Corkscrew Mtn, Toroda Creek Graben, Washington

Corkscrew Mountain is an interesting geological formation composed of Tertiary basalt flows in northern Washington.  It is located 2.5 miles west of Toroda and north of Toroda Creek.  Volcanic rocks form many interesting landscapes.

Corkscrew Mountain shown on the Toroda USGS 7.5' topo.
 

The photos below show several basalt flows exhibiting columnar jointing along with the flow tops and bottoms.  The trough shape of the flows may indicate that they flowed down a gentle valley.  The image on the right is the authors concept of the original orientation of  the basalt flows.



 





Oblique view of Corkscrew Mountain viewed on Google Earth.

It is out of the way for most people.  But if you are in the area, it is worth a drive by, a look and a photo. 

Thanks to Tom Johnson, Kinross geologist, for pointing it out to me several years ago.

Borate Mining in Death Valley, California: 1960's to 2005

My first job out of college was in Death Valley.  I graduated from San Diego State University in August 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology.  My other job offer was for mud logging on the North Slope of Alaska.  The position in Death Valley was with Tenneco Mining Company, a subsidiary of Tenneco Oil, a subsidiary of Tenneco Inc.  Tenneco had acquired the borate project via the acquisition of Kern County Land Company in 1967.  The acquisition was made mainly for the fee land holdings in Kern County, California for their oil and gas holdings.

In 1960, Kern County Land purchased the claims from the Pacific Coast Borax with the famed 20 mule team wagons.  They paid $200,000 for the claims that contained the Boraxo, Billie and Sigma borate deposits.

Tenneco's foray into borate mining lasted until 1976 when it sold its borate properties to Owens Corning vis the subsidiary of American Borate Company (ABC).  Owens Corning was the largest customer to the borate products.  In 1990, Owens Corning spun-off/sold ABC.  ABC intermittently produced borates from the Billie mine from 1990 until 2005.




Borate deposits of Death Valley and the Armargosa area (Source:  Barker and Barker, 1985).

The famous 20 Mule Train hauling borates.

 

The Boraxo and Sigma pits were mined by Tenneco in the 1970's.  The borates were trucked the mill in Nevada north of  Death Valley Junction.  Exploration and development drilling conducted within the monument.  The Billie deposit was drilled out on a 100-foot rectangular grid.  Conventional rotary drilling was done until borates were encountered and then the deposit was core drilled.  Tenneco was not allowed to build drill roads, so the drill and 4WD vehicles were driven cross country over the boulder-strewn wash.

The borate deposits of Death Valley are in the Pliocene Furnace Creek Formation.  They are stratiform deposits that form in a lacustrine environment.  The "ore" is composed of colemanite, probertite and ulexite.  Typical grade is approximately 22% boron.  The Boraxo and Billie mines yielded beautiful colemanite crystals some of which are honey colored.

Three colemanite specimens and one probertite (lower left); collected from the Boraxo pit in 1974.

The Billie deposit ranges from 200 to 1,350 feet below the surface.  It was 3,700 feet in length, 900 feet in width and up to 250 feet in thickness. 


Satellite image of a portion of Furnace Creek showing the Boraxo and Sigma open pit borate mines and the surface projection (approximate) of the Billie borate deposit that was mined underground by American Borate Company.  The north-south road that leads to the shaft is immediately east of the National Monument boundary.

 

                                          

                                              Ken's Blog with Photos of Death Valley

 

Screen shot of YouTube video of a flyover of the Billie mine (click on link below).

Billie mine drone flyover by Mathew Priest

Cross section of the Boraxo deposit.  The deposit was mined from an open pit by Tenneco Mining and then the portion that extends down-dip from the pit was mined underground with a continuous miner.  (Source:  Wilson, 1976).

 

 

 

Underground mine development for the Billie mine, Agapito is tasked with closure of the mine for  American Borate Company (Source:  Agapito Associates, Inc. website).

