FINALLY!!!!!  With vaccination and COVID-19 protocols for international travel now set in October, Sabrina Chan and I met with Chris Henry in Lund, Nevada, to get Sabrina’s field work done for her MSc thesis on the Stone Cabin formation and caldera in eastern Nevada.  The travelling was fine, but wearing a mask on airplanes and in airports for a day is a bit tedious.  However, this allowed us 11 days in the field to investigate the White River caldera, home for the Stone Cabin tuff, and outflow tuffs exposed both west and northeast of the caldera.  The weather was great for late October, although our drive back to Reno was in a snowstorm - good thing we finished when we did! 

Geologically, this caldera is very different from the Underdown caldera that we looked at in 2016 and 2017:  the White River caldera lacks an upper unwelded unit and megabreccia blocks are scarce.  The White River caldera does include abundant dacitic to rhyolitic lava flows that are uncommon at Underdown.  Sabrina is already busy crushing samples for geochemistry, and Chris is working on the caldera map and 40Ar-39Ar dating.  Stay tuned for more info as we get it!