Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
“Where the Walker runs down to the Carson Valley plains,
There lived a maiden, Darcy Farrow was her name.
The daughter of old Dundee and a fair one was she,
The sweetest flower that bloomed on the range.”
Traveling often reminds me how many places I know only through songs. I’ve made a (poor) living as a musician at various times in the past, and that’s a few lines from a song by Ian and Sylvia that I’ve sung many times. But it wasn’t until today that I’d ever seen either the Walker River or the Carson Valley. They are both lovely … at least in the late summer. I’m not making any claims about what it’s like during the winter, but then I’m a tropical boy, so what do I know.
When you come south from Lake Tahoe, you come first to Topaz Lake. There have been forest fires the last few days on the western slope of the Sierras, with the smoke blowing over the mountains to where we were traveling. So all the pictures are hazy.
After Topaz Lake you’re in the Carson Valley, and then the Antelope Valley, running along the Walker river. We stopped in the town of Bridgeport, on Bridgeport Lake. It’s on the upper Walker river, where the river is so small you could almost jump across it.
As you can see, we’re back in sagebrush country. It’s the bush with the yellow flowers, and it grows all over the west. It has a lovely pungent smell, one that is the essence of the desert to me.
After leaving Bridgeport, we took the advice that the commenter “fizzissist” gave me yesterday and stopped at at the Whoa Nellie Deli in the town of Lee Vining for their mango margarita and their lobster taquitos … excellent advice, excellent food, and excellent drink, for which we’re most grateful. The deli overlooks Mono Lake, a part of history of the never-ending water wars of the West. It is a curious lake, in that it has no outflow except by evaporation.
Back in 1913, the city of Los Angeles diverted water from the Owens River, which fed Mono Lake. And again in 1941, they diverted a couple more rivers that fed Mono Lake, in order to slake the thirst of the Los Angelinos. As you might imagine, this caused the surface of Mono Lake to fall. One of the stranger things this did was to expose the “tufa towers”. Tufa is a variety of limestone that forms by precipitation of carbonate minerals from springs. There were springs below the surface of Mono Lake, and they created bizarre towering accretions of tufa that are now above lake level.
Finally in 1994 after much fighting, the diversion of water from the lake was greatly reduced. The lake has recovered somewhat, but obviously from the tufa towers there’s more to go, and the recent drought hasn’t helped
Want to know the good news? Limestone is made of carbon dioxide, so the tufa towers are protecting us from the eeeevils of carbon dioxide by binding it up into tufa … I feel so much better knowing that the non-problem is under control.
There’s not much growth around Mono Lake, it’s mostly desert except for a curious tree …
Actually, that’s a cell phone tower with fake branches … but it’s not a bad disguise.
From there we went east towards Tonopah, Nevada. When we crossed into Nevada we were in Esmeralda County, which is a most odd county indeed. It’s odd because despite having an area of 3,600 square miles (9,300 square km), it has a total population (2010 census) of 783 souls, and not one single incorporated town in the whole county. A beehive of activity, indeed.
And having driven across the whole county, I can see why. Despite having amazing rock formations testifying to repeated compression and folding …
… and despite having the awesome White Mountains that go up forever, and are naturally white, that’s not snow …
… it’s still one of the bleaker parts of our amazing planet.
The biggest surprise of the day, though, came when we got near to Tonopah, Nevada. I looked out across the desert into the far distance, and I thought, dang, that’s one of them ugly solar towers if I ever saw one. I didn’t know there was one near Tonopah. And when we neared it, indeed it was as I feared:
A bit of research established that this is the Crescent Dunes solar power tower. It’s not quite completed, so at this point you’d think it would be the only solar power tower in the US that has never burned a single bird alive … but noooo.
The problem is that when the solar tower is in operation, the 17,500 mirrors will focus on the central white tower. The tower will become the brightest object in view, and of course, this will attract lots and lots of insects. The insects, in turn, attract lots of insectivorous birds, and the birds in turn attract raptors like eagles and hawks.
