Looking For Detachment

Things You Find in the Field: Skull and Bones

2012-02-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

MOH and I found these scattered bones on the flood plain of Slough Creek near Highway 50 at Devils Gate when coming back from our breccia hike. We thought it might be a sheep (or more than one sheep) because of the bits of wool (or light colored fur?) that were scattered all around.

I'm not terribly good at identifying bones, but found these comparison skulls: cow, sheep, mule deer, and another mule deer, enlarged from this page. Still can't tell! Any ideas?

Coarse-Grained Calcite in the Devils Gate Breccia

2012-02-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I meant to include one of these photos in the main post about the breccia at Devils Gate, near Eureka, NV. Instead of one extra photo, I hereby give you three.
The matrix between the dark gray limestone breccia fragments consists of coarse-grained white calcite, with the calcite crystals intergrown in a fashion that I've not seen before.
Here's a photo zoomed in on crystals near the tiny bush in the previous photo. This time my boot barely made it into the photo.

ENE of Center: Breccia at Devils Gate

2012-02-06T08:53:00.000-08:00

About 35 miles east-northeast of The Geographic Center of Nevada, both Highway 50 and Slough Creek go through a gap in the south end of Whistler Mountain, a gap or notch known as Devils Gate.

Note: Devils Gates are scattered all over Nevada, including a second Eureka County Devils Gate located north of Eureka, west of the paved road between Eureka and Carlin. Our Devils Gate, the one in this post, is located about ten miles east of Lone Mountain and seven miles northwest of Eureka (MSRMaps location).

Coming into Devils Gate from the west just before sundown.

A large breccia can be seen high on the carbonate cliffs north of Highway 50 when you approach the gate from the west. MOH and I first noticed this breccia several months back; we pulled over to check it out with binocs, then mosied on, filing the place away for a future hike. Finally, coming back from Serbian Christmas, the time was right.

We pulled off the highway onto a little dirt entryway that accesses the old highway south of the main road, parked the truck, and started walking. By the way, we've had the Prius on this old road, so presumably the pullout is suitable for most vehicles. After making it across the highway, we walked down a rabbit-brush infested two-track road, crossed Slough Creek, and then bypassed a fence by walking over to its abutment against the cliff face.
As we skirted around the base of the cliff toward our goal higher in the cliffs, we made a discovery: we found a lower breccia associated with small caves and solution cavities. In the photo above, the upper, larger breccia is in a smallish, bright white patch in the far, upper left part of the cliff; the lower, smaller breccia is clearly visible in the lower right of the photo, closer to Slough Creek.

This labeled Google Earth image shows the location of the upper and lower breccias and our convenient pullout. Re: pullouts, YMMV.

The lower breccia, shown above, is easier to reach than the one high on the cliff, and is recommended if you don't feel like scaling the hillside. The lower breccia contains some large, generally elongated and subrounded carbonate breccia fragments in white calcite cement of varying thickness. The thicker, upper part of the white calcite looks vein-like to almost bedded.
Our goal, the white patch with one conspicuous dark gray fragment, is now obvious in the center of the photo.
Side-hilling up this scrabbly, brushy, talus-covered slope was tricky in places, especially where talus formed only a thin veneer over the bedrock, and where limestone beds jutted out unexpectedly, sometimes forcing a downward retreat.

MOH, on a ledge to the left of the breccia, provides a bit of scale.

This is a large breccia body with large fragments, somewhat remindful of the Titus Canyon breccia in Death Valley, though not as complex. The large to giant fragments are angular to subrounded, and are set in a matrix of coarsely crystalline white calcite. The breccia body, as exposed, appears to be mostly in one or two layers or beds of the Devonian Devils Gate Limestone; its shape could be subspherical (possibly cavern-like) or cylindrical (pipe-like).
Nearly the entire cliff face in this alcove is composed of breccia. For scale, the dark olive green ephedra bush near a curved breccia fragment (right of center) is about 3 feet high. Also, see the next photo for a closeup of the curved fragment and the same bush.
The curved fragment behind the ephedra bush shows primary layering or bedding, as does a second curved fragment below it.

Vertical to overhung cliffs of Devils Gate Limestone are towering behind me in the next shot, and I'm having trouble finding solid footing in the talus-ridden alcove. Talus was almost slithering down the slope, about to cascade over cliffy beds of limestone to the tear-a-pants rocks below. No boot-skiing allowed here, unless you know how to ski jump.
The breccia is mostly exposed in this one wall. The alcove may have formed from erosion of breccia; maybe it formed from erosion of solution caverns or caves no longer apparent and partly associated with the breccia. Here, I'm just speculating, as I don't really know the genesis of the breccia or the alcove. The curved fragment from previous photos is now above the 3-foot high ephedra bush and to the right, below and to the right of the large central fragment. From this angle, the curved fragment looks oval. Numerous smaller, angular pieces of dark gray limestone float in white calcite below it.

The ephedra bush suggests an apparent height or thickness of 20+ feet or 6+ meters for our breccia, but viewing angles are deceptive in the alcove.
Fragments are clast supported to matrix supported. One example of matrix support can be seen in the upper part of the cliff exposure, where the mass of calcite appears to be greater than the mass of fragments. It's possible that solution caving caused collapse of pieces and large blocks of limestone, which then concentrated toward the bottom of the collapsed area, leaving the upper area partly open after collapse and before later calcite deposition or infill.

The white breccia matrix consists of large, intergrown calcite crystals. White calcite veinlets in some fragments appear to be mostly, but not entirely, older than than formation of the breccia, and therefore older than the white calcite infilling event. I noted only a few places where late calcite veining appeared to cut across both the breccia fragments and its coarse calcite cement.

The age of all this activity — breccia formation, fragment cementing, and early and late calcite veining — is unknown to me.

An unidentified plant grows on coarse-grained white calcite in a narrows below the alcove.
Update: Identified by Hollis in comments as Petrophytum caespitosum.

Here's some more coarse-grained white calcite with a nicely reflective calcite crystal above my boot.

NOTE: More pictures of the calcite matrix can be seen here, along with one more shot of the petrophytum.
The same ~~unknown~~ plant is growing on dark gray Devils Gate Limestone in the ledgy area outward from the alcove.

We take one last look at the breccia before starting downhill.

The view from the ledge, looking west: Highway 50 and the partly parallel old highway angle across in the upper left; Slough Creek, surrounded by lots of rabbit brush, meanders through the foreground; Lone Mountain stands alone in the distance.
After making our way downward on some decent, though imperfect, boot-skiing slopes, we looked back at the breccia and wondered if the way we came down would have been easier as a route up than the scrabbly sidehill across loose talus.

