Crittenden Springs, Nevada, USA ... Early Triassic ammonoids...part two.

[SPrice]

And on to the next part of the hunt.

 

The first hour or two was scoping out the location. Normally, like I did back in Alabama hunting for arrowheads as a kid, you start at the top of the hill and depending on how rough the terrain is go in a spiral heading down or do zig zagging switch backs or whatever fits the bill. These canyon hills have gullies between them so I focused on each ridge from the summit of the ridgeline going back and forth looking for outcropping. They were easily found as were the previous hunters' excavation holes and trenches.

 

A couple of dendritic rocks and more larger ammonite sections....come on! where's the big boys?  The band-aid is to cover the last day of having stitches in my wrist from the CT surgery.

 

 

 

 

Not sure if this is a hash plate or not. Looks like it to me.

 

 

 

Moving further up the slope and heading west across the top. I found a couple more dig sites and one was a bit of an eye opener.  This whole canyon's fossil layers are mortality sites. Maybe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little lickety spit on this one.

 

 

And this one.

 

 

 

Every rock started to look like an ammonite or pieces of them.

 

 

The next dig site.

 

 

The same hole back in 2009. This pic is in the science paper back in part one. It is displaying all three lenses or beds. And  above you only see one left.  Some hefty equipment was used to get these out. I'm thinking a gas generator, impact drill/hammer, rock saw and some heavy duty muscle power.  I found rotted tee shirts beside two holes. Over a decade old.  

 

NOTE: see the juniper on the right of each image. Identical trunk bases.

 

 

 

Here's the eye opening part....to me, at least.

 

I'm down in the hole for this pic. At first glance, not much to see. The next pic is enhanced with contrast and shadow.  What did I see?

 

 

 

Stare at it and start counting the ammonites. 

 

 

Some closeups of the wall of mortality.  The beds are on an angle of 16 degrees and the ammos are just stacked up for several feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a nice specimen protruding from the bed. It's still there, too. The rock was granite hard and I was gassing out after scouting over the ridges and gullies for half a day. 

 

 

 

I scoured through the tailings and found a few keepers. By the end of day I think I collected 25 pounds or so. 

 

 

It was around 5 pm when I made the call to pack up . No cell service for 20 miles and texted my wife once I hit pavement that I was on the way home...3 hour plus drive ahead of me.

 

 

 

 

Most of my finds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that about wraps it up. 

 

My take on this trip is mixed - my limited experience in geology and fossil hunting has me still low on the learning curve, especially in new locations. When I go back, I'll know EXACTLY where to start collecting.  There were some small locations of previous diggings which occurred on very small rock outcroppings and they were somewhat shallow. Were they exploratory from previous diggers? I don't think so. Why? Because there were remnants of aluminum foil crumpled up beside one of these meter square shallow pits. I do mean less than a foot deep holes. Sherlock says - someone knew where to dig,  someone scored, collected said score, wrapped it in foil and moved on.

 

Other thoughts - I found an ammonite fossil within two minutes of shutting the car door. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! My research paid off in Spades  - both the card suit and the shovel type. Hello big clues of huge holes in the ground! Lucky that I arrived after the mud dried. Well planned that I did indeed have my AWD vehicle. I was in my Element! It will be my exploring, camping, going everywhere vehicle until someone takes my license from me.  There were signs saying no camping as this was ranch leased BLM land. 

 

I gassed out earlier than expected, partly due to the altitude increase to 6,000 feet (I get AMS easily)  and partly for being a slacker during the off season. It was a 16 hour day with 7 hours of drive time (total of 407 miles, 655km ) . Also, a slight factor was recent carpal tunnel surgery  which had me taking it easy for a couple of weeks while healing.  I now have some more fossil prepping to do! At times I do  have too high of self expectations.  Military upbringing methinks.

 

Hope you enjoyed the beauty of the west.  Next big trip will be an overnighter at Cowboy Pass. And also another couple of trips back to Mounds Reef and Garley canyon once I'm sure the snow it gone and the mud has dried. Yee haaa!

[jpc]

Excellent report.  And great finds.  

Never heard this term,.. gassed out... I assume that means ran out of steam/energy.  

Did you do this as a one day trip?  No camping out?  

 

[SPrice]

Gassed out...mostly used in boxing and MMA ... a fighter runs out of steam from the intensity of burning all the oxygen in his/her muscles...and thus no more "fuel in the tank". 

 

Yes, a day trip,  I woke up at 4:15 AM and left a little after 530. Hunted and hiked those ridges all day, ate lunch at 530PM on the way home. Got home at 830 pm. Just out of conditioning. 

 

I live at 4500 feet in Utah but going up rapidly gets me huffing and puffing. Can't be age, though, I'll only be 67 in the fall. 

