A Quick Note about Earth Science Week

Yes, it's Earth Science Week, has been all week since the 10th, will be all week through the 16th. As usual, the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology is doing it's own thing for Earth Science Week: a one-day field trip, held both this coming Saturday and Sunday, the 16th and 17th. The field trip is called, "In Search of Tufa, Tuff, and Tough Rocks." Go to that link to sign up.

These field trips are always good, are open to the public, and often have several geologists besides the main field trip leaders along for question answering. I'm sorry to say that I won't be making it this year.

For anyone interested, whether going or not, the road log for the field trip is already available online, check out some great pictures of tufa domes! On the trip - or if you follow the trip guide at a later time - you'll see tufa, tuff, and some granodiorite (the tough rocks). You'll also travel across some old Lake Lahontan shorelines, northeast of Reno, NV, near Pyramid Lake.

A Million Things and DonorsChoose

There is a lot going on around the geoblogosphere (and more than that) and it has been harder for me to post during this most recent round of 10 hour days than I remember it being back when I started blogging. Maybe my posts were much simpler then, just a photo or two, some update about the weather, a link or two, and move on.
First, before I get distracted, let me point you to what I think is one of the most important things going on this week and into next month: Anne Jefferson and Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous are sponsoring their annual Earth Science DonorsChoose Challenge, which brings earth science tools, projects, and supplies to students and classrooms in need of your support. Go to their giving page, where you will find several projects worth funding, as well as links to other Earth Science giving pages including one by Maitri of Maitri's VatulBlog. As a bonus, HP is matching the first $50,000 raised during the Science Bloggers for the Schools challenge, this week through November 9th. So, get to it!

Also, it's National Fossil Day, and Anne has a great post up about the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in Oregon, which I visited very briefly this summer, and reported on equally as briefly. :)

Back to my rant: I get home after 10 hours at work, sometime between 5:10 and 5:30, and I've been doing that now for almost an entire month. After getting home, I might read a little online, have dinner, then maybe I'll have time to watch a Stargate Universe episode with MOH if he's not working nights. Then, after dinner, maybe I'll hang out online just a little more via mobile after getting ready for bed, or maybe I'll read. (Currently I'm reading - very slowly I might add - Roads: Driving America's Great Highways by Larry McMurtry).

In the morning, my alarm goes off at 4:30, I snooze it until as late as 5:00, make coffee, have coffee while reading blogs and news until maybe 6:00, at which time if I'm actually editing an already written post I might push it until 6:10 or so, then I get ready very quickly so I can be out the door at 6:40.

I think about blogging, not constantly, but often. I think about my many blog ideas, am in the midst of a few things already started, have Wedges to think about, and other stories in progress from earlier this year or last - and I bog down, or give up, or something - because the truth is, it just doesn't seem like there is that much time in the day.

I have access to a computer at work (not my computer, which would be much, much faster), but have not felt at all comfortable writing anything, even during coffee breaks or lunch. Instead, a couple-three of us get together and yak about things: work things, geological things, world of finance things, other things. One thing different than a couple years ago: I share a large room (a coreshed) with one or two other geo-types and don't have an office space to myself.

Then, on breaks between work periods, at least during these last 30 days, I've had a drive-to-meeting and drive-back-from-meeting break (two days); one whole day off, half of which was spent doing laundry; and a field-trip break (three days, all on the road). What I mean is, on breaks, I tend to be going somewhere, maybe because I'm not really traveling for work at the moment. During these various trips, I sometimes end up in a place without a good or easy-to-use internet connection, at least for a short time, or - as during the breaks over this last month - I end up in places where socializing and hanging out with other geos talking about old times, geology, the mining business, good stories, and other things takes precedence over all but the most cursory checking of things online via mobile in the late evening.

So, what this all boils down to, is that you - all my readers - are not getting many posts from me. And I don't see much to do about that right now!

Highway 8A: The Cutoff from Cedarville to the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway

After traveling past the Deep Creek Falls pullout, past Adel, Oregon, and onward past marshes or reservoirs, past interesting but unknown volcanic geology, and over at least two summits...
...we finally came into Nevada...
...and shortly came to the turnoff that was one of the primary purposes for taking the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway back into Nevada, instead of another, much shorter route. That turnoff is the north end of Highway 8A as it still exists today. Highway Eight A, Yay!
The sign says, "Cedarville: 71 miles." There is pavement in Cedarville, CA, west to the Nevada border, but none beyond that, and none from this turnoff south to the Nevada border.
Will we see a sign proclaiming the road as S.R. 8A? We turned south near this mini-kiosk for the Sheldon Antelope Wildlife Refuge to find out.
Looking to the south, it became apparent that this fine-looking dirt road isn't signed 8A from the north end, though it may still be signed 8A from the southwest end, just east of Cedarville, CA, in Nevada where this portion of old Highway 8A starts. (Where does a road start or end? This one starts in CA, goes northeast to the former continuation of 8A and 8, which are now Highway 140 and Highway 95, not entirely respectively, also part of the Winnemuccca-to-the-Sea Highway.)
Current signs indicate that the road — the entire remaining portion of Highway 8A — is "Not Regularly Maintained" and is "Closed in Winter." I suspect that the road is actually open during the winter (not blocked) but that it isn't plowed, can drift shut or get completely buried during snowstorms, and may turn muddy. I also suspect that the sign is there to indicate that people without backcountry experience or who are unfamiliar with the area are not advised to enter, especially in winter. This signage may have something to do with a winter saga that turned out okay, but looked bleak for a while. The last time this road was marked 8A on Nevada road maps was in 1980-1981.

