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Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 26, 2017 - 08:50am PT
hooblie! Re your question on my geology lesson of the area around Choss Creek:

are those silt clays what makes for good potato dirt or maybe aeolian deposits?

Here's what the geologist that wrote the report had to say on the subjecct of the Yahoo clay.

Throughout this area, the Yahoo Clay is monotonously uniform in its lithology,consisting of laminated clay and sparse amounts of
silty clay.
The clay is compact and
hard when dry, breaking with a conchoidal fracture,
but readily slakes in water. The eroded surface
weathers to form a loose, “popcorn” surficial layer a
foot or more thick, possibly because of the presence
of clays that swell when wet.

About 1/3 of the soil on our ranchette fits the above discription & is NOT potato-friendly. Most of the Snake River Plain farming is done on thin layers of sandy loam derived from natural erosion of basalt & wind distribution of that & re-depositing of Snake River aluvial deposits. There are some soils on the eastern part of the Snake River Plain that fit the definition of Loess, but not around here.

Wayno! The Lake Bonneville flood came from the failure of an old landslide that let loose a 450' high wall of water that gradually subsided as the lake lowered.

I suspect you are thinking of the Glacial Lake Missoula floods that devastated Eastern Washington & happened repeatedly due to glacial ice dams that came & went.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Oct 26, 2017 - 10:51am PT
monotonously uniform in its lithology,c

Boy, howdy! But I still love it when you talk dirty! :-)
Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 26, 2017 - 02:08pm PT
Reilly! I like it when geologists have some fun with their reports.
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Jan 15, 2018 - 08:13am PT
Nick Danger

Ice climber
Arvada, CO
Jan 15, 2018 - 08:39am PT
It seems we are always finding fault these days, so I thought I would add my 2 cents worth.

Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Jan 15, 2018 - 10:39am PT
Mouse! That first photo looks like a nice chunk of petrified wood.

Nick Danger! That's not my fault, but thanks for posting. Maybe someone here will accept it as their fault?

Idaho's best fault is under its highest peak Mt. Borah.

The 1983 Mt. Borah earthquake was measured at 7.3 on the Richter Scale. Because the area it occured in is mostly rural, there was not extensive damage to life or property, but unfortunately two schoolgirls were killed in nearby Challis, when a wall collasped on them.

From Idaho State Unviersity on the ensuing scarp-line that shows the fault.

Fault displacement that produced this intense earthquake was expressed in spectacular surface ground rupture along a northwest-trending, 22 mile-long zone on the western flank of the Lost River Range. A west-northwest-trending section of faulting that branches off of the main surface fault trace west of Dickey Peak gives the surface faulting pattern a Y-shape. Much of the zone of surface rupture follows the Holocene and upper Pleistocene fault scarps of the Lost River fault. Fault scarps, the most common features along the zone of surface faulting, look like small steps or cliffs. Fault scarps are produced when adjacent blocks of the earth's crust move relative to each other and are displaced along a fault plane.
http://imnh.isu.edu/digitalatlas/geo/quakes/borahEQ/boraheq.htm

Vertical displacement was about 9 feet, with Mt. Borah gaining 6 inches & the valley floor dropping 8 1/2 feet.



I recall a story about a local woman who happened to be standing right next to the fault & got to see the scarp line open up in front of her. Maybe it was her fault?

“Lawana Knox of Challis, Idaho, witnessed the for-mation of a fault scarp during the Ms 7.3 earthquake of 28 October 1983 along the Lost River Range, Idaho. The earthquake occurred at 8:06 a.m. local time (1406 UTC) while Mrs. Knox was hunting with her husband, William Knox.

Mrs. Knox was sitting at a point along a fork of Arentson Gulch…and was watching the southwest-facing slope down which she expected to see her husband driving elk. As she watched, the fault scarp formed before her eyes. At the closest point, the scarp was about 300 m away, but she could clearly see the scarp for at least 1 kilometer both to the northwest and to the southeast.