A front-page article in the Los Angeles Times on September 17, 1975 by Robert A. Jones warning the Tenneco Mining may someday have an open pit strip mine in the view of the Zabriskie Point scenic turnout.  The news item was the result of claim staking by Tenneco in the vicinity of scenic area.  The monument's superintendent James B. Thompson was quoted saying "We'll be able to stand right here and watch trucks haul away part of the view.  And if the legal situation doesn't change, we'll be helpless to stop it."

 

 Death Valley Nation Monument was an exception in that mining was allowed because of existing talc and borate mines at the time that it was designated as a monument by President Herbert Hoover in 1933.  In 1994, Death Valley National Park was created.

 

Front-page photo from the LA Times on September 15, 1975.

 Additional articles in the Times in 1975 and 1976 resulted in the banning of mining in Death Valley and eventually its status was changed to a National Park.  However, American Borate Company was eventually allowed to mine the Billie borate deposit since it was an  underground mine.  The shaft and head frame were just east of the monument and the only surface structure for the mine in the monument was the secondary escape way.

 

 

Zabriskie Point Death Valley has not be trucked away as predicted by the LA Times (Photo 2007).

The geologists that worked for Tenneco Mining were a great group of new geo's, mostly fresh out of college.  They had brand new geology degrees from southern California schools.  Many went on to have careers in mining, exploration, New Mexico Tech and the USGS.

 

Suggested Reading:

 

 

Barker, C. E., and Barker, J. M., 1985, A re-evaluation of the origin and diagenesis of  borate deposits, Death Valley region, California; in J. M. Barker and S. J. Lefond, eds., Borates-Economic Geology and Production: Symposium Proceedings, SME-AIME, New York, p. 101-35.

 

Barker, J. M., and Wilson, J. L., 1976, Borate deposits in the Death Valley region: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, Special Report 26, p. 22-32.

 

McAllister, J.F, 1970, Geology of the Furnace Creek borate area, Death Valley, Inyo County, California:  California Division of Mines and Geology Map Sheet 14, 9 p.  1:24,000.

 

Wilson, J.L., 1976, Geology and engineering aspects of Boraxo pit, Death Valley, California:  unpublished M.S. thesis, University of Southern California, 95 p. 









Borneo: A Photo Tour of Artisanal Gold Mining in 1993

In 1993, I visited the Pangkut area of Borneo (Kalimantan, Indonesia) to examine the gold potential for the mining and exploration company that I was working for in the US.  One of the geologists with me was Casey Danielson.  The area has long been an home to many Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) for centuries.  The Dutch colonized the Indonesia in the 1600's and 1800's.  The islands were often referred to as the Spice Islands.  

 

The mining is placer, hydraulic and shallow underground mining (shafts and adits).  The gold is recovered by panning, stamp mills and with the use of mercury.  In 2008,  the estimated production from Kalimantan 13.3 tonnes of gold (426,000 troy ounces) by 43,000 small-scale miners (Stapper, Daniel, 2011, Artisanal Gold Mining, Mercury and Sediment in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia:  MSc, University of Victoria).  [Thesis is available on-line]

 

 

The photos in the following are from the trip in 1993.  It is reminiscent of mining in the early gold rush days in California.

 







Archie's Rule of Thumb for Mineral Deposit Economics

Archibald M. Bell (1906 - 1991) was a mining geologist and long time VP of Exploration for Noranda.  Later he was a successful consulting geologist.  Bell was an ore finder (Pamour, Timmins and Copper Mountain, Quebec).  He was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 1995.  Bell is the source of Archie's Rule.

Source:  Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

Several years ago I came across a reference to "Archie's Rule" which is a rule of thumb method for evaluating the economic viability of a mineral deposit.

Simply and elegantly stated:  To be economic a deposit must have a recovered value of twice the all-in operating costs.  This allows for the covering of the capital costs.  The all-in costs includes mining, processing, refining, etc.  It assumes that the mine life will be long enough to extend over multiple metal price cycles.