 

The BLM land is leased by the WineCup Ranch and don't allow overnight camping. Probably a fire risk and liability.   Other places I camp out on BLM everywhere I go.

[Yoda]

@SPrice

Excellent trip report 

And some really nice Ammonite finds 

[Fossildude19]

Great report, and finds!

Thanks for sharing with us.

The sheer amount of ammonites in cross section in those photos is a bit overwhelming!

[PFOOLEY]

Oh man how I love spiraly creatures...great ammonoids! Good to see that you're healed and in the field.

[AK hiker]

Thanks for sharing, good photos and descriptions  to help understand what your trip was like. I too am fascinated by ammonites and like seeing where they occur in the rest of the world. On one occasion, I too found a death bed with ammonites stacked one atop another. 

[Alex S.]

Fantastic report what a trip to see. I don't know if I'd have it in me to do that long of a day and I'm only 27!

[SPrice]

On 3/21/2024 at 9:25 AM, PFOOLEY said:

Oh man how I love spiraly creatures...great ammonoids! Good to see that you're healed and in the field.

 

 

Same here!   I got the stitches out the next day. Doc says, do anything that doesn't hurt and work through some mild pain. He said I'm right on track for healing after surgery two weeks ago.

Edited March 23 by SPrice

[DPS Ammonite]

On 3/20/2024 at 5:01 PM, SPrice said:

There were signs saying no camping as this was ranch leased BLM land. 

Was all the Winecup Ranch leased BLM land off limits to camping. Ordinarily BLM lands leased to ranches (grazing leases) are open to camping at least in Arizona. 
 

Another question: are the good fossil areas on BLM land part of the proposed land swap that the Winecup Ranch would take ownership of. I saw reports last Fall that the ranch was trying to trade land to get rid of the checkerboard pattern of land ownership. I would be worthwhile to let the BLM to consider keeping the good fossil areas public and not trade them.

 

Unfortunately the BLM and US Forest Service do not pay enough attention to the desires of fossil, rock and mineral collectors especially when trading land or creating national monuments. 

 

https://elkodaily.com/news/local/government-politics/massive-land-swap-proposed-at-historic-elko-county-ranch/article_d52c772e-3af1-11ee-bd29-67cf00f5d53a.html

 

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/billionaire-proposes-massive-nevada-land-trade-with-federal-government

[Tidgy's Dad]

Always nice to see Triassic material.

Thank you for sharing.

[Brian James Maguire]

Well done ! This one is fantastic, will you prep it out ?

[SPrice]

On 3/23/2024 at 2:42 AM, DPS Ammonite said:

Was all the Winecup Ranch leased BLM land off limits to camping. Ordinarily BLM lands leased to ranches (grazing leases) are open to camping at least in Arizona. 
 

Another question: are the good fossil areas on BLM land part of the proposed land swap that the Winecup Ranch would take ownership of. I saw reports last Fall that the ranch was trying to trade land to get rid of the checkerboard pattern of land ownership. I would be worthwhile to let the BLM to consider keeping the good fossil areas public and not trade them.

 

 

To answer your first question about camping; first thanks for showing interest and asking.

 

The "No Camping" signs, like most of the signs were on the fenced areas. Some of the other signs mentioned "No Trespassing or  Hunting".  Next trip I will take more pics of the posted signage to make sure I'm on the right side of the fences. 

 

 

  And now that I've looked at the BLM map for this area in northeast Nevada, I see it is indeed the "checkerboard" that everyone online is calling it.  The more I researched the nastier it got in some arenas ... mainly the Hunting group and the Land Developer group with other groups including the citizen population of Nevada against the US Gov't selling out the public land to billionaires who want to play " John Dutton" of the Yellowstone media series.  

 

And after this little bit of research I see that the location I was physically parked, hiking, exploring and collecting fossils was indeed in one of the " Yellow squares" designating it as BLM land and not private. I did not see any more fencing nor signage once I crossed out of the privately marked land. The BLM has easements of access on the state roads driving through the BLM land, leased and private land.  So I feel I obeyed all laws regarding the access and visiting my country's public land managed by the BLM and including the regulations regarding collecting rocks, minerals fossils, etc., for personal use.

 

The Winecup Gamble Ranch seems to be up for sale and one potential purchaser has and might be still in the court system over the purchase agreement.  The WGR is also still in process on doing a land trade with the Federal Gov't to consolidate the parcel with trading better land for less better land to have their own giant ranch without the checkerboard pattern.  Big stinky mess, methinks. 

