slgwv's photos with the keyword: Big Box Canyon

Waterfall, Big Box Canyon, east side of the Stillwater Range above Dixie Valley, central Nevada. It's a good water year to be flowing like this! Check the still photos in the album for more about Big Box Canyon and its geologic significance. I tried to embed this video as a PiP in one of the stills, but that evidently doesn't work. I made an attempt at some real-time narration while taking the video--I figured no one will have a problem following an American accent! ;)

Looking west from Nevada State Route 121 in Dixie Valley, central Nevada. The prominent break in slope running roughly horizontally across the middle of the picture marks the trace of the range-front boundary fault, where the Stillwater Range is being uplifted with respect to Dixie Valley. The slope above that break is the fault-plane surface, little modified by erosion. Big Box Canyon (outlined) is a slot canyon that's incised into the range front. The downcutting by the stream is more or less keeping pace with the uplift, but the canyon remains narrow because the erosion is (geologically!) happening so quickly. The tapering downward canyon cross-section ("wineglass") is characteristic of streams cutting across active high-angle faults. Faulting here is ongoing: a huge earthquake in December 1954 (~Richter 7.4) left a ~15 ft (~ 4 m) scarp along much of the range front. It's barely visible here, but is much more prominent elsewhere. This area lies in the Central Nevada Seismic Belt, a north-south trending zone that's been the site of other large historical earthquakes.

East side of the Stillwater Range draining into Dixie Valley, central Nevada. This is one of several spectacular slot canyons along the range front here. The range is being uplifted so quickly (geologically speaking) that erosion hasn't had time to broaden the canyons. The canyons have a rough "wineglass" cross section, with a somewhat wider upper part tapering downward. This is one of the geomorphologic indicators of active faulting! A "box" canyon traditionally, of course, was one that ended at an unclimbable bluff, and this canyon qualifies there, too. When I was last here in fall 2000, there'd been an aluminum ladder up where that waterfall is, so that (in theory, anyway) you could bypass the cliff, but evidently it washed away in one or another flood over the years. The creek is _not_ generally running like this; it's a result of spring snowmelt in a good year! When I was here before there was no waterfall, just damp rock. The left inset shows a view of the range front, with this canyon highlighted. The right inset shows a more oblique view, looking back southwesterly, with Little Box Canyon (yes, there is one!) also highlighted. I also tried to embed a video of the flowing waterfall as a PiP, but evidently that doesn't work, so I've posted it separately.