Top 10 reasons I love detachment faults / core complexes

2012-02-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

Not sure about the order of these things, but here's a go at the geoblogosphere's most recent spontaneous meme, as started by Erik Klemetti, and followed by Siim Sepp and Callan Bentley. Oh, and by the way, I also love volcanoes, sand, and structure — among other geologic subjects and subdivisions — not necessarily in that order.

* They are not everywhere. Detachment faults associated with metamorphic core complexes are generally found in a band running from British Columbia, into Washington and Idaho, through eastern Nevada, into Arizona and the Mojave Desert of California, and down into Mexico (and also in other parts of the western U.S. and in other parts of the world). They run through my general neck of the woods, in other words, but occur in rather specialized geologic settings. This is all right by me. (If they were everywhere, we would miss out on other types of geology.)

* Detachment faults are found in Nevada. I love working in Nevada! Has anyone noticed that?

* Detachment faults and core complexes are found in the Mojave Desert. At first I kind of disliked working in the Mojave Desert because, although similar to Nevada in some ways, it isn't Nevada: it's hotter than Nevada, it's dustier and hazier than Nevada, and the mountain ranges are often older, more worn down, and farther apart than those in Nevada. The roads are cruddier, the small towns less inviting or pleasant in many ways (e. g. Baker, CA). You can find some strange people in the Mojave, and the place doesn't seem as safe as Nevada. I gradually grew to like the Mojave Desert, maybe largely for the exceptional geologic exposure, maybe for all it's weirdnesses, maybe because someday, perhaps, Nevada will look more like the Mojave. I also love to hate cholla cactuses, especially ones growing around the Whipple Mountains core complex.

* Detachment faults are often well exposed. Good exposure of detachment faults is, perhaps, largely associated with their general location in areas that have good exposure, but being of regional extent by definition, they consist of large faults that can often be found around or on top of entire mountain ranges. (I love exposure.)

* A good detachment fault is a thing of beauty. It's relatively flat-lying, very smooth, often shiny, and has wonderful slickenlines and grooves all over it's surface, often aligned in a nearly east-west direction.

* A core complex is complex (surprise). Core complexes aren't easy to understand, and every one seems a bit different from it's nearest neighbor. Geologists dispute the formation and development of these things, allowing for great arguments over beers, great field trips and arm-waving sessions, and exceptional reason for practising down-to-earth to wild-eyed geo-speculation.

* Core complexes and detachment terrane in general are good places to study all kinds of geology. I love all kinds of geology for all kinds of reasons. You can find all rock types — sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous (often plutonic, sometimes volcanic) — associated with core complexes and detachment terrane, along with great structure.

* Core complexes are mega structural features. I love structural geology, and core complexes and associated detachment faults provide excellent terrain for studying all kinds of structure, from mega to micro scales, including often unexpected but sometimes present contractional structural features.

* Detachment faults are a good place to find breccias: microbreccia, chlorite breccia, etc. I love breccias!

* Core complexes can contain ore deposits. Sometimes older ore deposits have been smeared or extended in the lower plate below the detachment fault; sometimes ore deposits are found along the detachment fault in possibly genetic association; sometimes pre-detachment ore deposits have been extremely sliced and diced by the detachment fault and its related upper-plate faults. Exploration for ore deposits is what I do. (Read a few discovery stories here.)

West to Southwest of Center: Beers and Roads and Folds and Things

2012-02-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd back up to a time a week before our stop at The Geographic Center of Nevada, a time just prior to our soak at Spencer Hot Springs. MOH and I had gone out to Austin, Nevada, and we had aimed, successfully, to arrive in time for Serbian Christmas.

Serbian Christmas is celebrated yearly at the International Cafe & Bar, and we've happened in once before without knowing that we were arriving on that celebrated date. This time, we postponed our already scheduled trip to Austin by one or two days in order to arrive on the 7th of January, which corresponds to December 25th on the Julian calendar.
By perfect celebratory standards, we got there just a wee bit late, but still in time to get a room with overrated free wi-fi (terrible bandwith, poor broadcasting) at the Mountain Motel, and time to sit in the bar for a drink or two — including some traditional plum wine from Serbia — before moving to our table in the cafe. The Christmas dinner of pit-roasted pig served with various and sundry dishes and desserts begins at around 2 or 3 in the afternoon (or maybe as early as noon). I think we sat down just before 6:00 and the food was still coming. The meal is free (unless you order off the pizza menu), the experience is more than worth the price, and the cuisine is the best for miles around.

We spent much of the next day trying to find a certain locality in the Northumberland caldera, and at one point we came close to taking the right road.

The right road.
I somehow didn't manage to take a picture of the wrong road.

We found a nice Z fold in Ordovician cherts of the Vinnini Formation just a couple miles southeast of the turnoff to the right road. The Z fold was part of a larger fold or fold complex that was difficult to photograph with straight-down-sun lighting. You can barely make out the Z fold near the main fold axis, just to the right of the prominent, though thin, black chert band in the right hand part of the photo.
Here's a better look at the Z fold with my boot for scale
And here's the Z fold rotated into a Z postion. I'll leave it to all the diehard structural types in the audience to tell me which direction is up in the photo showing the whole fold.

Not knowing that we hadn't made it to our sought-after spot in the Northumberland caldera, we returned to Austin after partaking of the waters at Spencer Hot Springs. We had another beer or two at the bar before eating dinner at the International, and the next day we continued our journey.

View Northumberland in a larger map

One Year Ago Today: Almost Stuck!

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

The day was dark with rain and snow, but we headed out anyway, thinking that we could visit the museum in the small town of Cherry Creek in eastern Nevada. We made our first stop on the side of the road to check out this large antelope herd. Antelope can often be spotted between McGill and old Schellbourne Station.
Cherry Creek, the town, is located on the eastern range front of the Cherry Creek Range, where Cherry Creek, the creek, comes out of a small gap in the mountains. Structurally, Cherry Creek looks like it's situated where the north Egan Range runs into the Cherry Creek Range, but the northern end of the Egan Range as named is located in Egan Canyon, the next gap to the south (MSRMaps location showing the regional Basin and Range structure).

