Finally, northwestern Nevada and in the distance is the rim of the approximately 16 million year old High Rock caldera, but that is as far as I would get. The problem traveling in school owned vehicles is that they are always 2wd drive vans. The snow was from the first big storm of the season several weeks back and it was decided that we would not take to take the van into snow country, seeing if we got stuck, we would be stuck for awhile. Plus there was going to be an increase in elevation and the group decided, we had never camped in snow, why start now!
But not being able to get to the caldera was not entirely bad. While stopped to figure out if the road was passable or not, lying on the ground in incredible amounts were dull red rounded rocks, when broken exposed the most beautiful obsidian I have ever seen.
Which then made everyone forget about how cold it was outside and like kids in a candy store, search for the obsidian "eggs". See how excited grad students can get about rocks!
I found my share of good "eggs" and decided to photograph the snow and scenery, in which I quickly got hounded for. I also couldn't resist my urge for sneak snowball attacks and to build a snowman, no matter how big it was, only a ft tall.
So it was on to Plan B........
Finally, northwestern Nevada and in the distance is the rim of the approximately 16 million year old High Rock caldera, but that is as far as I would get. The problem traveling in school owned vehicles is that they are always 2wd drive vans. The snow was from the first big storm of the season several weeks back and it was decided that we would not take to take the van into snow country, seeing if we got stuck, we would be stuck for awhile. Plus there was going to be an increase in elevation and the group decided, we had never camped in snow, why start now!
But not being able to get to the caldera was not entirely bad. While stopped to figure out if the road was passable or not, lying on the ground in incredible amounts were dull red rounded rocks, when broken exposed the most beautiful obsidian I have ever seen.
Which then made everyone forget about how cold it was outside and like kids in a candy store, search for the obsidian "eggs". See how excited grad students can get about rocks!
I found my share of good "eggs" and decided to photograph the snow and scenery, in which I quickly got hounded for. I also couldn't resist my urge for sneak snowball attacks and to build a snowman, no matter how big it was, only a ft tall.
So it was on to Plan B........ 
2 comments:
Very nice! There are lots of great obsidian nodules up in the High Rock country, and sometimes you can find the perlitic beds they weather out of.
I don't remember where the High Rock caldera is - what road did you drive up, and where from? Is it near Soldier Meadow? North of Gerlach? Farther north? Curious about it because I spent a couple months working there a long time ago.
I believe Solider Meadow is just south of the caldera.
We were coming from Lava Beds National Monument, so we went through Alturas and Cedarville, took highway 299 which turned to highway 8A, atleast thats what Google Earth says, and then turned east and headed toward Denio for about 13 miles and turned south, and in less than 2 miles is where we got stuck at.
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