[Note: if the Stolpa's indeed headed due east from the place they abandonded their truck on Highway 8A some unknown miles east of the non-town of Vya, NV, as reported, they would have eventually hooked up with the north-south portion of Highway 140 where it is part of Highway 95 — after crossing 50 miles of rugged canyon country while going entirely against the grain of canyons and mountains. Possibly they could have veered northward toward Gridley Lake, where there may be some active ranches; had they continued due east, they would have either had to cross the Pine Forest Range or, if veering southward to avoid that range, they would have ended up in the northeast arm of the Black Rock Desert, where there might also be active ranches.]

Sidebar: The Kims

View "Points on 8A" in a Larger Map

Points on 8A (above): Point A, the NV-CA state line; Point B, near Vya, NV; Point C, random location on 8A, possibly a good truck-abandoning location (NOT!); Point D, 8A joins 140. (Update: These points can currently only be seen by clicking through to Google Maps; 24Sept2014)

The earlier sign, before the turnoff, essentially indicates that it's 71 miles southwest from the junction of Highways 140 and 8A to the nearest services in Cedarville, CA, unless, of course, you happen to be going to Gerlach, NV, in which case services are a mite farther south. The longest interval of no services that I've noticed recently says 163 miles, leaving Tonopah to the east on Route 6, going toward Warm Springs and the so-called E.T. Highway.
We turned around, being entirely unprepared to drive so far out of our way and shortly running out of trip time...
...and continued our wayward journey toward Winnemucca on the Winnemucca-to-the-Sea Highway.

To be continued...

Where in the West: Rose Spit, B.C., Canada

Rose Spit, with North Beach to the right and East Beach to the left.

The October Where in the West location was won by Ron Schott (no Schott rule was invoked) for finding Rose Spit, which forms the northeasternmost tip of Graham Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, Canada, about 35 km NE of Massett. The area can be viewed anytime the weather is clear and anytime one happens to get on the wrong side of the plane from Anchorage to Seattle (the right or west side), which MOH and I did about a year and a half ago, while returning from the start of the Iditarod.

The linear, north-trending East Beach in the foreground, with North Beach's beach ridges beyond and to the west.

Howard won the geology portion of WITW by noting the beach, spit, beach ridges, salt marshes or brackish lagoons between the beach ridges. I can't swear to the nature of the water between the beach ridges, but brackish to salty seems likely. Howard raised the question of whether the beach ridges are actually cheniers, which are beach ridges deposited on tidal mud flats or "on an alluvial plain of silt, clay, or peat on prograding deltas or coastal plains." I haven't found any information about what the sand ridges at Rose Spit are deposited on, so will have to go with beach ridge for now.
Also seen at Rose Spit:

"dissipative beaches backed by prograding foredunes on North Beach; reflective cuspate cobble beaches with a sandy low tide terrace on NW Rose Spit; and multiple-barred beaches backed by migrating foredunes and parabolic dunes on East Beach."

Pictures of these features — and much, much more — can be seen here, on page 3 and 4 of the pdf.

And from Overview of Geologic Hazards to Offshore Petroleum Development – British Columbia Continental Shelf:

"Megaripples, sand waves and sand ridges are particularly important in the vicinity of Rose Spit and Rose Bar at the northeast corner of Dogfish Bank. These features are the result of storm-driven sand motion on the shelf under the influence of topographic steering of tidal and wind-driven currents. In this area amplitudes of the sand waves and sand ridges can exceed 6 m. "

"The eastern coastline of Graham Island is largely dominated by a thick sequence of unconsolidated glacial outwash deposits capped locally by Holocene dunes. These sediments are retreating rapidly, with the eroded sediments being swept northwards towards Rose Spit. While average erosion rates apear to be about 1 m per year, retreat is highly episodic; in 1992-1993, for example, 11 m of land was lost at Cape Fife and 1.5 m was lost in a 24-hour period at the same site in 1994. Numerous, ephemeral shore-attached bars are associated with the high rates of longshore drift along eastern Graham Island. "

View Rose Spit at Flash Earth.

Some References:
Bornhold, B., and Harper, J., 2002, Overview of Geologic Hazards to Offshore Petroleum Development - British Columbia Continental Shelf, in BC Offshore Hydrocarbon Development, Report of the Scientific Review Panel (January 2002), Appendix 11.

Otvos, E., 2005, Cheniers, in M. Schwartz (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Coastal Science: Springer, p. 233-235.

Walker, I.J., and Barrie, J.V., 2006, Geomorphology and sea-level rise on one of Canada’s most ‘sensitive’ coasts: Northeast Graham Island, British Columbia: Journal of Coastal Research, SI 39.

Where in the West: October 2010

Where in the West, if you might remember, features some location in the western part of the northern hemisphere. This time, the unknown area includes water - a fair amount - mostly likely ruling out Nevada and any other intermountain state! Both photos, taken from an airplane, will enlarge somewhat.
Where is this place, and what are some of the landforms?

I'll be out of town over the weekend, will check in via mobile when possible, but I might not be able to respond until Monday or so.