That's State Route 489 (above) cutting across Steptoe Valley toward Cherry Creek. The parallel white lines along the road in the center of the valley are patches of snow; standing water can be seen south of the paved road. This possibly intermittent lake or wetlands has recently appeared to be contiguous with Goshute Lake several miles to the north. (This year's so far extra-dry winter might have changed the extent of the southern wetlands.)
This is most of the small community of Cherry Creek. The museum wasn't open, the light was flat and dark, and we didn't spend much time looking around.
It could be a nice place to live, if you like beautiful scenery, out-of-the-way places, and long drives to market.
We hightailed it back to the center of the valley, where we decided to drive south along the historic Nevada Northern Railway to check out a boxcar or other railroad-related artifact we could see off in the distance. The road was well graveled and dry to begin with; the yellow line in the Google Earth image above shows our traverse from the paved road southward.
We made it about 600 or 700 yards before deciding not to go any farther. At this point, the road was turning into a watery mudhole, with no end in sight. In fact, we'd already driven breathlessly and unwittingly through mud we initially couldn't see the end of, and we had come to this short semi-dry spot. The rail, just off to the left in those prickly bushes, prevented any turnaround options, so I decided to back out.
Backing out meant going through a long stretch I shouldn't have driven through in the first place, but had started into before I could stop, then kept going through while hoping for a break in the mud and a turnaround spot. You can see the closest mud hole easily, a second, even larger hole beyond that, and a hidden muddy spot between the two more obvious holes.
Looking at this after driving backwards through it, makes it look pretty tame, but the truck kept getting pulled sideways into the deeper parts of my own tracks, while I tried to stay to the side on the dryer ground right next to the bushes. Consequently, we experienced a bit of fishtailing, and my dual tracks look like a mess of incompetent driving.
Backing up even farther, the road looked good as we went in, just slightly muddy.

Mud is a deceptive thing to try to drive through. Often, one can see a weakly muddy road ambling off in the distance, and this light mud goes on far enough ahead that one can easily get started into what turns suddenly, or gradually, into heavy-duty, very slippery, or deep mud. Getting out and walking an unfamiliar road is recommended, but one usually only walks so far ahead before deciding that the coast is clear: let's go ahead and drive! Incipient or weak mud might suck you in (so to speak), then suddenly, just around the corner: OMG! You're suddenly stuck if you stop, maybe not stuck if you keep going, or maybe staggeringly stuck far from solid ground if you keep going.

If stuck in winter, waiting until the big freeze early in the morning can be one way of getting out. Sometimes a longer waiting period (say months until spring or summer) is required, along with heavy equipment (a D-8 or D-9 dozer). With all the large bushes along our road, we would have been able to build a road under and behind my truck; this procedure often requires multiple jackings-up of the truck (jacking-ups?).

We weren't far from a routinely traveled road, so if badly stuck we could have walked out (in miserable weather) and hoped that whoever we flagged down could have rustled up a dozer: mechanized extraction is easier, though more costly, than building a road by hand. Overall, my getting stuck preferences include better weather (not too hot, not too cold), and I much prefer to be paid to get stuck and unstuck — rather than to be doing it on my own time — a preference come to by many years of off-roading as part of my job.
After backing through the mud, I finally reached a wide point in the road and turned the truck back to the north. An old pump house from the historic Cherry Creek Station is mostly hidden behind the truck; the remains of the water tower can be seen to the right.
We didn't spend much time looking at the base of the water tower at Cherry Creek Station. Maybe we'll go back someday, preferably when the sun is out!

Can You Believe We Are Still Doing This?!

2012-01-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

No, not blogging...

...attending the annual Consultants and Independents Hospitality Suite at the Northwest Mining Convention. Apparently the first one was in 1986. Yes, those are 26 X's. Count 'em. A couple independent or consulting geologists started this bash back in 1986, to show that you didn't have to be big to throw a great party. Previously, the big parties had always been thrown every year by the famous, now defunct, S&D.

I don't have a full set of the mugs. Darn it!

The NWMA holds its convention the first week of December every year, and already has the announcement up for the 2012 meeting. The meeting site location alternates between Reno and Spokane. The next one will be in Spokane.

Finally Some Snow... and Icicles!

2012-01-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

Icicles!

It's been a pretty bleak winter as far as snow and precip goes, with an early largish snow dump in early October, followed by... a lot of nothing other than some few and far between minimal snow showers and some minor snow in early to mid December. We've had cold mornings off and on, nothing unusual there, but we've had way more sun and unusually warm days compared to the previous four winters that MOH and I have spent here at our little house in the hinterland of eastern Nevada. This winter, we've had highs in the 50s to upper 70s in October, highs mostly in the 40s and 50s in November, highs mostly in the 30s to upper 50s in December and January, with four days in a row above 60°F right after New Year's day. So far, we've only had one high in the 20s, on December 5th, and no highs in the teens or lower. We have had a few scattered lows below 0°F, but nothing approaching our usual number of sub-zero nights. Consequently, what little snow we have gotten has not stuck around. Lowlands have been completely dry, midlands even to 7000 feet have been dry, and uplands have been largely snow free, at least below 9000 feet or higher. Elm beetles actually made a comeback last week; they must have thought it was spring. Hopefully not.

A couple days ago, it snowed! Six inches fell one day, two inches the next, and at least another inch fell the third day. Now, we're back in melting mode, creating what seem like the first icicles of the year, though maybe we had some back in October.

More icicles, including one making a fish-hook-like shape.

We don't have the usual ice field on the north side of our little house; instead, we have dry soil and gravel beneath a few inches of snow. Maybe we'll get a little more precip in the next day or two (hopefully not as freezing rain).

Alaska! Send us your snow!!

Yes, We Met in SeaTac

2012-01-22T09:50:00.000-08:00

"I'm by the ak ticket counters. See you there!" This text message was awaiting me while I was still on the plane — the return flight from my Xmas trip to Alaska — immediately after landing in Seattle. Excitement much? Yes!

"Not quite at the N gates, so will be a few minutes!" Darn, the plane hadn't yet pulled into one of the North Terminal gates, so I was in an immobile plane, stuck with all the other passengers, waiting. Finally a gate opened up and we pulled in. Then, there was the long trek to the interterminal train, the ride on the train, a hike through the main terminal because I got off at the first stop, and a walk out past security to the old main part of the terminal, to the ticket counter. I was practically running!

And there she was: Dana Hunter of En Tequila Es Verdad! I recognized her right away.
I was starving, having not bought any breakfast on the plane, so we went to the first little bar-diner, ordered lunch with wine and beer. And we talked. And talked. After a while we moved to another little bar-diner, a darker one, and that's when we took each other's picture. The second place was dark, so my photos, except for this first one, turned out a little blurry.
Dana, who was going to have to drive away from the airport, had switched to coke. I stuck with the Alaskan Amber, which seemed rather sweet after drinking mostly Alaskan IPA while in Alaska. The amber is proof of my presence at the blogger meetup (as are the pictures I took).
Too bad we didn't get pictures at the first place we stopped, but we were too busy talking — about sci-fi, geology, blogging & writing, cats & chickens, work, life, and pennyroyal tea. Maybe we'll get more time at our next meetup, which will hopefully be a geology field trip.