Clearly not a  NI 43-101 level of evaluation, but a useful tool in evaluating mineral deposits.

The Pink and White Terraces of Lake Rotomahana, NZ

Greetings from Texas,

On April 26, 2016, Robin Wylie of the BBC posted an interesting story on the web about the rediscovery of the Pink and White Terraces on the north island of New Zealand. 
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160427-a-natural-wonder-lost-to-a-volcano-has-been-rediscovered

Geologic map by Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1859) of the Rotamahana or Warm Lake (Left).  The sinter deposits are shown in yellow and are within a volcanic field.  Travel poster for the Pink and White Terraces (Upper right).  Bathers in the warm water of the hot springs (Lower right).

The Pink and White Terraces of Lake Rotomahana and the nearby volcano of Mount Tarawera are hot springs sinter deposits.  The sinter is composed of fine-grained quartz deposited by hydrothermal water of a geothermal field.  The Maori called the terraces taonga which means treasure.  They were also a popular tourist attraction for the well-to-travelers on the 19th century until 1886.  The terraces were "destroyed" by the eruption of Mount Tarawera on June 10, 1886.  The eruption was heard in Christchurch 400 miles away.  The locals, the native New Zealand Maoris, did not see the eruption from their villages.  However, 120 people, mostly Maoris were killed by the fallout of debris from the eruption.

Only one person saw the eruption.  Henry Burt was 7 miles east of the eruption and had a clear view of the volcanic eruption.  He told a journalist the lake looked like a "huge boiling cauldron bubbling in all directions."  After the eruption the terraces were no longed visible.  The New Zealanders had lost a valuable tourist attraction in the violent act of nature.

What we do have are beautiful watercolors of the area by Charles Blomfield, along with black and white photos by various individuals (some hand colored).  The watercolor is below.  The Pink Terraces are in the foreground and the White Terraces are in the distance.

Fortunately, recent scientific research has rediscovered the terraces below the waters and sediment of  Lake Rotomahana.  It is a fantastic story.  It is described in the research articles by C.E.J de Ronde, et.al. in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research:  Elsevier, volume 314, March 15, 2016.  One of the articles is titled:  The Pink and White Terraces of Lake Rotomahana:  what was their fate after the 1886 Tarawera Rift eruption?  (p.126-141).

 

 

 

Many thanks to Robin Wylie of the BBC for bringing this to the attention of the world and for the research by de Ronde and others for rediscovery the Pink and White Terraces of New Zealand.

 

It is worth your time to take a look at what else is available on the web on this story about the wonders of nature.

 

If you enjoyed this post, please comment.  dle





Geology as Written by John McPhee

This post is to introduce John McPhee to the geologists that have not yet discovered his wonderful writing of "creative non-fiction."  All geologists will gain further knowledge and enjoyment by reading the books by John McPhee.  He has written over thirty books.  Many are about geology.  He travels the world with leading geologists and professors of geology.  One of the main focuses are on development of plate tectonics starting in the 1960's and 1970's.  McPhee is a ,professor at Princeton University and a long time staff writer for the New Yorker magazine.  Many of his writings were first published in the magazine.

A great one to start with is Annals of a Former World published in 1998 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1999.  It is collection of previously published books:  Basin and Range, In Suspect Terrain, Rising from the Plains, and a new book Crossing the Craton.  His books are published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

The first McPhee book that I read was Encounters with the Archdruid (1971).  The book was written in the formative stages of the environmental movement.  There are three parts to this book.  They all involve McPhee and David Brower and three men that supported the development of natural resources in the United States.  Brower was the head of the Sierra Club in the 1950's and 1960's.  He later founded the Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute.

McPhee visits Glacier Peak in Washington in the Cascades and a wilderness area.  He visits the area with Charles Park (a well known mining geologist and author of a commonly used college textbook on ore deposits) along with Bowers.  Park is of the opinion that since we have no control of where ore deposits are located, the should be mined even if the White House needed to be moved.

