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alluvial fans

Nevada High Points #118 – Last Chance Range

D. Craig Young · March 23, 2024 · 2 Comments

Coalescent wash. Variegated landscape of Devils Hole Wash from the Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

Unnamed Peak

4985 ft – 1519 m (2257 ft gain)

2024.02.11

Last Chance Image Collection


Keeping a disciplined calendar is important to me. It truly does keep things from happening all at once, and it provides motivation for keeping to goals and practices that I set for myself. It also acts as a form of communication and agreement between home, work, projects, and travel – these are so intertwined in my personality and pursuits that I can think of no other way of living. I am not a slave to the calendar, and I commonly make changes – and it is by no means a daily list, only a practical target with emphasis on keeping to high point and geography pursuits. Setting aside Second Friday gives momentum to the aspirations of finishing the list, even in its general impossibility. Yet sometimes the calendar gets pushed around – in February the push came in the form of a series of atmospheric rivers that derail my projects in southern California.

Hearts of cactus. Color on the limestone slope of the Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

I have been trying to schedule an exploratory excavation project – contracted by Caltrans – in the southern Sierra, near Lake Isabella, for the past month, but the rain and snow kept coming. Finally, the forecast hinted we would get a break, so we pack up and head south. If everything goes well, I will be back into southern Nevada on Second Friday, so I keep in mind several ranges around the Amargosa Desert and Ash Meadows (northwest of Pahrump, NV).

Things do not go well. The storm sent a last-gasp arm of heavy precipitation into southern California, sending landslides over highways and bringing snow to the hills of the southern Sierra. I am stuck in a hotel room. We eventually get our work done over a couple extra days, and I drive into the desert, traversing through Death Valley and into the Amargosa Desert on Saturday night. The Amargosa River is in flood mode inundating a long stretch of the Ash Meadows Road east of Death Valley Junction; I ford it slowly only to find ‘road closed’ signs at the Nevada line. But they suggest the road closure is now behind me, that is, at the river crossing I just experienced. The signs face toward the west-bound traffic, but I am going east on a road that is high and dry ahead of me. I find my Ash camp in a gravel quarry at the foot of the Devils Hole Mountains east of the river – I have camped here a few times when gouging around the Amargosa River. The ground is wet but holds firm, so I set camp in a stiff breeze, finally making dinner in the cool and quiet dark – so much nicer than the hotel of the past few nights.

Rock wash. Proximal fan segment, northern Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #1)

Sunday morning opens bright with frost and cold with a north wind behind the recent storm. Coffee in hand, I decide to head into the Last Chance Range above Pahrump. I can make this a quick excursion into the limestone hills and then hit the long drive home. I park at the base of a ridge that seems to lead toward rocky shelves below the prominent summit, maybe 1,700 feet above me. I am not expecting compelling photographs under the bright, blue-sky conditions, so I  focus on simply enjoying the walk.

I soon realize that I am not at all prepared for the terrain of the Last Chance Range. First, I made the mistake of thinking this would be quick. I have a liter of water and virtually no extra gear; the battery is dead in my Garmin beacon. Second, I am not experienced in the stepped limestone crags of southern Nevada, with sometimes puzzling route-finding where small talus-filled chutes provide access to higher ledges, and ledges end suddenly at steep drops and rocky falls. I consider turning back; maybe I can just get to the next saddle, check the view, and try another time. But no, I am here today, and it looks interesting ahead; I should be fine. It was not a smart decision, but I put it in my pocket for now and turn onto a game trail traversing a ledge that seems to lead toward the final boulder-filled ravines below the summit.

Eagle’s window. Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #2)

The ledge is fascinating. Limestone and sandstone cliffs rise above me as I walk along uplifted and tilted beds and beaches of a shallow sea now rising into the desert sky. Sleeping circles of big horn sheep are tucked here and there. Jumping in time, I find a woodrat midden packed into a dry alcove at the cliff bottom. These middens hold valuable pollen and plant information, stored by the careful and complete collection activities of the ‘packrat’. These can be thousands of years old, but this one looks like it might be hundreds at most; still, if the local vegetation changes, a recent record is kept in these little indurated nests. I mark the locality and move on.

Neotoma midden. Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #3)
Register. Summit book of the Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA

I work my way into a steep but accessible ravine cut into the black limestone of the Last Change summit block. Ah ha, a couple cairns suggest that this might be a common route to the top. I grab the ravine wall in a couple places, but it is easy-going over a last few steps. Like walking onto a narrow balcony, I soon step into a breeze driven upward from the vast expanse of the valleys below. I am bounded by Mount Charleston in the Spring Mountains to the east and the prominent Telescope Peak above Death Valley to the west, both blanketed in new snow. A worthy effort, even without the best planning.