The Geographic Center

2012-01-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

While returning from a recent recon trip out in the middle of nowhere, driving back to Highway 50 on another endless Nevada dirt road — in this case the Monitor Valley Road, AKA the Old Belmont or Belmont Road — MOH and I came across this sign marking the approximate location of the Geographic Center of Nevada.
I say approximate because several different lat-lon locations can be found here and there on the web, with two USGS locations being about 0.75 to 1.5 miles northeast of the sign.
The sign is at the junction of the Monitor Valley Road and a side road going east into Wallace Canyon in the Monitor Range.

Points on Google Earth: Geographic Center (the sign), USGS 1 (located in 1962, and USGS 2 (located in 2003); click to enlarge.

The Monitor Valley or Belmont Road cuts northeastward across the Google Earth view, with the dirt road to Wallace Canyon heading east (right) from the point marking the location of Geographic Center of Nevada sign. Highway 50 is off in the distance to the north, cutting east-west beyond low hills of the northern Monitor and Toquima Ranges.

USGS 1: the 1962 USGS point for the center of Nevada is at N39° 19' 11.7" and W116° 38' 13.3".

USGS 2: the 2003 USGS point for the center of Nevada is at N39° 19' 48.0" and W116° 37' 56.0".

The sign on the side of the Monitor Valley or Belmont Road is at N39° 18' 44.5" and W116° 38' 52.9".

The two USGS points are marked on the ground with rebar and a notice, and a point about half way in between is marked with orange cones, as shown here and here. To arrive at the site, you can drive Highway 50 east from Austin, NV, for about 26 miles, until you come to a sign for "Belmont Road." Turn right on that wide dirt road, and go south. About 14 miles of driving will bring you to the sign and the fairly main side road to Wallace Canyon. A half mile before that, a smaller dirt road cuts east toward the Monitor Range; that road will bring you closer to the actual geographic center, with the 1962 location being about half a mile east of the main road and about 500 feet north of the side road. The 2003 location is about 3900 feet northeast of that.

It was quite cold while MOH and I were there — we thought it might have been 10°F or lower about an hour earlier — and the sun was going down. We didn't try to find the actual center of Nevada; we instead took pictures of each other standing in front of the sign and called it good enough.

Geographic center of Nevada on Google Earth; click to enlarge. All three points show up as one at this scale.

After getting back in the truck, we rolled north, making it to Highway 50 just as the sun was setting.

Read More:
Nevada's Geographic Center at Backyard Traveler by Rich Moreno

Journey to Nevada's Center at Nevada Landmarks

The Geographic Center of Nevada at CmdrMark.com

LFD is Going Dark on January 18th

2012-01-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

Looking for Detachment will be going dark tomorrow, January 18th, in solidarity with Reddit, Boing Boing, Wikipedia, and other sites protesting the SOPA and PIPA bills. Read more on my Stop Censorship Header | Stop SOPA post.

I will be doing this (provided it actually works) by changing my Blogger template in the following way. Just before the tag, which currently looks like this:
I will be adding this script:

<script>
window.location = "http://sopa-blackout-template.blogspot.com/";
</script>

The template will then look like this:
I'm doing this rather than replacing my template with the blackout template, for simplicity's sake. I'll simply erase that bit of code from my template at the end of the protest. At LFD, this blackout will run for 24 hours beginning 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (12:00 am January 18 EST or 9:00 pm January 17 PST), running until 0:50 UTC on Thursday, January 19 (12:00 am January 19 EST or 9:00 pm January 18 PST).

Thanks to Sara J Chipps (although I'm redirecting to a different URL), App, who created the SOPA blackout template, Robert David Graham at Errata Security, and Jae Kim at Future of Social Network.

A Soak at Spencer Hot Springs

2012-01-15T06:53:00.000-08:00

It was just a week ago. MOH and I were heading home from holidays travels, and we had stopped in Austin, NV, making it there for Serbian Xmas. We had driven my truck over the mountain into Big Smoky Valley, down old Highway 8A, and across the valley on the Northumberland Mine road where we were looking for a long lost spot from a 1978 adventure. After roughing it over various relatively unused and poorly maintained dirt roads, we crossed the valley to get back on 8A, headed north, and crossed the valley again to have a soak at Spencer Hot Springs.
We ended up at the main hot spring, the one with the large pool, interior sitting stones that form a circle, and exterior deck. You can see a couple of the large sitting stones below water level on the right side of the pool; these form a nearly complete circle, although they are partly caved in on the far side. They get reset every now and then. You can also see the edge of a dark metal contraption just on the far left of the photo.
This metal framework has been put in place sometime in the last year and a half, to keep people (and dogs) out of the very hot source pool that has formed around the pipe that taps the hot water. It's quite ugly, and makes the springs look a bit smaller, blocking what view there is to the south.

Yes, the water is hot. That's rather the point, isn't it?

It's likely that the 165 written on the pipe indicates the temperature in Fahrenheit of water coming out of the well. Various temperatures have been reported for the main spring: 144°F was reported in 1917; a higher temperature of 162°F was reported in 1974 (two sources from Garside and Schilling, 1979).

Temperature of the geothermal reservoir at Spencer was estimated at 216°F in 1981 by the Nevada Department of Energy, and at 253°F in 1974 by Mariner and others (the latter also in Garside and Schilling, 1979).
Water from the source well flows through a pipe into the main soaking pond.
Temperature of the soaking pond can be regulated with this valve. While we were there, the water was bearably hot, hot enough for us to feel comfortable after getting out into the chilling and persistent wind.
After our fairly short soak, we took the main dirt road from the spring northwestward toward the site of the old Frontier and the junction of old 8A with Highway 50, thence over Bob Scott and Austin Summits back to Austin.

In this YouTube video from June 2010, by davidsquall351, you can see the way the main hot spring looked prior to the metal contraption being placed over the source well. You can also hear the gurgling of the water, and the braying of wild burros. The local burro herd make an appearance in the latter half of the video.

The burro herd typically has one mule or horse tagging along with it. We didn't see them while we were there last week, but do see them fairly routinely. Pictures of a couple of them are included in this trip report. They roam at least as far the north as Highway 50, which is only four miles away. We've seen them at least six miles from the springs.

Stop Censorship Header | Stop SOPA Links

2012-01-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

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A few links about SOPA and PIPA:

STOP SOPA, SAVE THE INTERNET - Boing Boing, 11Nov2011

Good Idea, Poor Follow-Through: Congress' Mistakes with SOPA - ACLU, 16Nov2011

Sandia Labs: SOPA will 'negatively impact' U.S. cybersecurity - CNET, 17Nov2011

Free Speech Takes a Beating - ACLU, 18Nov2011

What Can the Average Person Do to Stop SOPA? - Forbes, 18Nov2011

Stop #SOPA: Using the Internet to Save the Internet - The Huffington Post, 28Nov2011

How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia - Wikimedia blog, 13Dec2011

Stop SOPA - Dave Schumaker, 13Dec2011

Urge Congress to Stop SOPA! - ACLU, 14Dec2011

SOPA Fixes Isolate Opponents, especially Google - Forbes 14Dec2011

Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works - Motherboard, 16Dec2011

How SOPA Could Ruin My Life - Forbes, 16Dec2011

Why SOPA Could Kill the Open Education Resource Movement - GOOD, 16Dec2011

Stop Online Piracy Act Debate Highlights Congress' Ignorance - Truthout, 29Dec2011

Let's support Internet Blackout Day - Ontario Geofish, 4Jan2012

Latest revision of the bill shows that SOPA doesn't affect US (domestic) websites... - Reddit, 5Jan2012 (?)

