Weathering-rind thicknesses were measured on volcanic clasts in sequences of glacial deposits in seven mountain ranges in the western United States and in the Puget lowland. Because the rate of rind development decreases with time, ratios of rind thicknesses provide limits on corresponding age ratios. In all areas studied, deposits of late Wisconsinan age are obvious; deposits of late Illinoian age (ca. 140 ka) also seem to be present in each area, although independent evidence for their numerical age is circumstantial. The weathering-rind data indicate that deposits that have intermediate ages between these two are common, and ratios of rind thicknesses suggest an early Wisconsinan age (about 60 to 70 ka) for some of the intermediate deposits. Three of the seven studied alpine areas (McCall, Idaho; Yakima Valley, Washington; and Lassen Peak, California) appear to have early Wisconsinan drift beyond the extent of late Wisconsinan ice. In addition, Mount Rainier and the Puget lowland, Washington, have outwash terraces but no moraines of early Wisconsinan age. The sequences near West Yellowstone, Montana; Truckee, California; and in the southern Olympic Mountains have no recognized moraines or outwash of this age. Many of the areas have deposits that may be of middle Wisconsinan age. Differences in the relative extents of early Wisconsinan alpine glaciers are not expected from the marine oxygen-isotope record and are not explained by any simple trend in climatic variables or proximity to oceanic moisture sources. However, alpine glaciers could have responded more quickly and more variably than continental ice sheets to intense, short-lived climatic events, and they may have been influenced by local climatic or hypsometric effects. The relative sizes of early and late Wisconsinan alpine glaciers could also reflect differences between early and late Wisconsinan continental ice sheets and their regional climatic effects.

Abstract Abandoned or inactive mercury mines are found throughout the western United States. Mercury contamination from these mines has migrated into a variety of different media in varying forms. Cleanups and mitigation projects have been undertaken by various agencies and private entities at a number of these mines, although many remain to be addressed. Although each cleanup has similar objectives, such as source control, the methods employed in each area of the site may differ. By having an understanding of mercury and its effects and assessing different methods used at mercury-mine cleanups, future actions can be more effective at addressing the variety of issues posed by mercury contamination at former extraction and processing sites. This paper provides background on mercury, its occurrences, its health effects, and the mercury mining process. Four cleanup sites that utilized different methods for addressing mercury contamination illustrate how different sources at abandoned mercury mill sites may be addressed to mitigate impacts.

ABSTRACT The Salmon River suture zone in west-central Idaho is a steep ocean-continent plate boundary separating Paleozoic-Mesozoic island-arc terranes and the ancestral western Laurentian margin that characterizes much of the central North American Cordillera. In the Riggins region, the most complete record of arc-continent collision and subsequent modification of the accretionary boundary is exposed because of the lower abundance of Cretaceous plutonism as compared to exposures of the boundary regionally along strike, and the deep degree of erosion along the Salmon River Canyon. Using recent mapping, microtectonic analysis, geochronological data, and structural models, this field trip explores the time-transgressive structures currently exposed across the Salmon River suture zone from the eastern foothills of the Seven Devils Mountains into the Salmon River Canyon. The Salmon River suture zone contains a Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, west-vergent thrust belt that is overprinted along its eastern extent by the Late Cretaceous, transpressional western Idaho shear zone and Late Cretaceous(?) and Cenozoic ductile-brittle extensional structures. A distinct amalgamation of metavol-canogenic and metasedimentary rocks characterizes the thrust belt and includes the (1) northeastern Wallowa terrane, (2) western Salmon River belt, formally grouped with the Wallowa terrane, and (3) eastern Salmon River belt, known locally as the Riggins Group and Pollock Mountain Amphibolite. The western Idaho shear zone overprints the easternmost rocks and structures associated with the eastern Salmon River belt. It also contains heterogeneous units of tonalite, trondhjemite, and grano-diorite orthogneiss, as well as individual tonalite, granodiorite, and granite plutons that display a gradation and partitioning of deformation and strain internally within the shear zone. East of the magmatic injection zone located along the arc-continent boundary, Laurentian continental metasedimentary rocks and tonalite and granodio-rite plutons occupy the eastern portions of both the shear zone and larger suture zone. Geochronologic data, obtained largely from metaplutonic rocks in the McCall region south of the Riggins region, provide the temporal resolution to constrain current tectonic models proposed for Salmon River suture zone evolution.