Mrs. Knox reported that the 1- to 1.5-m-high scarp formed in about 1 second. She reported that the scarp reached its full height quickly, and that it did not appear to adjust up or down later or oscillate up and down while reaching its full height. Mrs. Knox reported that the scarp did not form until the peak of strong shaking was beginning to subside.

Upon being asked how long the strong shaking lasted, Mr. Knox replied, “about a minute.” Mrs. Knox disagreed and said, “it might have been a half a minute, but it felt like a lifetime.” Both Mr. and Mrs. Knox said the earthquake started with noise and that “the earthquake came from the south, from the direction of Borah Peak.” After the first sensa-tions, the ground shook harder and harder, and only after the shaking started to subside or ease did Mrs. Knox see the scarp form.”—from Wallace (1984)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284309437_Twenty_years_after_the_Borah_Peak_earthquake-field_guide_to_surface-faulting_earthquakes_along_the_Lost_River_Fault_Idaho
Nick Danger

Ice climber
Arvada, CO
Jan 15, 2018 - 11:06am PT
Fritz,
The following is the AEC's fault, quite literally.
This 3 meter high fault scarp formed the moment the Faultless underground nuclear test was triggered on 19 January, 1968, at the central Nevada Test Area. This location was chosen for particularly large yield device testing because lower yield devices were already causing too much damage in Las Vegas. CNTA is truly located in the middle of nowhere (96 mi east of Tonopah, the nearest town); it was chosen for its remoteness and its supposed lack of seismic activity. Why they thought it was aseismic is anybody's guess because you can see subtle fault scarps in Holocene alluvial fans in the low angle light of early morning from the site. Anyway, in the event the test formed this graben as well as triggering deeper faults 25 and 50 miles away. No more tests were conducted at CNTA after that first one. There is so much evidence of extensional stress associated with the Walker Lane throughout this area that it amazes me anyone would have been surprised by that test triggering seismic activity.

So, it's AEC's fault.
Nick Danger

Ice climber
Arvada, CO
Jan 15, 2018 - 11:10am PT
PS, I am always a fan of your posts, Fritz, just love seeing the stuff from Idaho.

Keep up the good work there in Choss Creek.
cheers
Nick
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jan 15, 2018 - 11:43am PT
Dirty dancing! One of my majors was geography. Sadly, I only capisco the ‘geo’ of this thread.
But I like other things that I don’t unnerstand, too, like wimmen. 🤪
Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2018 - 11:23am PT
I took a long road trip down to the Silver City area in western New Mexico, on my way to meet Heidi at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show.

On the way, my most memorable moment was spent standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona.


Then the next morning, I visited a Native American Great House ruin, Casa Malpais, with a local history buff, who had access to the ruin through a locked gate. It's located near the AZ-NM border town of Eager.

The most outstanding rock at the ruin was incised with Petroglyphs & is a Winter Solstice marker. At midday on the Winter Solstice, a finger of light moves down to the Ram's Horns at center.
Then I enjoyed a scenic drive south to historic Silver City NM, where I spent two nights. Silver City was unexpectedly larger & busier than I had imagined. Worse yet, nearby huge & active copper mines had vast areas of mineralized areas fenced & posted No Tresspasing.

The next day, on the edge of an active mining area, I found a road that was blocked with large rocks, but not signed, & I wandered up it, uncomfortabley aware that I was also on the edge of a rural subdivision. I found one nice chunk of the copper mineral Azurite & then retreated for a drive around a couple of the active copper mines.

The Santa Rita mine, which was first discovered by Spanish explorers in the early 1800's is miles across & still growing.

A few smaller old mines & headframes are on the edges of the Santa Rita mine, but all I noticed are posted & fenced.

In the adjacent town of Bayard, there is an exhibit of old mining machinery along the highway. I liked the small boiler on wheels, which was towed around to exploratory drill-sites to power compressed-air drills.


This much-later mucker-hauler was also powered by compressed air. The operator stood on the small steel step.