With Congress on break, SOPA fight continues - CNN Tech, 6Jan2012

SOPA sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith to SOPA opponents: You don’t matter - Digital Trends, 6Jan2012

Eight Top Internet Firms Back Alternative To SOPA - ReadWriteWeb, 7Jan2012

What kind of country messes with Internet Freedoms? - Greg Laden's Blog, 7Jan2012

Congressman drops support for SOPA - Boing Boing, 9Jan2012

'Internet Censorship'? Would Websites Go Dark Battling Hollywood? - ABC, 9Jan2012

Stopped they must be; on this all depends. - Blog.Reddit, 10Jan2012

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing - Boing Boing, 10Jan2012 (?)

Help Stop SOPA/PIPA - WordPress, 10Jan2012

The Internet Strikes Back: Reddit Going Full Blackout to Protest SOPA Betabeat, 11Jan2012

Reddit's SOPA Blackout Admirable, But Google and Facebook Must Follow - Forbes, 11Jan2012

SOPA foes warn: Not much time left to act - CNET, 11Jan2012

SOPA fight in 'last rounds,' says senator at CES - Computerworld, 11Jan2012

If Facebook Won't Stop SOPA, We Can Do It For Them - Forbes, 12Jan2012

SOPA: Anonymous To Protest Anti-Piracy Bill On January 18 - The Huffington Post, 12Jan2012

SOPA: The gloves come off - Fortune Tech, CNNMoney, 12Jan2012

SOPA – yeah, not a good idea - Compound Eye at SciAm, 13Jan2012

Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet - The White House, 14Jan2012

Obama Administration responds to We the People petitions on SOPA and online piracy - The White House Blog, 14Jan2012

Obama administration joins the ranks of SOPA skeptics - Ars Technica, 14Jan2012

UPDATED: SOPA is DYING; its evil Senate twin, PIPA, lives on - Boing Boing, 16Jan2012

SOPA Dead (for now) But PIPA is Not - Greg Laden's Blog, 16Jan2012

In Protest Of Anti-Piracy Bill, Wikipedia To Go Dark - NPR, 16Jan2012

Wikipedia Going Dark to Protest SOPA - Mashable, 16Jan2012

It's Baaaaaaaaack: Lamar Smith Says SOPA Markup To Resume In February - Techdirt, 17Jan2012

LFD is Going Dark on January 18th - Looking for Detachment, 17Jan2012

In Protest Of SOPA And PIPA - Maitri's VatulBlog, 17Jan2012

Why SOPA is Dangerous - Mashable, 17Jan2012

Stop SOPA: What A Blacked Out Internet Looks Like - ReadWriteWeb, 18Jan2012

Which Anti-SOPA Protest Was More Effective, Wikipedia's or Google's? - The Atlantic, 18Jan2012

me too -- stop SOPA, PIPA - In the Company of Plants and Rocks, 18Jan2012

Content Blocked by SOPA/PIPA - Martian Chronicles, 18Jan2012

Blocked by SOPA/PIPA - Hudson Valley Geologist, 18Jan2012

SOPA/PIPA - GeoMika, 18Jan2012

Jean-Luc Picard on the dangers of limiting our liberties. - Emily L. Hauser—In My Head, 18Jan2012

apagón SOPA - eg, edgargonzales.com, 18Jan2012 (a list of #SOPAblackout sites)

The Day the LOLCats Died
h/t @Mashable

PIPA and SOPA Co-Sponsors Abandon Bills - Mashable, 19Jan2012

The Week That Killed SOPA: A Timeline - Mashable, 20Jan2012

MegaUpload case proves we don’t need SOPA or PIPA - GigaOM, 20Jan2012

SOPA and PIPA postponed indefinitely after protests - CNNMoney, 20Jan2012

---

Please note: This blog is fully copyright protected, and I am against illegal copyright infringement. I am, however, standing with the EFF and ACLU on this one.

UPDATE 15Jan2012: The banner/header no longer works as originally intended. It is attached to the page of this post, not to the entire blog, so can't be set to block out my blog header.

Last updated 22Jan2012 at 8:00 a.m. PST

Too Much to Possibly Post About

2012-01-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get a kind of writing block that has to do with too many possibilities: too many photos, too many things I've seen and could or could have posted about, too many ideas. I've got photos of things of interest going back at least into early December (actually, even earlier than that); some of these potential posts could be quite short and sweet, and yet that doesn't make it easier for me to consider posting them. Many are no longer timely the way they would have been had I posted them within a week of the events, hikes, etc., many could be posted any time, really, whether or not time has passed.

I also have gotten into a kind of mode where I think I'm too busy to post (and I have been, for various reasons, but may not really be right at the moment), and it also seems nice just to relax and really not do much of anything.

Things:
More photos from Jarbidge,
An owl in the field,
The so-called alaskite at Devils Gate near Eureka,
✓~~Beer mug from hospitality suite at Northwest~~,
✓~~A blogger meet up in Seattle~~,
Another hike to the Pony Express Station,
✓~~Photos from a Serbian Xmas in Austin~~,
Northumberland caldera photos and a related post alluded to elsewhere (can I really figure out the location?),
✓~~Recent pics from Spencer Hot Springs~~,
✓~~A neat breccia from Devils Gate near Eureka~~,
Bones of a sheep in the field,
Something else seen in the field, surely,
✓~~Stop SOPA~~,
Miscellaneous links and posts in draft, and

...I'm pretty sure there are more.

Where to start? That is the question.

Above possibilities listed in order of posting:
Stop Censorship Header | Stop SOPA Links
A Soak at Spencer Hot Springs
Yes, We Met in SeaTac
Can You Believe We Are Still Doing This?!
West to Southwest of Center: Beers and Roads and Folds and Things
ENE of Center: Breccia at Devils Gate

Last updated 6Feb2012 at 11:19 a.m. PST

2011 Top 10 Posts at LFD...

2012-01-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

...and 20 more.

Here at LFD, the year started out with a bang, with 5 of the top 10 posts being from late December 2010 and January 2011. Three more were from April. All of the top 20 posts are listed below; for posts rated lower than #20, I've left some out in favor of others. Posts are listed in order of publication, with the Top 10 highlighted by a larger font.

