With the price of gold at historic highs, gold exploration companies are out looking for potential sites. One of many exploration projects targeted in the Eastern Sierra is at Conglomerate Mesa in the Inyo Mountains.
K2 Gold took up the exploratory drilling plan that SSR Mining prepared. They are working under a California subsidiary called Mojave Precious Metals. Phase one of the project, the Perdito Project, was approved with an environmental asssessment in 2018 allowing them to drill at 7 locations with helicopter access. Mojave Precious Metals/K2Gold drilled at only 4 sites and completed the work in 2020. Now K2Gold has bigger ideas and bigger plans--Phase 2, the Mojave Exploratory Drilling Project. They want to continue exploring for gold and drill at up to 30 more sites covering a greater area. They also want to put in roads to the many drill sites instead of using helicopters.
What makes Conglomerate Mesa so special? Well, it’s lovely out there, quiet, surrounded north and south by wilderness. It is covered in a sea of Joshua trees and the Conglomerate Mesa may be their climate change refuge. There are 12 rare species there (learn about the Botanical Wonders of Conglomerate Mesa) There are neat things to find like charcoal pits that supplied charcoal for the Cerro Gordo mine, traces of the historic Keeler-Death Valley trail across the mesa. However, the best part for me is the geology and geomorphology; the classic outline of the mesa formed by hard, resistant conglomerate beds.
Conglomerate Mesa is the key, the “Rosetta Stone”, for unraveling the evolution of the ancient coastline of the southwestern U.S. from the Permian through the early Triassic (300 to 247 million years ago). The mesa consists of a sequence of strata that represent a complete geologic record during this time. The Early Permian strata at Conglomerate Mesa are particularly important because they are not duplicated anywhere else. There are fossil beds in this sequence that can be dated by the unique fossils within them: fusulinids (plankton with calcite shells), conodonts (ancient eels), and corals. Three new genera and 12 new species of the fusulinids are endemic to the Conglomerate Mesa area—found nowhere else. None of the fusulinids survived the Permian Extinction, so these are the only beds that contain them.
How can we let something that unique, found nowhere else in the world, become an open pit mine? Reclamation won’t bring back the classic mesa outline or the unique strata. Help us protect it. If you live in Inyo County, tell your supervisor to not support mining there and put up a yard sign opposing it. For more information about Conglomerate Mesa and what you can do to help, go to: https://friendsoftheinyo.org/k2-gold-is-coming-for-conglomerate-mesa/