That afternoon, I drove north of Silver City on Hwy 15 & north of the old gold-mining Town of Pinos Altos I found Forest Service lands & access to the Continental Divide Trail & a historic Arresta site. I wandered up the trail for a few miles, taking side trails to various small abandoned mines. Blessedly, I did not find any minerals of interest to pack out.

The next day I headed south to Lordsburg, hoping to find some small abandoned mines around the old mining town of Tyrone. The whole mining district is now another huge open-pit copper mine, which is of course fenced & signed.

In Lordsburg, I actually found a decent rock-shop on old Hwy 66. It was open, but upon my waking up the owner from his late-morning nap & asking if he had any local mineral specimens, I got geriatric confusion. The shop had a lot of specimens & he wandered around for a long while muttering to himself that he used to have some he had found at the big-pit south of Lordsburg, when you could still collect there. He didn't find anything & I left for Tucson.

However! A few days later, Heidi & I drove down to remote Chiricahua National Monument, which is a wonderland of Rhyolite erosion. The CCC lads built a great series of trails through some of the "hoodoos" in the 1930's with much rock-stacking, drilling, blasting, & digging. We hiked the 3.4 mile Echo Park Loop. Here's Heidi at the start of the hike, which trends steeply downhill.


Fritz along the way. Note the light green lichen on the pinkish Rhyolite. That cool lichen is also featured on much of the granite at Cochise Stronghold, which is in the next range to the west.

Hoodoos!

There were lots of balanced rocks.

On the trail out, we found this layer of rhyolite marbles, all nicely glued together. Since it was such a localized formation, all I can guess is they came from a nearby spatter-cone?

cron

Trad climber
Dover
Feb 20, 2018 - 12:00pm PT
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
Feb 20, 2018 - 01:59pm PT
Reedmergnerite from Zagi Mt. Pakistan

So rare I can't even find info on it

NaBSi3O8
Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2018 - 02:14pm PT
Craig: I'll credit you with just not liking the specimens of Reedmergneite they show on Mindat.
https://www.mindat.org/min-3382.html

However, the photo of a complex specimen from New Mexico does seem related to yours.

https://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?frm_id=pager&cform_is_valid=1&min=3382&loc=&u=&potd=&pco=&d=&showtype=1&phototype=0&checkall=&filtcountry=USA&loctxt=&keywords=&orderxby=&submit_pager=Filter+Search
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
Feb 20, 2018 - 02:19pm PT
Thanks Fritz
There is a little info on Reedmergnerite
But it sure is lacking compared to most minerals

No photos on Google images look like my specimen
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
Feb 20, 2018 - 02:25pm PT
Diopside from Badakhshan Afghanistan
jeff constine

Trad climber
Ao Namao
Feb 20, 2018 - 02:48pm PT
Nick Danger

Ice climber
Arvada, CO
Feb 20, 2018 - 03:23pm PT
Nice pic, Jeff.

Fritz, those "rhyolite marbles" are spherulites. The rhyolite they occur in was emplaced as a voluminous pyroclastic flow that was hot enough upon deposition to fuse into a dense glassy mass. The interior of the flow retained heat long enough to grow microcrystals but the upper and lower margins of the flow quenched as a volcanic glass. Glass is thermodynamically unstable and wants to achieve a lower Gibbs free energy state by crystalizing, but is caught in kind of a thermodynamic catch-22. As the temperature drops the thermodynamic drive to crystalize grows stronger, but the amount of thermal energy present to actually drive the crystallization process is diminishing. In such situations small imperfections in the glass become nucleation sites for the first crystals, and since the thermodynamic drive is so great crystallization occurs rapidly outward in all directions from that initial seed crystal. The crystallization front progresses outward as a spherical surface. Since the processes of seed crystal nucleation and outward crystal growth occur in a very narrow window in temperature/chemical composition/Gibbs free energy space, the resulting spherulites are typically uniform in size and occupy a rather restricted stratigraphic horizon within the parent welded tuff.


This is a photo of a pyroclastic flow that was neither thick enough nor hot enough to fuse into a densely welded tuff. that being said, these types of nonwelded tuffs have their own internal thermodynamic and geochemical tricks to play.

