Tom Schweich  

Laurier

Just to the east is the site of the former Kettle Falls before they wer einundated by Grand Coulee dam.

Cross Columbia River

Kettle Falls

Spokane

Pasco

Kennewick

Umatilla

US Highway 395 follows the route of I 84 from Stanfield to Pendleton, Oregon.

Pendleton

Mt. Vernon

John Day

Burns

Junction: Oregon Highway 78, to Oregon Highway 205 to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and Burns Junction on US Highway 95.

Alkali Lake

Bruce Pavlik's (1985) review of sand dune flora of the western United States included the Alkali Lake Dunes as its northernmost locality.

Hutton Spring, on the northwest margin of Alkali Lake, is the sole habitat of the Hutton tui chub, classified as a threatened subspecies by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

On the southwestern margin of Alkali Lake is a pretty messy chemical waste disposal site. About 25,000 drums of pesticide manufacturing waste were disposed of here in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1976, the drums were crushed and buried in place in shallow trenches and fenced. Current analysis concludes that the site does not present a significant risk to the public or the environment.

Lakeview

New Pine Creek

Alturas

Likely

Susanville is 3 miles west on California Highway 36.

Honey Lake

Doyle

Hallelujah Junction

Petersen Mountain to the east in Nevada.

Reno

• Nevada State Route 341, known as Giger Grade, to Virginia City
• Nevada Highway 431, the Mount Rose Highway.

Carson City

Minden

Gardnerville

Junction: Leviathan Mine Road, west, then south past the Leviathan Mine to California Highway 89.

Holbrook Junction

Topaz Lake

Coleville

Walker

3 Flags Trading Post

Sweetwater Mountains

Sonora Junction:

Bridgeport Valley, just west of Bridgeport

Here I also found the Bridgeport Remote Automated Weather Station (RAWS). Current data can be obtained from: http://raws.wrh.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/roman/meso_base.cgi?stn=BPOC1.

This little road could be followed about 3/4 mile southwest to the mouth of By-Day Creek.

Bridgeport Valley

Bridgeport

U. S. Highway 395 crosses the East Walker River at Bridgeport.

Bodie is about 13 miles to the east.

Dog Town

Dog Town

Virginia Lakes is 6 miles to the southwest.

• Junction: California Highway 167, east in the direction of Bodie, and the Nevada border. Access to Mono Lake Drive and Mono City.
• Lundy Lake Road, west up Lundy Canyon, past Lundy Lake to a trailhead.

Mono City

Mono Inn

Tioga Lodge

Delta of Andy Thompson Creek.	Coll. No. 983, Polypogon monspeliensis	Tioga Lodge, site of former Mono Lake Post Office	Coll. No. 983, Polypogon monspeliensis	Three species of orchid found near Tioga Lodge

Many plant collections use this location as a point of reference.

Lee Vining

Mono Lake Committee building.

California Highway 120 follows the route of US Highway 395 for 4.8 miles to the south (below).

• Oil Plant Road, Forest Road 01N18 “Bohler Canyon”, to Farrington's.
• Forest Road 01N50, “Rush Creek”.

North June Lake Junction

Junction: California Highway 120, east to Benton at US Highway 6.

Shown as 1S09 on the 2007 Motorized Vehicle Restrictions Map, listed as 01S52 and named as "West Portal Road" in the USFS Transportation data set, this road may have some relation to the "Old Mono Highway."

The first half-mile of this road does not carry the Forest Road designation, presumably because it is on the private property of the LADWP.

The junction with the current-signed "West Portal Road" is about 0.6 mi south.

• West Portal Road
• Forest Road 1S29 "Grant Lake Cut-Off"

Aqueduct crosses under US Highway 395, road here also.

• Northbound US Highway 395 to West Portal Road

• Southbound US Hwy 395 to West Portal Road

Junction: Forest Road 1S116

Vista Point.

Aeolian Buttes to the east, between the highway and Mono Craters.

Aeolian Buttes

South June Lake Junction

• "Bald Mountain Road," Inyo Forest Road 1S05, turn northeast.