 

Here's the WGR cattle grazing boundaries they have leased.  The green line is the border. Both the Gamble Individual and the Dairy Valley allotments are theirs. The canyon with the fossil locations is located in the Dairy Valley parcel.  As I mentioned earlier, this location has been explored, searched, excavated for many decades by personal collectors, universities

and very possibly commercial or something similar like a crew of over the top industrial collectors using heavy equipment of some sort. ( my speculation theory ) . 

 

 

 

Here's where I was in the canyon on BLM land. And to answer the question about camping...I do believe I can camp right where I was legally on BLM land. 

 

The Winecup Gamble Ranch is rightfully protecting their privately owned and leased property because it has some of the best game hunting in the state. I'm going to go back later in the early summer but I would not want to be around during hunting season in the fall. 

 

 

 

 

The second question - "are the good fossil areas on BLM land part of the proposed land swap?" 

 

Yes, they are. 

 

They do want to consolidate the entire "checkerboard" into one big ranch. 

 

From the article: “This would be the largest land exchange the BLM has ever done,” said Andy Wiessner of Western Land Group. “It’s too big to happen administratively. An EIS (environmental impact statement) would run thousands of pages.”

 

 

I'll be doing more homework before I go back to make sure I've for sure dotted and crossed the 'i's' and 't's' . 

 

[DPS Ammonite]

23 minutes ago, SPrice said:

The BLM has easements of access on the state roads driving through the BLM land, leased and private land. 

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. 
 

You are lucky that you have access to the public land in the checkerboard area. In many states, the private land owners try to keep the public from getting reasonable access to the stranded public parcels such as at the corners. A case in Wyoming found that crossing a corner to access public land is not trespass if you don’t step on private land. Hopefully similar rulings will unlock stranded public lands throughout the US.

 

Keep up the battle to access our public lands for collecting. Also, don’t let the BLM and the US Forest Service create new national monuments without specifically allowing fossil, mineral and rock collecting on the monuments in their use regulations and plans.

 

https://earthjustice.org/experts/tom-delehanty/wyoming-court-decision-helps-provide-access-to-over-8-million-acres-of-public-land#:~:text=In a major win for,million acres of public land.

[SPrice]

On 3/24/2024 at 1:40 AM, Brian James Maguire said:

Well done ! This one is fantastic, will you prep it out ?

Definitely! 

The science papers on this location suggest that there are many with superb preservation of the shell. I saw plenty of evidence of that statement...but mostly broken bits.  This one has the shell with some separation at the mouth. I wet it in this pic. 

 

My second visit will be more productive and more rewarding.  Plaster and foil will be included to wrap some specimens. 

And two new sources were dug up ( pun intended)  this morning from the research paper's author himself. Pretty much first person verbal mapping of the location was found on a site I rarely used but knew it may have some value. Boy, did I miss a gold mine. 

[SPrice]

This is from the science paper PFOOLEY posted back in 2015.  The image shows the quality of preservation in the ammonite beds.  While reading it , I noted that the University staff doing the collecting had used some big equipment of some sort. They described some of the ammonites as being collected from 3 different blocks of limestone measuring from .75 to 1.2 square meters and finding 30 specimens of 15 different species.  So having big tools allowed them to collect the huge blocks and haul them back to the lab for preparation work.  

 

 

A graph showing the occurrence and dimensions of one species found.

 

 

 

A chart showing the occurrence, diameters and ammonoid taxa of species in one large block of limestone. That's a whole lotta fossils jammed together in a 1.2 meter squared block of stone. 

 

 

 

The other source I found this morning has this info about the area I was in : "Lower Triassic marine sediments, consisting of the Dinwoody Formation and units belonging to the overlying Thaynes Group, crop out in the ----------------- ..... and extend to the ----------- for ~8 km, covering an area of ~33 km2."

 

I'm going to bring a proper pry bar on my next trip and spend the night.

 

[SPrice]

A bit of prepping on this little guy.

 

[Jeffrey P]

Looks like you found some very nice specimens. Congrats and thanks for sharing your detailed report. 

[SPrice]

2 hours ago, Jeffrey P said:

Looks like you found some very nice specimens. Congrats and thanks for sharing your detailed report. 

 

Thanks!  After the first hike along the ridges and gullies, I started to get my bearings on where and what to look for.  Then almost every rock either looked like an ammonite in poor preservation or just bits and pieces.  So the second trip should be several notches above what this initial trip was. 

 

I did find a 30 pound block from another collector's excavation...but I didn't retrieve it after the final trip down the hill. I'm sure it's still there. I was a slacker.

 

Here's some of the blocks.

 

 

This whole pile of rocks was tailings from a hole...I flipped through maybe a dozen and picked out a few keepers.  This was really a scouting trip to see what and where to look.

 

 

Another block...with a side blotch lizard guarding it.

 

 

 

See my car, it's the Orange Honda Element? I'm 3/4ths the way up the hill.