And when the birds and raptors fly into the beams of sunlight reflecting from the mirrors, their feathers catch fire, and they die a horrible death, plunging to the earth in flames. The operators of the solar towers call these hideously killed birds “smokers”, because of the smoke trails they leave behind as they are fried to death.
As a result, even though the Crescent Dunes project it hasn’t even entered operation, the plant has already killed 130 waterbirds during a test in January 2014. Biologists on the ground reported seeing the birds fly into the solar flux, “turn white, and vaporize” … ugly, and that’s just a warm-up.
But wait, it gets better. Despite being in the middle of the desert, the plant itself will use up to half a million gallons of water per day, including cooling tower water, blowdown water, floor drain water, and the like. In addition, it will need up to another two hundred thousand gallons of water just to wash the 17,500 mirrors (about ten gallons [38 litres] per mirror). Finally, it will need up to another two hundred thousand gallons for dust control, since nothing grows under the mirrors to hold the ground in place, and the winds can blow around here. As a result, authorized total water use will be up to 900,000 gallons (3.4 million litres) of water per DAY. Meanwhile, “environmentalists” are all agog and protesting like crazy about the one-time water use for fracking each well … pathetic.
But wait, it gets better. The construction was supposed to provide 600 construction jobs … but in the event, according to the locals I spoke with, the owners imported cheap labor from overseas, and very few jobs went to the locals.
But wait, it gets better. If the project goes belly-up, the taxpayers are on the hook because of a half-billion dollar government loan guarantee from the Obama Administration. I swear, I do not understand this. If the banks aren’t willing to give a loan to some shonky project like this one, what makes the Department of Energy so much wiser about monetary risks than the bankers who loan money for a living? Not only that, but the solar project is built on 1,600 ares (650 hectares) of government land. How does that work? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the Obama Administration is once again rewarding its rich friends with sweetheart “green” deals that line their pockets while screwing the consumer, but each new revelation never fails to shock me.
But wait, here’s the best part. The owners of the Crescent Dunes solar tower have signed an exorbitant agreement with the Nevada Power Company, which will pay them the absolutely outrageous sum of US$0.135 per kilowatt-hour … that’s a cent and a half more than my power costs in California, where power costs are already jacked up by this same kind of renewable nonsense. That means that after wheeling costs (the all-up cost of the transmission of the power) Nevada Power will be charging its customers something like sixteen to eighteen cents per kilowatt-hour or so for power which is unavailable half the time …
And despite that, I keep hearing from the innumerate that solar power is competitive with fossil fuels.
In summary, the Crescent Dunes project burns birds alive, it only provides part-time power, it uses nearly a million gallons (3.4 million litres) of water per day, it’s only possible because of government collusion, it didn’t provide the jobs claimed by its owners, and it delivers hideously expensive power … but by gosh, it is renewable, so all is forgiven and what’s not to like?
In any case, once the bird-murdering madness was thankfully behind us, we arrived at Tonopah where we’re spending the night.
My regards to all commenters, even though I don’t answer your comment please know that I’ve read it. As before, if you’d like to hoist a beer with us and are on our way, email me at willis.eschenbach at yahoo . com. I can’t promise to answer your email, but it will indeed be read and appreciated.
All the best,
w.
I always enjoyed that song but it really hit home when my wife and I started managing a ranch in N. Antelope valley that has a few miles of the West Walker running through it. I even started referring to my wife as “Darcy”. Her typical response is always “Huh?”
Willis if you thought Sutter’s Mill was something and you’re headed to or from Death Valley you might want to consider a side trip up Cerro Gordo Peak just outside of Lone Pine, CA. The mine and ghost town are privately owned so you need to contact the owner to arrange for a visit but you wouldn’t be disappointed if you can get in. Truly amazing what those folks managed to do including building a mule driven tram to bring buckets of silver ore down the 9’000 ft. mountain to the valley below so it could be loaded on barges and transported across now dry Owens Lake.
I also have to agree with brians356, those yellow flowering plants are rabbit brush and not sagebrush. People with bad allergies can have a real tough time with the stuff this time of year.
Sagebrush, rabbit brush – they all look alike from the poop deck of a passing prairie schooner. 😉
Willis:
I trust you ventured into the old Mizpah hotel last night? Open again, I hear, and back to its former boomtown glories.
