Subj : ES Picture of the Day 27  2023
To   : All
From : Dan Richter
Date : Mon Feb 27 2023 11:01:10

 EPOD - a service of USRA

The Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) highlights the diverse processes
and phenomena which shape our planet and our lives. EPOD will collect and
archive photos, imagery, graphics, and artwork with short explanatory
captions and links exemplifying features within the Earth system. The
community is invited to contribute digital imagery, short captions and
relevant links.


 Northeastern Nevada’s Pilot Peak

   February 27, 2023

    RayB_pilotpeak659c_28jan23 (003)

   Photographer:  Ray Boren

   Summary Author:  Ray Boren


   Looming prominently, and helpfully, above the  Great Basin of
   western North America, Nevada’s  Pilot Peak has proved to be a
   beacon to desert travelers. The mountain rises to an elevation of
   10,720 feet (3267.6 meters) above the sage, salt flats and lower ridges
   of the  Great Salt Lake Desert. It has an appealing pyramidal aspect
   even in mid-winter, as shown in this photograph, taken on January 28,
   2023, from an Interstate 80 exit south of the mountain, not far from
   the twin, stateline communities of West Wendover, Nevada, and Wendover,
   Utah.


   Native Americans, such as the region’s resident  Goshute and
    Shoshone peoples, mountain men, and 19th-century emigrants all
   found  Pilot Peak an invaluable landmark. Historic markers near the
   freeway exit note that the early, California-bound
    Bartleson-Bidwell wagon party, cutting cross-country northwest of
   Great Salt Lake, camped by the mountain and precious springs that they
   found there in 1841, having left the  Oregon Trail in today’s Idaho
   in search of a new route to north-central Nevada’s  Humboldt River.
   The summit’s name is attributed to government explorer  John C.
   Fremont, who in 1845 first glimpsed it from the  Cedar Range, about
   75 miles away, and recognized its value as a guide for emigrants. Only
   a year later, the  Donner-Reed party reached Pilot Peak and its
   springs after an arduous and time-consuming traverse of the desert and
   salt flats on the untested  Hastings Cutoff, which caused delays
   that contributed to the company’s subsequent snow-bound tragedies that
   autumn and winter in the still-distant Sierra Nevada Range.


    Pilot Peak’s “prominence” — its impressive 5,726-foot (1745 m.)
   rise and views above surrounding valleys — places it among an elite
   group of summits in the United States, according to hikers and
   mountaineers. Primarily composed of  sedimentary rocks, including
    shale, the short Pilot Peak Range is among the many mountain
   sequences that help define the  Basin and Range physiographic
   province, extending from Utah’s  Wasatch Mountains on the east to
   California’s  Sierra Nevadas on the west. Geologists explain that
    tectonic extension stretched the earth’s crust over millions of
   years, forming the basin’s series of mountain blocks and intervening
   valleys.



   Pilot Peak, Nevada Coordinates: 41.0210, -114.0778



Related EPODs

    Northeastern Nevada’s Pilot Peak  Dance Hall Rock and Tafoni
    La Scala dei Turchi  Atacama Lagoon and Sagittarius Arm of the
   Milky Way  The Snake River’s Formidable Hells Canyon  Joggins
   Fossil Cliffs
    More...

Geography Links

     *  Atlapedia Online
     *  CountryReports
     *  GPS Visualizer
     *  Holt Rinehart Winston World Atlas
     *  Mapping Our World
     *  Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
     *  Types of Land
     *  World Mapper

-
   Earth Science Picture of the Day is a service of the  Universities
   Space Research Association.

https://epod.usra.edu
 
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