Mine access, maybe.
There’s a pumice mine in the Coso Range that I’ve not been able to get into since Hurricane Hilary washed out the road a year ago. Finally decided a folding electric bike would do the trick, since I could walk it through washouts. And so, with eBike assembled, gave it a try.
Access is via a powerline road, which bypasses the major washout and intersects the mine road at washout number two. As I approached that intersection, I noticed a fairly overgrown BLM road I had missed before. Pretty good shrubs in the middle, but the wheel paths were clear, so I tried it.
As it turned out, it intersected the mine road past washout number two, so I was able to drive almost to the mine. Only a geologist would call the current mine road a “road,” with the horrible shape it’s in. Since the last few hundred feet were not anything close to a road, unfolded the bike, since I wanted to see what it would do, and rode on up.
The attraction? Pyroclastic tuff balls, which form more or less like snowballs rolling down hill. The pumice deposit was formed as a part of a sideways blast of pumice and ash from a volcanic vent, glowing hot. Pieces of rock, hot enough to be sticky, tumbled along in the glowing ash cloud, picking up red hot ash and rock fragments. I’ve looked at a lot of ash flows and pumice deposits, and this is the only spot I’ve seen these. Tuff is a rock formed of welded volcanic ash.
The mine had suffered significant erosion. Took photos and found what I was looking for. That evening, wanting to send photos to someone, discovered none of the pix had gotten into the icloud, so reached for my phone. What?! Not in my pocket? Find my phone showed me roughly where it was, in the mine!! Aagh!
Next day went up there and found the phone. Cooled off with a giant iced tea in Ridgecrest, fed the van with cheap (relatively) gas, and though it was 110 degrees, drove up an aqueduct road to collect some teaching examples of true granite, nothing at all like countertop granite, 99% of which isn’t granite at all. The outcrop was in the shade by the time I got there.
Granite is not so common, but “granitic” rocks are, in the family with granite but differing in mineral percentages.
Crazy couple of days, but overall pretty good. The phone was cooked, but after a cooldown, it still works!