Stat ratings are generally affected by the time a post has been up, so posts from later in the year have overall lower ratings. Ratings (by Google Analytics) are numbers for 2011 only.

Like caterpillars, crawling or marching... (very late 2010) #6

January

Deep Time #2

RIP Middlegate Shoe Tree #3

Hydraulic Jump Links #9

A Geologist's Field Book #8

How to Make Coffee Strandlines or Rhythmites #14

Friday Fault Photo: Fairview Peak, NV, Fault Line #15

February

Friday Fault Photos: Fault Scarp at Fairview Peak, Nevada #24

Happy Valentine's Day from the central Basin and Range #18

March

Post Postponed because of Earthquake #1

April

Recent Hike: A Feldspar Twin #11

Salt from Bonneville Salt Flats #23

Rocks and Stones #4

Mirage on the Desert #5

Yuba Dredges No. 17 and 21 #7

May

Cross-Bedded #16

More Cross Bedding #25

Some Thoughts on Weirdness, and A Picture (or Two) (or Three) #10

June

Cathedral Gorge I #17

Cathedral Gorge II: The Hike #59

July

Memories: First Trip on Highway 50 #22

Left Behind: Pink Point #42

August

Accretionary Wedge #37: Geology that makes you sweaty and warm. #27

September

Fold Analogs #12

Four Years Ago: Spencer Hot Springs, Kingston Summit, to Fallon #20

October

An Evil Geologist Lair #13

November

Sand Mountain for Sand Dune Week #19

The Contact at Contact #51

December

Over the Plateau and Into the Canyon #57

Accretionary Wedge #41: One Small Event from Hawai‘i's East Rift Zone #106

First Walk of the New Year

2012-01-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

I went on my first walk of the year earlier today, out along a creek in Anchorage, AK.
That's about 24 inches of snow on the ground, although the total snowfall for the season has been much higher than that.
Photos were taken at about 10:30 Alaska time, about 15 minutes after sunrise.

Trees.

And more trees.

Did I mention that it was a short walk?

Accretionary Wedge #41: One Small Event from Hawai‘i's East Rift Zone

2011-12-31T10:39:00.000-08:00

This month's Accretionary Wedge, being hosted by Ron Schott at his Geology Home Companion Blog, is all about the Most Memorable/ Significant Geologic Event That You’ve Directly Experienced. For myself, it often seems as though I'm on the spot shortly after significant events, rather than during them, which isn't entirely a bad thing. One ongoing event that I did witness in part is the eruption of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō. Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō is the active vent in the East Rift Zone of Hawai‘i's Kilauea volcano.

Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō in May, 1987.

In late May, 1987, I attended the Cordilleran Section meeting of the GSA, which was in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawai‘i during one of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō's many eruptions (Episode 48, which lasted from 1986 through 1992 and consisted mostly of lava flows from a new vent, Kūpaianaha, although I don't remember hearing that name in 1987).
A young geologist with bright red Lang Drilling hat and Nikon camera sits on a 1972 pahoehoe flow that cascaded over the Holei Pali (pali = cliff).

The timing of the GSA meeting in Hilo wasn't bad, although maybe it wasn't perfect, and the volcano-oriented field trip I went on before or after the meeting took us down the Chain of Craters road to the Waha‘ula Visitor Center (MSRMaps location of the Visitor Center near Kupapau Point, from an old topo map). The Visitor Center was later destroyed by a 1989 flow (before, during, and after photos).

We arrived on the scene in time to see a scene similar to this one from a slightly earlier field trip: the Chain of Craters road blocked just east of the then extant Visitor Center by what was for us a week-old lava flow.
This is the week-old pahoehoe flow, which flowed southeastward from its vent at Kūpaianaha, ultimately making it into the ocean. The lava was still hot, although not molten at the surface. We had been cautioned to bring boots with Vibram® soles. A couple orange hot spots can be seen in the original print of this photo (notably in the dark shadow between the two geologists on the flow, click to enlarge). We were the only ones allowed out on the flow that day, and our trip leaders guided us carefully around (and away from) thinner and more dangerous spots, places that were thought to be more likely to collapse.

Flow activity in the area had begun about six months prior to our visit; even the 6-month-old part of the flow radiated heat and was warm to the touch.
Here, a geologist stands next to one of the open cracks while a stick stuck just below the surface bursts into flames.
My best closeup of hot lava only three feet below the flow surface we were walking on.
In the distance, steam is rising from the week-old lava flow where ocean waves are hitting the flow.

Black sand beaches had already started forming along part of the six-month-old flow. The land surface had been extended oceanward by the flows; we were told that all new land belongs to the state of Hawai‘i. Several of these flows, along with earlier flows of 1983 through 1985 (eruption Episodes 1 through 47, I think), destroyed houses in the area and blocked the road toward Kalapana. Housing and subdivision destruction continued with later parts of Episode 48 (1986-1992) and with even later eruptions. While we were there, some people were still hopeful that roads would be rebuilt. Roads can be built on new flows after about 1 to 1.5 years.
The flows we saw that year are shown here in black, lumped with all the Episode 48 flows erupted from the Kūpaianaha vent (map from Heliker et al, 1998, detailed version here). In 1987, the flows weren't as extensive as shown here, especially on the west side where the Waha‘ula Visitor Center was still intact.

We were quite excited about walking on the flow, and sometime after the field trip a few other geologists and I went around to the eastern side of the flow where a tongue of lava was coming down the hill from above. A couple people ran up to the flowing lava to take a close look. I think we were about a hundred yards below the molten rock, and I kept wondering if unknown lava tubes would unexpectedly spurt lava out closer to us, but nothing quite that exciting happened (thankfully, in my view).

Additional Information:
Summary of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō–Kupaianaha Eruption, 1983 to present at HVO.

Heliker, C.C., Mangan, M.T., Mattox, T.N., and Kauahikaua, J.P., 1998, The Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō - Kūpaianaha Eruption of Kīlauea, November 1991–February 1994: Field Data and Flow Maps: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 98-103 Version 1.1.

Heliker, Christina, Swanson, D.A., and Takahashi, T.J., 2003, editors, The Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō-Kūpaianaha Eruption of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai‘i: The First 20 Years: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1676.

Takahashi, T.J., Abston, C.C., and Heliker, Christina, 1995, Images of Kilauea East Rift Zone Eruption, 1983-1993: U.S. Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-24.

A Couple More Maps:

Map of flows from Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō: April 30, 2008.
HVO source here.

Kīlauea East Rift Zone Eruption Map: December 27, 2011.
HVO source here.

White Xmas

2011-12-25T16:52:00.000-08:00

Right now it's 27 inches and counting.