  You can take this road, and then Indiana Summit Road (1S06) as a short cut to Big Sand Flat on CA Highway 120. The distance is much shorter that taking CA Hwy 120 around to north end of the Mono Craters. The time required is about the same.

• Inyo Forest Road 02S10 "Glass Flow", turn southwest.

  "Glass Flow" is a strange name for this road, as it turns north through the Hartley Springs campground, and avoids any actual glass flows.

"Airfield Flat" to the north. There was a airfield in the sand flat to the north. One source has it a WWI airfield. I kind of doubt that. WWII seems more likely to me. You can access Airfield Flat from Bald Mountain Road.

Snow fences along US Highway 395 at Deadman Creek Road.

Watch for 1950s Caltrans-installed snow fences to the west. Fences were constructed upwind to keep wind-driven snow off the highway. Snow drifts build up along the eastern side of the fences, helping keep the road open with minimal plowing. The effects of higher and lower amounts of precipitation over time can be evaluated by looking at shrubs on either side of the snow fences. Near Deadman Creek, Michael Loik (UC Santa Cruz) and graduate students are studying simulations of increased and decreased snow depth scenarios as envisioned by some climate change models. Fluctuating snow depth results in variable soil moisture available for shrub and tree growth in the subsequent spring and summer, effects resonating through processes in the ecosystem such as litterfall, root growth, soil carbon storage, and soil nitrogen content. Their work on carbon, water, and nutrient fluxes driven by snow depth/melt timing in this system helps understand community-level responses to snow depth changes. Such responses include natural recruitment of Jeffrey and lodgepole pines (Pinus jeffreyi and P. contorta), as well as Great Basin sagebrush and antelope bitterbrush (Artemisia tridentata and Purshia tridentata) (McNulty, 2004).

Laurel Mountain.

This is the road that goes northeast along Hot Creek. Some maps show this as Owens River Road, others as Hot Creek Hatchery Road.

Long Valley Caldera

Convict Creek Moraines

Field Trip Stop 2-5 "Convict Creek Moraines" of the 2009 Desert Symposium (Reynolds and Jessey, 2009).

Looking south toward Convict Lake, one can see a 900-foot-high ridge that is a gigantic lateral moraine separating Tobacco Flat to the south from Long Valley to the north. The moraine is thought to be of Tahoe age. On the right (west) side of the road is a massive Tioga moraine made up of a series of arcuate end moraines.

A flora of SNARL has been published by UC Santa Barbara Museum of Systematics and Ecology (Orr and Howald, 2000).

Lake Crowley

Big Pumice Cut

Field Trip Day 2

Tom's Place

Type locality of Eriogonum nodosum Small ssp. monoense S. Stokes, J. T. Howell #14362.

Owens River Gorge	Field Trip Day 2

Owens River Gorge.

Field Trip Stop 2-3, "Owens River Gorge," of the 2009 Desert Symposium (Reynolds and Jessey, 2009) and LADWP Power Plant Middle Gorge. For comparison with Day 1 Cottonwood and Division Cr. plants, the Owens Gorge Power Plants are “triplets,” each generating 37.5 megawatts. The three plants operate simultaneously, and generate 100 megawatts. They also operate on aqueduct flow minus the water used in the Owens Gorge Fishery. About 120,000 acre feet of water goes through the plants each year, generating 225,000 megawatt-hours, enough for 200,000 homes. The penstock in Owens Gorge is eight feet in diameter.

Turn east here to access the Owens River Gorge.

Bishop

• California Highway 168, west and south to Bishop Creek and Lake Sabrina,
• West Line Street

• East Line Street, for about a 1/2 mile to the east, becoming Poleta Road.

Big Pine

Field Trip Stop 3-2 of the 2009 Desert Symposium (Reynolds and Jessey, 2009).

Look west-northwest at debris flow which came down north fork of Oak Creek.

Independence

Mary Austin house in Independence on U. S. Highway 395.

• East Market Street,
• West Market Street, which becomes Onion Valley Road at the edge of town.

The Eastern California Museum is near the corner of West Market Street and Grant Street. It has a collection of eastern California minerals and mining equipment. It also has an excellent exhibit of Native American baskets and artifacts and reproductions of rock art. The life of Japanese-Americans interned at Manzanar is also exhibited.