Gawd how I love volcanic rocks!

BTW, the new Jurassic World movie is going to have both dinosaurs and volcanos! I expect it to be the most important movie in my adult life. the only way they could possibly improve on that lineup would be to add P-51s.

cheers
Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2018 - 03:57pm PT
Nick! Thank you for the explanation that the Rhyolite marbles are actually crystals. Heidi & I were fascinated.

Here's a closer shot of the "spherulites."

Fritz

Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 27, 2018 - 09:18am PT
While we were in Tucson, we went to several of the venues for the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show. The show spreads out to a number of hotels & some tented expositions along both sides of the freeway through Tucson. It culminates in the 3-day Convention Center Expo, which ends the two-week long show. Most vendors are there from Jan 27 to Feb 10th. It was the 4th time we’ve been to the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show & I confess to not being as excited about seeing hundreds of thousands of the finest mineral specimens in the world, as I used to be.

It is great to escape winter in Idaho for 80 degree f. days in the desert and it was fun to visit with some of the more friendly mineral dealers.

Some of the larger hotel parking lot shows entail miles of exhibits.

A couple 5" tall Aquamarine crystals, I think from Pakistan.

The most popular hotel show for "serious" collectors used to be called the InnSuites show & is now the Hotel Tucson City Center. They have unfortunately lost about 70% of their parking lot, so traffic congestion there can be ugly. They do usually have some fun outside exhibits.



There were a lot of nice fossil specimens at the Granada Ave. Arizona Mineral & Fossil show & some great mineral specimens too.

Sabertooth tiger skeleton attacking an unidentified skeleton.



Heidi had been jonesing for a large & light-colored Wulfenite specimen, since seeing some huge ones last year at Tucson's Desert Museum. We finally found some from Arizona's Rowley Mine on our last day at the show. A pleasant young geologist/dealer had just purchased some from a miner & was willing to give us bargain prices, since he needed some cash. I'm happy Heidi likes this kind of "rock" for Valentine's Days, versus what jewelery stores sell.

I bought some inexpensive specimens for resale, but ended up buying a nice & large Diopside specimen for myself, from Kimbedi in the Republic of the Congo. I really like the color.

We left Tucson on Feb 11, just as the jet stream roared south & brought rain & cold weather to the desert. We worked our way home on Hwy 95 from Vegas to Tonopah & visited some of the early 1900's gold-mining boom towns on the way to Tonopah's classic Mizpah Hotel.

Rhyolite's famous bottle house. Empty liquor bottles were an abundant & free building material.

Bottle house detail.

Goldfield NV isn't dead, but it is slumbering despite the number of bars still open. The Goldfield Hotel was once the finest between San Francisco & Denver, but despite some attempts to reopen it, is currently closed.

tile floor detail.

Just east of Goldfield are hundreds of mines, including some that are still being mined.


Dozens of mine dumps in this photo.

The early 1900's Hotel Mizpah in Tonopah has been nicely restored & is a somewhat fascinating place to stay, since it also come with a much-touted ghost of a early 1900's prostitute, who was murdered in a top-story room.


The storm changed to snow that night & we were punished for trying to escape winter with icy roads the next morning & another two-weeks of winter in South Idaho.

Here's our hotel room view, with the snowstorm approaching.
Craig Fry

Trad climber
So Cal.
Feb 27, 2018 - 09:53am PT
Good stuff Fritz

I'm not allowed to go to the Tucson Show anymore because I spend all my mineral money buying on E-Bay these days.

We went a couple times, and as usual, I spent all my money in about 1-hour.
Then it's pure torture to look at all the other stuff I could've bought if I saved some for the other 1000 of sellers.
Some day, after I retire I will go, maybe even sell.

You can some really great stuff on E-Bay directly from the miners. They can set-up a E-Bay store with just an IPhone and a PayPal Account.
If they rip anyone off, they lose their E-Bay store fast, so it's very secure and legit.

Afghanite
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