I noticed something a ways to the left of it, on the crater wall.
That something can barely be see in this photo, between the trees on the far side of the lake.
Here it is, enlarged a bit, a light-colored line on the opposite crater wall.
It's the Wineglass, after which the Wineglass Tuff was named! Enlarge the photo, and you'll see that the Wineglass is a wineglass-shaped talus slope beneath a layer of Wineglass Tuff (aka Wineglass Welded Tuff of Williams, 1942). Just to the left of the Wineglass is a prominent cliff called The Pallisades, formed by the andesite of Roundtop, which has a K-Ar age of 159±13 ka (Bacon, 2008).
Okay, now I've moved on to stop 4: "Danger Will Robinson!" - and what geologist could resist going beyond this sign? (Another photo of the lake and Wizard Island, ho hum.)
Instead of obeying the sign, I followed my geological instincts to this cliff edge, where I found some great glacial striations and grooves on some lava rock (possibly the andesite of Applegate Peak, which has a K-Ar date of 258±8 ka to the south - Bacon, 2008). The grooves point approximately toward the Wineglass - a northeasterly direction.
Here's an enlargement of the grooves and striations, with a field sandal for scale. It looks to me like the ice was moving to the southwest (lower right in the photo), but I didn't examine the outcrop in detail while there.
The nature of the day was apparent at the Watchman Overlook, where many were standing around waiting for the mist to clear.
The mist came and went, ebbing and flowing, finally clearing for a clear view of Wizard Island. You can see the crater of the cinder cone in this photo, along with an andesitic flow that erupted from vents near the base of the cone. The flow comes almost to the edge of the lake at the Watchman Overlook.
While watching the mist come and go, I took a few photos toward Llao Rock, and just happened to get a bit of the Devil's Backbone in the picture, just beyond the dark foreground mass, in the mist near the water's edge.
Here you can see the lower part of the Devil's Backbone dike, beyond that darkly shadowed mass of rock in the foreground. Beyond that, you can see Llao Rock and the white ash layer below it from a different angle, through the mist. The dark rock in the foreground is part of the andesite of the west wall, which has a K-Ar age of 70±4 ka (Bacon, 2008).
This is the andesitic flow on the west side of Wizard Island, with some deep blue to turquoise water in the shallows around the little islands and in the coves and bays in between them. In case you're wondering what Crater Lake looks like beneath all the water, click here for a great underwater view as seen from The Watchman. You'll see that there is another cinder cone in Crater Lake, one completely under water.
I didn't climb the trail to The Watchman Lookout Station; it looked a little inhospitable to me.

Some References:Bacon, 1983, Eruptive History of Mount Mazama and Crater Lake Caldera, Cascade Range, U.S.A.: Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, v.18, p.57-115.

Bacon, C.R., 2008, Geologic Map of Mount Mazama and Crater Lake Caldera, Oregon, Including the Database for the Geologic Map of Mount Mazama and Crater Lake Caldera, Oregon by David W. Ramsey, Dillon R. Dutton, and Charles R. Bacon: U.S. Geol. Survey Map SIM-2832.

Cranson, K.R., 2001/2002, Cinder Cones in Crater Lake National Park: Nature Notes From Crater Lake v. 32-33.

Davis, J.O., 1977, Quaternary tephrochronology of the Lake Lahontan area, Nevada and California: Univ. Idaho PhD dissertation, 168 p [listed here].

Davis, J.O., 1978, Quaternary tephrochronology of the Lake Lahontan area, Nevada and California: Nevada Archeological Survey Research Paper 7, 137 p [pdf].

Davis, J.O., 1985, Correlation of late Quaternary tephra layers in a long Pluvial sequence near Summer Lake, Oregon: Quaternary Research, v. 23, p. 38–53.

Williams, Howel, 1942, The geology of Crater Lake National Park, Oregon: Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 540, 162 p.

Travel Day Three, Part #2: Annie Creek

After making the unexpected turn onto Oregon Highway 62, I drove toward Crater Lake and stopped at the first pullout, the entrance to the Ponderosa picnic area (Google Maps location) - named, no doubt, for the magnificent Ponderosa pine trees that dominate the area. You can view a nicer version of this map of Crater Lake at Ponderosa, and it's also the first pit stop location after turning off from Highway 97.
I just love the trees you drive through on this part of the road!
The second unmarked pullout past Ponderosa, located here on Google Maps has good views across the canyon formed by Annie Creek, along with some more wonderful trees. Look for trails, possibly made by geologists on former field trips.
The walls on both sides of the canyon are steep. In some places you can just barely see over the edge; in other places you can clamber down the slippery upper slopes - don't slide too far, there are columnar cliffs below.
An upper layer of bedded, air-fall ash overlies an andesitic, scoria-rich ash flow deposit (called "andesite scoria" on signs in the area), which has weathered into crude columns. Cooling cracks in the andesite scoria do not appear to make it through the overlying deposits.