The Golden Bear dike in the Sierra Nevada and the Coso dikes in the Coso Range crop out on opposite sides of Owens Valley, California, and strike roughly perpendicular to it. Neither dike reappears along strike across the valley. New data demonstrate that the dike sets are ca. 83 Ma in age, share nearly identical mineralogy and petrography, and intrude similar wall rocks including distinctive 102 Ma leucogranite. These data suggest that the dike sets were originally continuous and were offset dextrally by ~65 km. This displacement estimate is consistent with other recent estimates of total slip across Owens Valley. If faulting began during the Pliocene, the average slip rate was signifi cantly faster than the current rate. Alternatively, motion could have been episodic and have begun as early as the Late Cretaceous (Kylander-Clark, et al., 2005).

Manzanar

Bacon and Pezzopane (2007) excavated three fault trenches and one 2-m deep pit within about 10-20 m of each other along the north-striking fault trace near Alabama Gates.

Bacon and Pezzopane (2007) excavated four fault trenches within 20-50 m of one another along a 100-m length of the Owens Valley fault. Three stratigraphic pits, each 3-4 m in depth, were excavated on nearby geomorphic surfaces in order to map the unfaulted stratigraphy.

Lone Pine

Turn west here to visit the Lone Pine Fault.

Annie M. Alexander and Louise Kellogg collected Salvia dorrii on the mesa above Carroll Creek Canyon. Also accessible from Horseshoe Meadows Road.

Bartlett

Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns

Plaque at Cottonwood Charcoal Kilns	Remains of adobe charcoal kilns.	Field Trip Day 1

The historic plaque is at the highway; the kilns are about 1 mile east on a dirt road.

Olancha

The Golden Bear dike in the Sierra Nevada and the Coso dikes in the Coso Range crop out on opposite sides of Owens Valley, California, and strike roughly perpendicular to it. Neither dike reappears along strike across the valley. New data demonstrate that the dike sets are ca. 83 Ma in age, share nearly identical mineralogy and petrography, and intrude similar wall rocks including distinctive 102 Ma leucogranite. These data suggest that the dike sets were originally continuous and were offset dextrally by ~65 km. This displacement estimate is consistent with other recent estimates of total slip across Owens Valley. If faulting began during the Pliocene, the average slip rate was signifi cantly faster than the current rate. Alternatively, motion could have been episodic and have begun as early as the Late Cretaceous (Kylander-Clark, et al., 2005).

Coso Junction

Coso Junction	Field Trip Day 3

View left (northeast) of white pumice mine cuts. The Sugarloaf perlite dome is to the southeast, along with cinder cones of the Coso Volcanic Field. The Coso Geothermal Field hosts a power-generating project in continuous operation for two decades. In 2002, four geothermal power plants were located in the main production area, constructed from 1987 through 1990. Turbine-generator sets are operated by steam; the geothermal system is heated by magma that has been migrating upward from a depth of 10 km to as shallow as 5 km. This near-surface system is evidenced by hot springs, mud pots, mud volcanoes, and fumaroles.

Banerjee, et al. (2011) assessed the relative importance of deeply circulating meteoric water and direct mantle fluid inputs on near-surface ³He/⁴He anomalies reported at the Coso and Beowawe geothermal fields of the western United States. The depth of meteoric fluid circulation is a critical factor that controls the temperature, extent of fluid-rock isotope exchange, and mixing with deeply sourced fluids containing mantle volatiles. The influence of mantle fluid flux on the reported helium anomalies appears to be negligible in both systems. This study illustrates the importance of deeply penetrating permeable fault zones (10^-12 to 10^-15 m2) in focusing groundwater and mantle volatiles with high ³He/⁴He ratios to shallow crustal levels. These continental geothermal systems are driven by free convection, and fluid flow is guided by faults rather than topographic gradients.

Rose Valley

Red Hill

Turn west here to view the outcrop of columnar basalt at Field Trip Stop 1-3 of the 2009 Desert Symposium (Reynolds and Jessey, 2009).

Inyokern

Johannesburg

Red Mountain

Atolia

Kramer Junction