School my on the salt- How do you actually "break" through?

OK- I never been to Bonneville and hope to get there someday. I understand what it is & what is use to be.

What exactly does it mean when someone breaks through the salt? Is it still slushy under the somewhat thick crust of salt?

Just curious...

 

Wow, I thought this was going to be a p*** the popcorn and jujy fruits question, but its a good one. Now my curiousity is piqued.

 

From my understanding the thickness of the salt varies. Some areas are much thicker than others. This is due to the mud or earth under the salt no being perfectly flat. As the water in the lake dissipated the water level fell evenly since liquids will become level. The salt is left behind but since it's flat on top and the mud isn't there are bound to be thinner spots.

I also understand that a lot of the salt has been taken out during various potash mining operations of the past few decades.

 

To yer mutha.

Sorry , that was just uncalled for but I couldn't resist. I need to get my behavior under control.

 

Young man!! Don't make me turn this car around. We'll all go back home and you'll be grounded from watching Tennessee Tuxedo for the rest of the summer. How does that sound?!?! Don't give me that look....

 

Please trust that isn't were I was going with this. I'm really curious for a guy I know just returned from a life changing 3 week trip out to Bonneville. He drove his Sedan Delivery from NJ to Bonneville. His pictures were amazing and the stories even more incredible.

He also said that the salt water "brine-for lack of better word" that you drive through was really tough to get off. It took 3 power wash baths to get it completely off. Is it super salt or something?

I'll edit the thread ***le & take out B- boy's name in the ***le.

 

That brings up this thought. I've heard about the "Save the Salt" campaign but I never understood what needed to be done, or what is being done, to restore or improve the course. I'm ***uming any work would be done just to the course due to the size of the lake bed, or am I uninformed? Can someone shed some light on this?

 

OK, so the salt get's damaged. I've heard something about donations to "Save the Salt". How do they repair it?

 

It was my understanding that due to the thin surface the race course was moved. My question is: is the area in question usually the race course? Also, is the salt mining continuing to effect the racing surface? And, final question: does anyone have a link to any groups working to help keep mining from having a detrimental effect on the race course? Is it BLM land?

 

Phil, I don't have link to share but I'm 99% sure that the BLM is in charge of it and they were leasing the land to mining operations who were not complying or not required to comply with land restoration legislation laws.

 

A quick google-riffic search came up with the Save the Salt link:

http://www.saltflats.com/save%20the salt.html

Some info there about what's being done to reverse the loss of salt and how anyone can get involved.

 