UPDATE 23Jul2019: I'd like to clarify that the thin, light-colored layer just below the surface is the air-fall ash. Beneath that are brownish layers with only vague columnar formations. Beneath that are lighter colored deposits with obvious columnar weathering. The entire cliff section from the light colored columnar rock to the darker bedded layers form a thick zoned section of ash-flow tuff erupted from Mount Mazama during its climactic eruption about 7700 years ago. The entire deposit is zoned from lighter colored, more silicic, rhyodacitic material below to darker colored, more mafic, andesitic material above (CVO).

On to the next stop, the fourth unmarked pullout past Ponderosa (Google Maps location).

It's here that I slid down the upper ash layer, down to the andesite scoria below. The green masses above the dark rock I have my foot on consist of trees and plants across the canyon.
This is the same dark rock in the foreground, and now we can see the steep canyon wall on the other side of Annie Creek, with a dark talus slope below the columnar unit. I'm standing on the uppermost part of the andesite scoria.
Looking to the side from nearly the same vantage point, we can see some of the irregular shapes formed by erosion of the bedrock. This looks like a hoodoo to me.
The canyon at this same unnamed overlook is really pretty, and includes this waterfall where a small side stream flows over the andesite scoria.
More of the same canyon wall just to the left of the previous photo, with hanging gardens, trees growing on the side of the canyon, and layering in the columnar andesite scoria.
And here I've finally found some incipient pinnacle shapes. This is about as good as it gets below Annie Falls. The road to The Pinnacles overlook, with rock that looks like this, was closed.
Possibly the cooling cracks have extended from the columnar scoria a little ways into to the overlying ash deposit here, forming these miniature pinnacles.
This is Godfrey Glen, which can be seen from the Fossil Fumaroles overlook (Google Maps location). The upper ash is the tree-covered slope former above the dark unit of the andesitic scoria ash-flow deposit. Columns and pinnacles are especially prevalent near the top and middle (or bottom?) of this dark unit. The golden brownish rock below consists of a dacitic pumice flow deposit. All this rock was erupted during the climactic eruption of Mt. Mazama - 6,845±50 carbon-14 years B.P. or about 7,700 years ago (Bacon, 1983) - which then collapsed to form the caldera that is now filled by Crater Lake.
Weird, hoodoo shapes in andesite scoria in the foreground.
A couple pinnacles across the canyon. Annie Creek can be seen in the bottom of the photo.

Some References:
Bacon, 1983, Eruptive History of Mount Mazama and Crater Lake Caldera, Cascade Range [ref only], U.S.A.: Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, v.18, p.57-115.

Decker, R., and Decker, B., 1995, Road Guide to Crater Lake National Park: Double Decker Press, 47 pp (?).

Williams, H., 1942, The Geology of Crater Lake National Park, Oregon With a reconnaissance of the Cascade Range southward to Mount Shasta: Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 540, 162 pp.

Crater Lake & Mount Mazama, at the Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) website.

Mazama Ash, at the CVO website.

Summary of the Eruptive History of Mount Mazama, at the CVO website.

Road Song: Telegraph Road

I've been a bit down in the dumps today, so I've been going through old and depressing songs, trying to find something to cheer me up. Maybe that seems a bit perverse, but watching sad movies works sometimes, so why not sad songs - and anyway, the end hints at a happy ending.




Dire Straits: Telegraph Road (lyrics)
Album: Love over Gold, 1982

NOTE: Videos of Telegraph Road are usually found in two parts, with the first part ususally ending at the end of the lyrics, before the long, final instrumental section. This pair of videos is split toward the end of the lyrical part. I don't really like that, but I thought the recording was better overall. Also, there is no official Dire Straits webpage, because they have been disbanded for several years.

As you can probably tell from the post title, this is one of those hundreds of road songs that I thought I had on a list somewhere. In fact, I thought I had recorded this song on one of a series of 90-minute tapes I made in the late 1980's (that was before one could record CD's). I now have a CD version of two of those tapes, recorded for me earlier this year by a geo-colleague who had the foresight to save copies. The CD also contains the contents of two road-song tapes made at about the same time by that geo-type. And it contains additional songs - including what was a non-road-song tape - and some movie clips pertinent to exploration, travel, or having otherwise cultish or historic value.

I'm pretty sure that I made three road song tapes, and the CD contains two of those. The first one was called "Life in the Fast Lane." The second was called "Tucson to Tucumcari." The third, I just don't know. "On the Road Again" - maybe?