Not Quite Blogger Meetup

2011-12-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

While sitting at the empty table beyond the closest or largest "Alaska" sign in an unnamed bar at the SeaTac airport ...
...and after eating this early lunch with Pike IPA ... ... I had a fine phone forum with Dana Hunter of En Tequila Es Verdad fame (True Fame, really) — and we decided that we would definitely meet sometime in the future.
Here's to ya, Dana! :)

Over the Plateau and Into the Canyon

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

With this belated post, I'm returning to our last trip north, which was now more than a month ago. At first I thought I'd do this in the spirit of Evelyn Mervine's geology picture a day — but these are not all geology photos, and I'm going to bunch 12 together, hoping that will hold me until I can get around to another continuation, whenever that will be.

Our November trip north began here, with some wintry views and with us leaving the Great Basin for the Snake River drainage, and continued here, as we drove by an intrusive contact and then north into Idaho.

The 3 Creek Road begins in the tiny burb of Rogerson, which sits along Highway 93 between the Nevada-Idaho stateline and Twin Falls, ID. From Rogerson, the road rambles west toward Salmon Falls Dam and points beyond (MSRMaps location). The sign at the beginning of the 3 Creek Road says Salmon Falls Dam 7, Murphy Hot Springs 49, and Jarbidge, Nevada, 64. Possibly you can guess our destination.
Here, not long into our side trip (the side trip being the main point of the entire trip), we are driving over the old, one-lane Salmon Falls Dam.
At this point, the 3 Creek Road still shows signs of the earlier snowstorm: a bit of snow on the sides of the road, and ice in shadowy curves. The Jarbidge Mountains sit in shadow in the not-so-far distance.
The 3 Creek Road crosses miles of plains consisting of fairly flat plateaus and rolling hills, all variably incised by creeks and rivers draining northward to the Snake River.
A snowy but inviting road traversing the hills to the north catches my eye. If driven, would it take us all the way to the Snake River?
This is a typical view of the southern part of the Snake River Plain, looking west from the 3 Creek Road where it is about to descend into one of the intervening valleys.
We finally left the 3 Creek Road, dropped into the gorge of the East Fork of the Jarbidge River, came to The Jarbidge Forks, and drove south into Nevada along the main fork of the Jarbidge River. Hoodoos in the rhyolitic Cougar Point Tuff appear near the Idaho-Nevada state line.
Most of the hoodoos are in Nevada, certainly the best ones are!
A bush or small tree grows atop a double hoodoo.
The snowy road curves ever onward, giving us glimpses of the canyon walls and mountains above Jarbidge.
Sun glows on the hills we hiked in the summer of 2010, on stands of subalpine fir, limber pine, and whitebark pine.
We arrive, get a room in the middle of a locally critical football game, go for a walk through the snow, and end up at the Red Dog Saloon for beers and burgers.

The Contact at Contact

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

We continued on toward the small bordertown of Jackpot, Nevada, having passed out of the Great Basin by dropping into the drainage of Willow Creek – which joins with Dry Creek, which joins Jakes Creek, which enters Salmon Falls Creek near the railroad siding of Henry. Salmon Falls Creek then flows north, eventually emptying into the Snake River below Twin Falls. Skies were clearing somewhat, and snow was no longer thretening.

A few miles south of Henry, China Mountain rises into view east of Highway 93. China Mountain is a good place to see an intrusive-sedimentary contact at 70 mph. The generally rubbly or knobby looking rocks on the far north side of China Mountain are outcrops of the granodiorite of the Jurassic Contact pluton. It’s intruding late Paleozoic limestone and marble (and possibly other associated sediments and metasediments): the layered and moderately dipping beds across most of the mountain.
Here I’ve drawn the approximate contact in hot pink. Granodiorite is to the left (Jgd on this map); limestone and marble are to the right (PMl on the same map). Where I’ve ended the contact, it dives under undivided Miocene to possibly Pliocene tuff, ash, and sediments (mapped as Ts3).
The granodiorite of the Contact pluton shows some spectacular spheroidal weathering between Henry and the small outpost of Contact. This view to the west of the highway, taken just a couple minutes beyond that last photo, shows the granodiorite in the foreground, with Ellen D Mountain in the background. Ellen D is underlain by the same late Paleozoic sediments seen on China Mountain; the contact between the granodiorite and the sediments runs behind the wonderfully knobby mass of granodiorite and the base of Ellen D Mountain.
What isn’t clear from the highway, is that the intrusive contact passes eastward from the present site of Contact, runs west toward Ellen D Mountain, then curves southward. All along that contact, the topo map of the area (from MSRMaps) shows a series of old mines and prospects dug into mineralized, contact-metamorphosed rocks right along the contact. These are some of the mines and prospects of the Contact mining district, which were prospected originally for gold, but have been mined mostly for copper. The original mining town of Contact was moved from its original site fairly early on prior to being relocated a second time at its present location.

While we drive by Ellen D Mountain, the highway passes through some roadcuts in the Contact pluton. The knobby knob on the left and the low mass on the right are in granodiorite. The reddish brown hill to the far right is in Tts: rhyolitic ash-flow tuffs probably about 10 to 12 million years old, possibly erupted from the Bruneau-Jarbidge eruptive center to the west.
After stopping briefly in Jackpot, to gas up and grab a snack, we crossed the Idaho line at 1:20 pm PDT, 2:20 Mountain Time. Jackpot is not the only town in Nevada that operates on Mountain Time.

Oh, by the way, here's my take on the naming of the various contacts. First, the Jurassic granodiorite intruded the Paleozoic limestone. Later, uplift exposed the contact between the Jurassic and Paleozoic rock formations. Much later, people came along prospecting for gold and copper; they were attracted to the contact for various reasons, not the least of which was probably some nice float of copper oxides and copper carbonates. When they staked claims, they listed the claims as being in the Contact mining district, which they named after the mineralized contact they were so hot on. They set up a town and called it Contact, after the mineralized contact and the mining district. Eventually, all the nearby mining districts in the area were consolidated into one district called Contact. The order of the naming and founding of the latter two (Contact the mining district and Contact the town) is entirely speculative on my part.

I have a bit more information on this part of Highway 93, from south of Wells to the stateline, in an earlier post, here.

Map References:
Hope, R.A. and Coats, R.R., 1976, Preliminary geologic map of Elko County, Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey, Open-File Report OF-76-779, 1:100,000

Sheet 3 of the above, covering our area of interest in the upper left.

Sheet 6 of the above, the explanation for the entire map.

Sand Mountain for Sand Dune Week

2011-11-20T06:07:00.000-08:00

Two dune posts in a row in a row creates a geoblogosphere meme, and Sand Dune Week has been proclaimed!
Sand Mountain — located on Highway 50 about 25 miles east of Fallon, NV — is a perfect candidate for Dune Week, being one of those booming or singing dunes described here on Cocktail Party Physics.