Copied from SCTA-BNI.org

Save the Salt, A Brief History ​

Bonneville Page

from Mike Waters​

It has come to our attention that there are a number of folks out there that are not fully aware of what our Save The Salt organization is all about. To that end we have comprised the following brief history of when and why Save The Salt was formed. We hope this tells the story "In a Nutshell"
Thanks to Mary West (Secretary of Save The Salt) for putting this history together and thanks to JoAnn Carlson (SCTA/BNI Office) for forwarding the note to us from a gentleman who is a new compe***or at Bonneville. He said that he knew Save The Salt was important but he wondered what it was. By the way, he sent a donation along with his inquiry.
Save The Salt, a brief historyuring the (1930-1940) era the Bonneville Salt Flats was able to support the weight of 10-ton twin-engine streamliners that roared down the 13.5-mile long Race Courses. The Hot Rods roared onto the salt flats in 1949 with the first Speed Week event and have run every year since. Of course a few years were missed due to weather.
By the early 1960's the pioneers of Land Speed Racing began to notice subtle changes in the surface of the raceway. There were discussions of why the surface seemed to be getting weaker and that this unique body of land was shrinking. We were able to get only as much as 7 miles of decent salt for our courses, if we were lucky. It wasn't long before fingers were pointed at the mining industry on the south side of interstate 80. Owned by Kaiser Chemical, their operations covered some 50 sq. miles of the salt flats.
Rick Vesco, our first chairman of Save The Salt, spearheaded the effort to meet with Utah State and Federal Government officials as well as the Chemical Company to resolve the problem of salt depletion. The goal was to return the salt that was ac***ulating in their settling ponds at the mining facility to the Raceway. These early cries for help continued until 1989 when the Save the Salt Organization was founded and struggled to achieve recognition as they began to see the heavy toll the mining industry was taking on the salt flats. In the meantime Kaiser Chemical had sold the operation to Reilly Chemical and a new 20-year lease for mining had been signed.
The once healthy 18 plus inches of salt had become so fragile that the Race Courses had to be moved farther and farther east. Running on the long International Race Course was no longer possible. Reilly Industries was forcing water through c****s crisscrossing the flats into their evaporation ponds from which potash was extracted. It was estimated that the process was taking an estimated 850,000 tons of salt from the flats each year.
The Save the Salt Board has members from the Southern California Timing ***n (SCTA) / Bonneville Nationals Inc (BNI) and Utah Salt Flats Racers ***n (USFRA). This group was able to negotiate a restoration agreement in 1997. Working hand in hand with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Reilly Chemical Co. they began to work together to return salt from the ponds.
The Lay down Project was to reverse the process by pumping brine water back onto the salt flats at the rate of 1.5 million tons of salt each year for 5 years. The BLM, Reilly Chemical and the Racers embraced the plan. It was a giant step forward with Government and Industry working together.
From the beginning of the pumping project racers began to notice changes in the surface. By the end of the 5-year pumping plan the racers were able to get back to running on the old International Course. Though not as long, there was a noticeable difference in the hardness and durability of the racecourses and on a few occasions we were able to get as much as an 11 mile course.
Once again the Potash Plant has been sold. Intrepid Industries is now the owner and has shown an interest in our quest to have a healthy Bonneville Salt Flats and a strong racecourse surface. They showed their support by once again starting the pumping process the first of February 2005. We commend them for their efforts. The Save the Salt Board is committed to working with both the BLM and Intrepid Industries. While there is still a lot more to be done, our vigilance appears to have paid off, not just for the racing compe***ors but also by preserving this historical natural treasure, The Bonneville Salt Flats, for future generations to come.

Save The Salt Board: Technical Advisors:
Chairman: Larry Volk Rick Vesco
Secretary: Mary West Bonner Denton
Treasure: Mike Waters Gordon Hoyt

Members of the Board:
Duane McKinney
BNI, Roy Creel
SCTA, Mike Cook
USFRA, Gary Allen




Please send your donations to:
Save The Salt
39937-90<SUP>th</SUP> Street West
Leona Valley CA, 93551​

 

Gotcha. Kinda like sand at the beach.

The water floods over the salt crust/surface. It then picks up the salt, dilutes it in the water solution. The flood waters settle on the low lying areas. When the water evaporates and dries up, the salt is deposited elsewhere on the surface.

 

The brine pumped back to the salt by Reliey contains salt that was pumped across I 80 from the salt flats. The potash is extracted and the leftover salt has just been piled up for years. Now they mix that salt with water so that it can be pumped back across 80 during the winter and allowed to spred out and dry, leaving the salt behind, that was there before Reliey pumped it in the first place.

 

That's cool.

Let's hope the new (and any future new) owners respect the salts the same way.

If they ever had the inclination to make money off of the salt unstead of pumping it back across 80 - you know that the almighty dollar would win....

 

oh when some buisness man gets enough money to **** us all out of bonneville it will happen in the name of industry

 

I have to admit that I was once a victim of breaking through the salt. I drove way off of the designated path and paid the price for it. Luckily we were able to get wood under the tires and get moving.

Where we got stuck the consistency of the salt was totally different than the racing and pit surface. It was basically a thin salt mud that easily gave way to the actual mud below.

That is the dangerous condition that the BNI guys monitor for racing each year.