Alluvial fans of western front of Last Chance Range. Qa1: oldest (Pleistocene); Qa2: oldish (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene); Qa3: recent (Holocene to modern). Stars correspond to map points in image captions.

I choose a longer descent following more gradual slopes to the west, prudent when running dry as I am now – missteps may be more likely on the steeper and varied traces of the ledges of my route up. This takes a while, but over a couple miles I cross a nice section of variegated alluvial fan surfaces. The surface changes revealing clues to the age of the alluvial landforms and the soils forming on them. Color changes are abrupt and clear, like someone has drawn a geological map on the ground. Gullies show ancient soils of flaggy carbonate on stained boulders of debris flows and flood levees, the adjacent surfaces red with oxidation and dotted with turbated carbonate gravels. These give way to fine-grained, grey-colored, and recent fans and washes, where floods of the Holocene and maybe last year (!) pushed basinward from the steep, western slopes of the Last Chance Range.

Fan relic and wash. Medial fan segments along Devils Hole Wash, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #4)
Temporal change. Variation in the alluvium on the fans below the Last Chance Range, Mojave Desert, NV, USA (Map Point #5)

Last Chance Image Collection

I am back at my truck with many hours of extra-time added to complete the loop. I will have echoes of this excursion for a few days – especially because I now have the muscular stasis of a long drive home, but it is worth it, as usual. I will note my poor planning and resolve to not to make such silly errors on future climbs; I know better (I think). It is good to be in this corner of the Mojave Desert in the closing of winter, and I suspect I will be back a few times in the coming months.

Keep going.

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The Crater to Ione, NV: The resolution of ‘Second Friday’

D. Craig Young · January 13, 2020 · 2 Comments

It is a new year, 2020. I thought of doing a retrospective of last year’s favorite journeys and images. “My 12 Best Photos”, calendar-like (to follow a theme), or something similar. A look back, however, reveals several gaps in my photography journey. Those gaps opened as my vocational world (not too mention much of our national and global community experience) encountered turbulence. I turned to field studies and photography as escapes – I had many good field sessions, but they were escapes, nonetheless. Not escapes from the management attention that my business requires, but escapes as relief and rejuvenation. So, leaving the turbulence behind and motivated by it, I am looking forward to a new year and another trip around the sun.

What were the gaps? I had one new blog post in 2019 and I basically avoided sharing either images or field observations on social media. The latter does not bother me all that much, the pitfalls of social media are best avoided. The former is a strange conundrum.  I very much enjoy the blog medium. I spent considerable time with new formats and published several blogs based on journeys that took place in previous years; I still have a few drafts in the works. I kept thinking I would catch up eventually. Still, that is ‘looking back’; this is about looking forward.

Clayton – Ione Collection

Friends, family, and colleagues know me as a scheduler. I keep a detailed calendar charting my day and keeping time for the various things I consider significant. Do I stick to it?  Some days or weeks are better than others; I have never, however, considered any calendar as legally or emotionally binding. Other than engagements or appointments I should not miss, it is generally aspirational. But it is very structured. When I do stick to it, there is pleasure and satisfaction there, and, as a result, when I realize a successful calendar, I find I get things done.

A given workday, for example, has ‘Prime’ tasks and ‘Focus’ tasks. During ‘prime-time’ I allow disturbances and it is about collaboration and teamwork; it usually takes up the mornings. I turn off phones and email during ‘focus-time’, picking a specific project for the day or week that needs or can benefit from undivided attention, typically several hours in the afternoon. Field work negates the schedule for a while. Hey, it is fieldwork, that is why I do this!

My wife and I have a pretty simple home life, and I am not one to separate ‘work’ from ‘play’. I can and do unplug, but I am fortunate (I think) that my interests intertwine, mostly to mutual benefit. Like the workday, evenings revolve around a few key, calendared activities. Mondays and Tuesdays are about geoarchaeological research, notes, or projects that don’t get time at the office. Thursdays are for photography – processing, printing, and study. Other days I let randomness have its way, and I do not berate myself if the occasional distraction rips the day from the calendar.

So, what is this about? This is something of a forward-looking resolution and promise to me – discipline and practice around growth in my photography and my geoarchaeological science. It is all about the weekends!

