Armchair Adventures

Black Rock Playa, Nevada

Looking down on the Black Rock Playa from the Calico Mountains, it’s hard to imagine how emigrants on their way to California in the 1850s felt upon reaching the driest most desolate part of the trail.  Black Rock Point, visible in the center of the photo, was a major point of reference for the emigrants. Their journals include descriptions of discarded gear and dead oxen along the way and boiling hot springs, but no drinking water. 

The playa is formed from silt that settled out of Ice Age Lake Lahontan, which reached 500 feet in depth – old lake terraces still ring the mountains around the playa.  Now the playa is dry except when winter rains and snowmelt temporarily create a shallow pool of water. Fairy shrimp hatch and reproduce during these short wet periods and their eggs lie dormant in the playa silt for many months or years until the right conditions emerge. 

One-hundred and seventy years after emigrants made their difficult trek across the playa, the area remains remote and undeveloped. However, the Black Rock also attracts a curious array of events and uses. Most notably, the Burning Man gathering is held annually at the southern end of the playa attracting 80,000 participants who set up a temporary city each August.  The vast playa is a perfect launch location, and annually hosts armature rocket events. In 2004, a launch from the playa climbed 72 miles above the earth making it the first armature rocket to reach space.  In 1997, Thrust SSC driven by Andy Green became the world's first, and so far, the only supersonic car, reaching 763.035 mph on the tabletop flat surface of the playa. The Black Rock-High Rock-Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management’s Nevada Winnemucca District.

John Day River, Oregon

The John Day River is a tributary of the Columbia River, approximately 284 miles (457 km) long, in northeastern Oregon in the United States and managed by the BLM Oregon. Undammed along its entire length, the river is the third longest free-flowing river in the contiguous United States. There is extensive use of its waters for irrigation. Its course furnishes habitat for diverse species, including wild steelhead and Chinook salmon runs. However, the steelhead populations are under federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections, and the Chinook salmon have been proposed for such protection. 

The river was named for John Day, a member of the Pacific Fur Company's overland expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River that left Missouri in 1810. Day struggled through eastern Oregon during the winter of 1811–12. While descending the Columbia River in April 1812, he and Ramsay Crooks were robbed by Native Americans at the mouth of the river that now bears his name, forcing them to hike 80 miles (130 km) back to friendly Umatilla Indians under extreme conditions. 

The absence of dams on the river causes its flow to greatly fluctuate throughout the year depending on snowpack and rainfall within the watershed. The highest flow recorded at a gauge on the lower John Day was 43,300 cubic feet per second (1,230 m3/s) on January 2, 1997. The lowest flow was no flow at all, which occurred on September 2, 1966; from August 15 to September 16, 1973; and on nine days in August 1977. The average flow at the gauge is 2,075 cubic feet per second (58.8 m3/s).