Been a few years since I last passed through T-pah. If memory serves, “pah” is Paiute for water, and gets tacked onto a lot ofplace names in central NV, for obvious reasons. A bit bleak for most tastes, but suits an old desert rat like me. And Arc Dome at sunset is a wonderful sight:
I’m confused, I thought I had lived in the Carson Valley for these last seven years, at least that what the signs says as you head south out of Carson City on 395. The Walker is quite a ways South, one branch runs through Topaz Lake then down near TRE into Smith Valley, and on down past Yerington where I presume it reaches a Walker River sink. So the Walker and Carson Valley don’t connect except in the song. However I still like the song especially John Denver’s version.
Mike, you are correct the West fork of the Walker River runs north out of Walker Canyon in California and into Antelope Valley where it then turns east and flows into Smith and Mason Valley’s. Once outside of Yearington it merges with the East fork of the Walker and becomes the Walker River. From the confluence of the 2 forks of the river it then continues flowing east onto the Paiute Reservation at Shurz, NV and into Weber reservoir. Some water then flows out of Weber and into Walker Lake one of the lakes on the Bureau of Reclamation’s Desert Terminal Lakes program and original home of the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout.
Maybe the song isn’t correct from a geographic stand point but… I highly doubt that is historically accurate as well 🙂
Well Willis, actually, it appears that you do indeed understand this…
From installment 1: I packed for the desert, dang it, not for cold nights … that’ll teach me.
Appropriate packing for Death Valley at the moment, but you’d need your long johns in a couple of months. Three of us rode our motorcycles out there one November years ago, and camped at Furnace Creek. Suffice it to say I crawled into my sleeping bag fully dressed, with my boots still on. There was no gas in Furnace Creek in those days, so we managed to run out of gas the next day….
If you have time, there is some very interesting stuff in the Panamints (west side of the park). If you go to the “beehives”, be sure to go inside one and sing of Darcy Farrow. The acoustics inside those things are memorable. Then, if your vehicle is high clearance–pavement ends at the beehive–drive on up to Mahogany Campground. It sits right on the edge of the dropoff into the canyon. I used to go up there at the end of the school year to be alone and recover from 9 months of socializing with eight-year-olds.
Terrific travelogue Willis! Keep it up
That song by Ian and Sylvia brings back memories which have now turned ugly due to the Tonopah Tower. No more subsidies for wind turbines, solar towers and renewable energy! No subsidies for petroleum either. These energy sources either survive on their own or perish on their own! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0drT4ocmAg&list=RDhWNA8gD0jUY&index=15
“And when the birds and raptors fly into the beams of sunlight reflecting from the mirrors, their feathers catch fire, and they die a horrible death, plunging to the earth in flames.”
And how do they taste?
Burnt.
Willis, the Owens River runs southward. So, it never fed Mono Lake. What the DWP did was acquire water rights to the streams coming off the eastern Sierran and running down to Mono Lake. The water was collected and diverted south to the Owens Valley project, which supplies some of L.A.’s insatiable thirst. When you drive the Owens Valley today much of it is desert, but a little over 100 years ago that was productive pasture and crop land irrigated by water from the Owens River. The Owens was the focus of California’s most notorious water war. The grandfather of one of my friends in college spent time in prison for dynamiting the Los Angeles Aqueduct in defence of his water rights. I have to say that if Jerry proceeds along his dictatorial path with the tunnels, there may well be a new series of water wars.
One of my favorite songs.
Maybe the tower company should open a stand that sells extra crispy bird.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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Nice story.
Willis waxes technical with regard to the bird-burner.
I’ll take people over birds any day, but these large solar projects only result in net harm. These huge projects harm people as well as the environment. We must stand opposed.
Sorry to be late to arrive at this post, but I’m glad you’ve been enjoying the Great Basin. Let me know if you ever breeze through Frenchglen, Oregon. I usually have a beer in the fridge for guests. (Also glad to see other friends straightened you out on rabbit brush. 😉 )
Tehachapi to Tonopah……
….speaking of songs.