Ol' Sody Lake EarthCache
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This is an unusual lake with deceptive depth.
Soda Lake and Little Soda Lake are two of several “maars” in this area, so after this stop you can say that you "have been to maars." This maar is a broad, low-relief, nearly circular, very young volcanic crater - younger than the sediments that were deposited in Lake Lahontan. It formed when rising basaltic magma had a sudden and violent expansion of magmatic gas or steam (possibly when it encountered groundwater) and exploded violently upward, spewing out basaltic fragments forming an inverted cone-shaped depression surrounded by layers of volcanic ejecta. They are also called “diatremes” or “tuff cones”. Maars range in size from 200 to 6,500 feet across and from 30 to 650 feet deep, and most fill with water to form natural lakes. Most maars have low rims composed of layers of sediments and ejecta out of the diatreme. Soda Lake is about a mile in diameter and a U.S.G.S. survey in 1885 noted that the depth of Soda Lake at that time was 147 feet – now it is about 200 feet deep. Some of the basaltic rock was still fluid when it was ejected and you can find evidence of this – look for small “bombs” as they are called, around the higher walls of the lake – fluted wavy lines in the surface of the rocks that indicate they were thrown through the air while still molten. The rock also has visible crystals- phenocrysts- of several minerals: plagioclase feldspar (glassy to white), olivine (greenish) and pyroxene (brownish). Asa Kenyon was one of the early settlers here in the early 1850s and he recorded the first mineral discovery in Churchill County at Soda Lake in 1855. He also established a trading post at Ragtown in 1854. Early miners dug up layers of crystalline sodium carbonate from just below the surface and later “soda works” were built around the lake and operated for decades in the late 1800s producing “washing soda” from evaporation of the alkaline waters of the lake in vats. After the irrigation projects of the early 1900s brought water into the valley for agriculture, the water table rose drastically and flooded the old soda workings. Old soda works buildings along the lakeshore are still visible by divers in the lake. The current level of Soda Lake is about 50 feet higher than it was when the first emigrants arrived, and Soda Lake is currently close to 200 feet deep. Sharon Lee Taylor wrote an explanatory pamphlet on the history of Soda Lakes entitled Soda Lakes: Nevada's Underwater Mystery in the Desert. It is available for free at the Churchill County Museum. Both hot and cold springs have long been known around the Soda Lakes area, and one hot spring area was developed into the currently operating geothermal power plants run by OESI producing over 16 megawatts of power. To log this Earthcache, please do the following: Post a photo of you and/or your GPS with Soda Lake showing in the background. Email the cache-owner answers to the following questions (ONLY INCORRECT RESPONSES WILL BE ANSWERED): Questions: 1. Which side of the lake has higher walls (N,S,E,W)? 2. Why? 3. Do you think the Ph (alkalinity) of the lake increases or decreases with depth? 4. Why? 5. What color are MOST of the small rocks around the rim of the lake (especially the east side)?
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Npprff ivn Yhpnf ebnq, abegu; be ivn Fbqn Ynxr Ebnq, gur jrfg ba Pbk Ebnq.
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