I will call them ‘Second Friday’ and ‘Fourth Friday’, calendared and planned weekends of each month. Second Friday marks a monthly field trip, getting out on the ground with emphasis on areas where I have research interest and where I can bring my photography to that setting and topic. I head out on a Friday with a geography in mind and camp through the weekend. I might make a basecamp, or I could ramble on a reconnaissance of roads and trails untraveled. Fourth Friday begins a local weekend focused on practicing my photographic skills. I might chase golden light in the mornings and evenings, forage for images on a quick daytrip, or simply hunker into intensive processing or printing sessions. I may break from the focus to see to chores, of course, but the weekend revolves around a photography theme or themes.

Will this work? We will see. With this blog post, it is January’s Second Friday and I am in Clayton Valley, east of Tonopah, NV.

The Crater.

The Crater rises from the Pleistocene-age, coalesced alluvial fans that stream from the northeast margin of the Silver Peak Range. The fans engulf the volcano, but it rises in the classic composite cone, weakened only along its east side, where lavas poured into the valley, leaving black scoriated lobes paralleled the later flashy flows of the ever-reaching alluvial fans. Hwy 268 is one of the few remaining paved roads in Nevada that I have not explored, and while planning the field excursion The Crater is a highlight of my Google Earth flyby. This is where the weekend begins.

The Crater at Dusk, Clayton Valley.

The weather is perfect. There are rumors of a coming weak storm system, but the sky remains placid, the sun unduly warm for early January. I climb The Crater and explore its blown-out center; I continue southward to circum-navigate its perimeter. The walk is crispy on the young volcanic pumice and scree. Dust profiles on the cone’s south slopes, downwind of the Clayton Valley basin-bottom playa (today a focus of Lithium production), are fascinating. Fine-grained sediments always attract my attention.

Moonlight Crater, from the Monocline, Clayton Valley, NV.

I drive about a mile north with the approaching evening. Some basalt-capped badlands, called The Monocline, provide a stage for sunset and moonlight photography of the dark volcanic crater against the light-colored desert fans. It is the composition I visualized for the evening practice. The light is subdued, but I enjoy the quiet evening and the invitation of the full moon.

Tuffs in badlands of Black Canyon alluvial fans.

Camp is a non-descript wide spot at the intersection of cardinal two-track roads in the middle of the Black Canyon fan extending from the Silver Peaks. I am in the Big Smoky Valley drainage system now, but only a short distance north of the low pass to Clayton Valley. With the sunrise I detach the trailer and scurry in the ZR2 toward some badland outcrops far up the fan. The roads cut into the desert pavements and it is a short hike to Miocene badlands where ashflows and lakebeds encapsulate occasional pockets of petrified wood. Clear sky sunrise with few clouds. I am enthralled by the expanse of fans with inselberg islands of partially buried outcrops revealing remnant landscapes, but how to express the expanse and document the temporal incongruities through photography? I will return again and again.

Remnants. The volcanic outcrops of Black Canyon, Silver Peak Range, NV.

Circling toward Ione via the Gabbs Pole Line road, the forecasted squalls finally intersect the weekend. There is a bit of drama in the sky as I drop into quarry pits and arroyos to walk fine-grained profiles. There is temporal information in the sequence of ancient soils separating deep packages of gravelly Pleistocene alluvium and Holocene dust reworked into the basin as loessic alluvium. The Ione Wash arroyo is fantastic, a deep slice along the axis of this vast inland valley. I walk the profiles searching for fire histories, volcanic ash, and soil formation, hoping for an archaeological trace from the basin’s past.

Ione Valley Squalls.
Misty Mountain.

I camp by the roadside where I can photograph the squalls sailing through the Paradise and Shoshone ranges. Few flurries hit camp, but the evening is a pleasure, the trailer is warm, and I sleep well. The morning is clear but for some scudding clouds on the mountain tops. I tour homeward, joining traffic on Hwy 95 until skipping south at Yerington. I’m home in the early afternoon.

Last squall.

Clayton – Ione Collection

This is the pleasure of the weekend of Second Friday in all regards. I had some targets highlighted as little more than excuses to get into new landscapes where I could consider the natural setting and its process. I augmented my taste of dirt with the slow build of landscape photography, choosing a few scenes to maybe tell the story of the traveled stage. This is how planning, and a calendar, brings discipline that ultimately evolves into the pleasure of an outback journey and experience.

Keep going.

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