 

Having attended Bonneville off and on since the late '60's the problem of breaking through the surface - the salt - might be illustrated by thinking about the ice on a lake of water.

The colder the temperature becomes; the thicker the ice becomes.
Thick enough to support large vehicle weights.

At Bonneville - many, many years ago; it was an "inland" body of SALT water.
After many thousands of years, the water content evaporated from the "brine" and left behind a vast surface of salt. Perfectly smooth and just right for speed trials and THICK enough to support VERY heavy vehicles.

UNDER the salt surface is a huge deposit of silt. (or mud)

After MANY years of mining - this has been done by waiting for the winter rains and run off from the mountain range close by, to DISSOLVE the salt surface an have it run into settlement ponds - then when the salt in the settlement ponds drys from evaporation, it is scooped up and processed.

It was originally thought that the supply of salt - the thickness was as much as 24" - was ENDLESS.

BUT over the years the thickness of the salt was slowly reduced by the constant mining. More and more heavy vehicles began breaking through the "crust" (of salt) and become mired in the silt below the salt surface.
(illustrated by the "fiasco" that took place this year during Speed Week)

I used the "ice ****ogy" because the water table is ALWAYS near the surface of the top of the salt (even ABOVE this year!!) - one inch below the salt makes for the best racing surface - BUT the silt underneath the salt is ALWAYS saturated with water! VERY soft!

Because the thickness of the salt surface has become SO thin in the past couple of years; it doesn't take very much weight to break through.
(like "thin ice on a lake")

I'm a big supporter of SOS, (Save Our Salt) but the thickness problem has gotten way ahead of the SOS program; and it's attempts to put some of the salt back.

As much as I hate to be a "broken record"; it's time to ...
RESTRICT WEIGHS OF VEHICLES ON THE SALT!!

 

Thank you D.D. Excellent explanation.

 

Im sending some back, who do i send it to?

 

This is pretty cool. All this time I thought it was the Morton Salt ***** with her umbrella swipeing the salt

 

If you get away from the racing area you'll see huge ditches stretching across the flats. This is where the brine that goes to the mining ponds comes from. SOS basically just got them to pump that brine back over the winter months to spread out and dry into the flats surface again instead of being just piled up by the settling ponds. It's a HUGE pumping effort.

The course is moved from year to year to wherever the best conditions exist for the course. It's not always in the same place. This year it was moved because the water level made the normal area unuseable.

Also, if you only ran your car thru the pressure washer 3 times, you better think about doing it some more. Get the car up and get under it. You'll be surprised at the chunks on the frame rails, brackets, top of mufflers, etc. And even worse is the dried salt brine you don't see that managed to soak into the road grime on the inside of fenders, etc.

Park your car on your sprinkler and move it so it soaks the whole bottom of the car and gives it a really good rinse for a good long period.

 

Does anyone know what kind of preparation/inspections are done to the salt prior to racing? I've seen pics where trucks pull smoothing sleds but is there anything else?

 

This was my first year out there too...and it damn sure won't be my last. We pulled Boy Wonder out of the second week of 7th grade for the trip. We're hooked. A friend and I are in talks about building a car for next year.

We drove home through a pretty good rain storm, plus 2500 miles of road bumps, etc. and still found fist-sized chunks of salt in the driveway. I put one of the fan-type sprinklers (the kind kids jump over) under the truck and moved it around for several hours after work EVERY NIGHT for a week. I'm still not convinced I got it all.

My understanding was also that the salt sea at the entry to the flats is not normal.

-Brad

 

Riley Tar and chemical (Indianapolis Indiana) is one of the companies with a "save the salt" contract thru the BLM Bureau of land Management etc. They catch the drain water off in ponds, allow it to evaporate and recover the salt and return to the surface , trying to save this natural park of salt flats etc.

There is a good story at www.saltflats.com right now on this very operation.

 

Experienced salt dogs call it Bonneville Loc***e.

 

I still want to go !