The second meeting and excursion is with Charles Fraser, business man and real-estate developer.  Fraser wants to develop a large housing project on a "wild island" off the coast of Georgia.  Fraser is no-friend to environmentalists and refers to them as "druids."

The final episode is with Floyd Dominy, a longtime commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation.  Dominy earned his moniker as the archenemy of the druid by overseeing the building of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River.  McPhee is able to get Brower and Dominy to agree to a raft trip through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River.  Dominy has his eyes on building a dam in the Grand Canyon.  As we know this dam was never built.  The Glen Canyon Dam was built forming Lake Powell.  David Brower states that his greatest failure was not preventing the construction of Glen Canyon Dam.  After that failure, Brower and the Sierra Club became more determined in the efforts to fight large development projects.

Some interesting quotes from Basin and Range:

• "as a general rule material will flow rather than fracture if it is hotter than half its melting point measured from absolute zero."  p. 57
• "The whole of plate tectonics, a story of steady-state violence along boundaries, was being brought to light largely as a result of the development of instruments of war." p. 127  [He is referring to the development of the magnetometer and the detection of "magnetic strips" on the ocean floor which confirmed "Continental Drift and "Plate Tectonics."]

McPhee's "favorite"

• "If by some fiat I had to restrict my writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose:  The Summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."

And possibly my "favorite"

• "With their four-dimensional minds, and in their interdisciplinary ultra verbal way, geologists can wiggle out of almost anything."

Here is a list of the books by John McPhee.  I hope this post encourages you to read one or more of his books.  They are great reads!

A Sense of Where You Are: A Profile of Princeton's Bill Bradley (1965)
The Headmaster: Frank L. Boyden, of Deerfield (1966)
Oranges (1967)
The Pine Barrens (1968)
Levels of the Game (1969)
The Crofter and the Laird (1970)
Encounters with the Archdruid (1971)
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed (1973)
The Curve of Binding Energy (1974)
Pieces of the Frame (1975)
The Survival of the Bark Canoe (1975)
The John McPhee Reader (1976)
Coming into the Country (1977)
A Roomfull of Hovings and Other Profiles (1979)
Giving Good Weight (1979)
Basin and Range (1981)
In Suspect Terrain (1983)
La Place de la Concorde Suisse (1984)
Heirs of General Practice (1984)
Table of Contents (1985)
Rising from the Plains (1986)
The Control of Nature (1989)
Assembling California (1993)
The Ransom of Russian Art (1994)
The Second John McPhee Reader (1996)
Irons in the Fire (1997, essays)
Annals of the Former World (1998)
The Founding Fish (2002)
Uncommon Carriers (2006)
Silk Parachute (2010)

The Red Sandstone of Heidelberg Castle, Germany

Dear friends and colleagues,

In 2014, I took the Viking River Cruise up the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basal.  The trip went through four countries:  The Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland.  It was a great tour of the Rhine River Valley and many ancient castles and even Roman ruins in Cologne.

One of my favorite stops was in Heidelberg were we visited the castle overlooking the Rhine.  The castle is constructed mostly of "Red Sandstone" which displays beautiful cross bedding.  I thought the readers might enjoy seeing some photos and learning a little history of the castle.

The castle was started in 1225 (approximate).  In 1622, the castle was captured by the French during the Thirty Years War.  It was of the first used of explosives to attack and destroy a castle.  The castle suffered damage by several fires.  The Heidelberg has had numerous famous visitors including Martin Luther and Mark Twain.  Twain spent several months in Heidelberg in 1878 when he toured Europe.  His book "A Tramp Abroad" was written in 1880 about his travels in Europe.

“A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him, how it rides him!”   From "A Tramp Abroad"

That is all for now, but if anyone knows the age of the "Red Sandstone" please comment.

dle  Leander, TX