View angle, time of year and day (sun angle), and weather all affect the seemingly shifting appearance of Sand Mountain, sometimes dramatically. The first photo (above)was taken from the west-southwest during the middle of an early March day last spring, 2011.
This second photo was taken from the south in the late afternoon in late May, also 2011. Enlargement of the second photo will reveal a barely visible white line on the east side of the dune: the RV city usually sitting in the lee of the dune, where ATVers gather to run up and and down the face.
Here's the mountain in a wind storm, a late afternoon in mid-May of 2009. Any RVs present are getting sand blasted!
Lighting for pictures can be quite variable, and I often get flat pictures just driving by at random times of the day. But even mid-summer can be good for shadows and details, as shown by this photo taken early one morning in early July, 2010. Enlargement of this photo shows two tiny-looking ATVs on the west side (far left) of the dune, behind and a little to the right of a foreground dark spot that is possibly a rock or large bush. Look carefully!

Although I've driven up to the RV city and to the half buried Sand Springs Pony Express station, I've never gone on the dune to try to make it boom.

One thing that can be done fairly easily, as part of this mini virtual field trip, is to follow the sand from Sand Mountain back to its original source, back to the southwest across a mountain or two, then across Highway 95 south of Fallon, southwest toward the delta of the Walker River, where the river emptied into ancient Lake Lahontan. Start with this map and this air photo, then go here (scale change), then here, and then here (direction change). The last air photo is mostly below the high stand of Lake Lahontan, but shows the final current destination of the Walker River: Walker Lake.

Meme participants so far:
Galileo's Pendulum
Clastic Detritus
Cocktail Party Physics
In the Company of Plants and Rocks
Agile* - Journal
Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog
Research at a snail's pace
Earth Science Picture of the Day
Sandatlas
Georneys
Pools and Riffles
Earth-like Planet
En Tequila Es Verdad
Through The Sandglass
EarthSky // Blogs // Space (Deborah Byrd)

Some References:
La Pointe, D.D., 2000, Earth Science Week 2000: Geology along America's Loneliest Highway. A field trip for families and rockhounds: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Educational Series E-37.

Trexler, D.T., and Melhorn, W.N., 1986, Singing and Booming Sand Dunes of California and Nevada: California Geology, v. 39, no. 7, p. 147-152. Also reprinted here on Tom Sweich's webpages.

NOTE: The California Geology search page is quite finicky or counterintuitive. I finally searched using only the year, 1986. What also worked was %California% %Nevada% with the percent symbols, entered as keywords under "Title of Article."

What I'm Considering as an Xmas Gift to myself...

2011-11-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

...to replace my aging Canon A650 IS camera:

A650 IS specs at Canon

G12 specs at Canon

D10 specs at Canon

ABCDeals refurbished A650 $450

Refurbished A650 "from China" $290

A650 at Amazon, varied prices

G12 at Amazon $430

I really like my A650 IS, I have had it cleaned or fixed once (dust or spots internally on the lens or mirror, a glitch that somehow develops during airline flights). It's a great camera that has already survived one E18 or "Lens error, restart camera" event, which I fixed by carefully whacking the camera, as per the percussion advice on some forum (maybe this one; other options were send in for repair or take the camera apart and mess around). I'm now facing a growing spot of no pixels on the vari-angle LCD screen (vari-angle is a higher requirement for me than AA batts). I'm sure Canon can fix this, but I don't know at what cost (yet). In the meantime, before I send my camera off, I'll need another camera (though I could pull out my old A620, like I did in the spring of 2010 when I last had the A650 in for repair). eBay currently has A650's that generally sound no better than the one I already have.

A note: Xmas always comes early when I buy something like this for myself.

UPDATE 20Nov2011: Nikon Coolpix P7100 review

UPDATE 28Jan2012: Just ordered a Canon G12. This option retains the vari-angle LCD screen, adds slight weight and height, aperture drops from max 4.8 to 4.5, total zoom drops from about 210 mm to 140 mm, wide angle increases from about 35 mm to 28mm, megapixels drop from 12 to 10, have to use Canon battery packs, gain High Dynamic Range shooting.

A Wintry Trip North

2011-11-15T13:20:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, thinking that it wasn't really wintry enough already, we took off to the north...
...eventually heading directly into the fast-moving storm that was just clipping the northeast part of the state, not leaving a lot of snow in it's wake, but blowing like crazy.
Light and dark patches northeast of Highway 93: the storm moves across Clover Valley south of Wells, Nevada.
Sunlight comes through light snow showers on the west side of Spruce Mountain Ridge, a narrow basin-and-range ridge east of the East Humboldt Range.
Still south of Wells, somewhwere near the turnoff to Ruby Mountain Brewery, we drove by a small herd of elk grazing on the other side of the right-of-way fence.
Over the last couple years, NDOT has installed a couple wildlife overpasses between Wells and Jackpot. This is the one at HD Summit (MSRMaps location).

At this point, Highway 93 is still inside the Great Basin, within the watershed of miles-long Thousand Springs Creek, which eventually leaves Nevada for Utah and the Great Salt Lake Desert northeast of the small town of Montello.

About 10 miles north of HD Summit, Highway 93 enters the drainage of the Snake River after crossing an unimpressive drainage divide atop a small set of east-west hills, south of the "93" on the MSRMaps image below, and here looking north on Google Street View. I couldn't quite locate this major drainage divide while we were driving south, but instead probably thought it was in the small hills just north of the "93" on the MSRMaps view.
MSRMaps image courtesy of the USGS. One mile is shown by the black section line running east-west between the red, north-south township border to the left of Highway 93 and the black, north-south line to the right of Highway 93.

At this seemingly insignificant drainage divide, the internally draining Great Basin ends. The Basin and Range Province, which overlaps the smaller Great Basin, continues a ways to the north, merging gradually with the plateau country on the southern edge of the Snake River Plain.
Scenes like this always make me want to drive off road, but we didn't. Instead, the pavement continued north, and so did we...

Alcan Geology Series

2011-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

My two posts on Folded Mountain are perpetually popular, at least from searches, so I've put together this mini-series of roadside geology along the Alcan, or Alaska Highway, or Highway 97 (British Columbia). If I knew more about the geology along that road, I might post more of my photos from my several trips.

Alcan Geology and Related Posts:
Where on (Google) Earth #158
Folded Mountain, B. C.
Folded Mountain, B. C. - A Reprise
Muncho Lake, B. C.
More Muncho
Some Alcan Mileage Links

I also have two more posts about Canada, with some introductory or basic geology:
Where in the West: October 2010
Where in the West: Rose Spit, B.C., Canada