slgwv's photos with the keyword: Black Rock Desert

Looking northeast up the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The tiny town of Gerlach, Nevada is more or less even with the skylined range (Granite Mountains) coming in from the left (see note). The site of the Burning Man countercultural festival is about 15 miles beyond, out in those flats. The powerline on the left that the road is following is the intertie that connects the Bonneville hydropower grid, on the Columbia River, with the Los Angeles grid. The valley here was filled with Pleistocene Lake Lahontan about 15 K years ago, and large shoreline features such as wavecut benches are prominent here and there along the mountain front. I'm standing on one to take this photo, in fact!

Recurvirostra americana . A common shorebird in western North America, seen here improbably on an ephemeral lake near the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. In fact, this time of year this shallow basin is normally completely dry! Left inset shows another view of this bird; the right inset shows this ephemeral lake, looking west toward the Granite Mountains. Meltwater from the snow still (unusually) present on these mountains is maintaining the lake for now.

Looking southwest across an ephemeral lake to the Granite Mountains in northern Washoe County, Nevada. The shallow basin this lake fills is normally completely dry (see the satellite view), but is filled due to the extraordinary water season last winter. Snow is also still present on the Granites; they usually are completely bare this time of year, and the continuing snowmelt is helping maintain the lake via normally dry Granite Creek.

A small basin improbably perched about 400 ft (120 m) above the main basin. It's relict topography from when the whole Black Rock basin was filled with a huge lake, Pleistocene Lake Lahontan, several hundred feet deep. The barrier walling off this little basin is a spit, a peninsula (highlighted) deposited by longshore drift when Lake Lahontan was full. In fact, there are lots of small perched playas and similar features around Lake Lahontan, formed by shoreline processes in a deep lake. In some places, the Lake Lahontan features are so large-scale they're a good model of marine shoreline processes, showing what the coastline would look like if you could drop sealevel a few hundred feet. (As it happens, I have a whole album on such a place, where we would take Geology 100 students on field trips: www.ipernity.com/doc/289859/album/501179) Normally the perched playa is dry (hence a "playa"), but this year it's filled from the heavy rains last winter.

Looking SE across (temporary) Black Rock Lake!

And (temporary) Black Rock Lake!

Black Rock Playa (dry lake bed), except with last winter's season it's an actual lake. I would guess it's only a foot or so deep out in the middle, however. The site of the annual Burning Man counterculture festival is out in the flat off the peninsula to the right; it's held around Labor Day (1st Monday in September), so maybe the playa will have dried out by then! Looking more or less north; the eponymous Black Rock is roughly in the center of the picture (highlighted). The distant mountain range on the skyline right of center is the Jackson Mountains, with the high point (King Lear Peak) having a thin snow cap. Upper left inset shows the view to the east, centered on Trego Mountain. The upper right inset shows the view southeast toward the north end of the Selenite Range.

On the sort-of flooded Black Rock Playa (i.e., dry lake bed), Black Rock Desert, Nevada. This is more-or-less the area where the Burning Man counterculture festival is held around Labor Day (1st Monday in September, for those who may not know). Due to the very wet winter, the playa has been flooded to make an extremely shallow lake ("30 miles long and 3 inches deep," in the traditional joke), and it will be interesting to see if it dries out enough to hold the festival by September. The mountain across the playa on the left is Trego Mtn, a local landmark.