Introducing Pinnacles National PARK!

One of our nation's oldest national monuments is set to become our nation's newest national parks, and I couldn't be happier about it! Assuming the legislation is signed by President Obama, Pinnacles National Park will be one of the most geologically interesting parks in the system for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it lies on a major plate boundary, and provided critical evidence for understanding the movement of the San Andreas fault. It doesn't hurt that it is also one of the most scenic portions of the central Coast Ranges of California (mind you, Big Sur is beautiful too, but remarkably no part of Big Sur is a national park or monument).

Pinnacles was established in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt under the auspices of the National Antiquities Act, which was one of the wisest acts of Congress ever. The act allowed presidents to establish monuments without congressional approval, and without it we might never have had Grand Canyon, Zion, Petrified Forest, Death Valley, or Joshua Tree National Parks, because all of them were established as monuments at first, often over local opposition. It often took decades, but Congress would eventually come to its senses and make the monuments into national parks, as it did this week with Pinnacles.

I have been taking geology classes on field studies trips to Pinnacles National Monument now for 24 years, and it has been a significant part of my blog explorations of California (click here for a sampling of some of my descriptions of the region). The geological attraction of the park is the 22 million year old extinct stratovolcano that erupted on top of the San Andreas fault in southern California near Palmdale and Lancaster in the Mojave Desert. Subsequent movement along the fault has carried the Pinnacles half of the volcano 195 miles northwest to its present location in the central Coast Ranges (the other half, called the Neenach volcanics, aren't nearly as scenic).

The ancient volcano has eroded into an intricate maze of spires and deep slot canyons. The High Peaks Trail loop, which traverses the most rugged part of the Pinnacles, is close to the top of my list of favorite hikes in the world (and mind you, that is a list that includes Angels Landing in Zion, Delicate Arch in Arches, the Grand Canyon, and the Burgess Shale in Canada). The slot canyons have in places been completely covered over by gigantic boulders, forming talus caves. One is a quarter mile long, and includes an underground waterfall.

The park has some great wildlife and botanical attractions to complement the wonderful geology. To this day it remains the only place where I've seen a wild bobcat. It is also home to one of the few populations of the California Condor, and they can often be viewed from the visitor center on the east side of the park.

Pinnacles National Monument was enlarged several years ago, and there is a proposal to incorporate ranchlands to the east across the San Andreas fault. This would be an excellent idea if the funding could be found to do it. The park is already an example of a transform boundary, and expansion would add rocks that formed in the Franciscan subduction zone that effected the region during Mesozoic and early Cenozoic time.

On a political note, I want to thank Representative Jeff Denham for co-sponsoring the legislation that is allowing the monument to become a park. Denham represents my district, and on most issues (really, all of them) we greatly disagree. But on this, he did good.

Pinnacles National Monument-soon-to-be Park can be accessed by paved roads from the west out of Soledad and King City, and from the east on roads out of Hollister and San Juan Bautista (no roads cross the monument). A campground is available on the east side of the park, and 30 miles of trails are available. The park is a popular technical rock-climbing area. There are only nine days left to comment, but an extensive management plan is being considered at this time. Information can be found by clicking here.

Pinnacles National Monument: A Strange Landscape in California's Coast Ranges

It was our last field studies trip of the year. After our explorations of the San Andreas and Calaveras faults in the Hollister region of the Coast Ranges, we headed south on Highway 25 to Pinnacles National Monument. Pinnacles is one of our unheralded gems, a beautiful landscape with an unusual origin.

The rocks are strange looking, and far out of character with the "normal" rocks of the Coast Ranges, which tend to include graywacke sandstone, shale, serpentine, and some occasional expanses of granite and metamorphic rock. The knobby rocks in the photo above are the result of volcanic mudflows and lava flows. The Pinnacles are the eroded remnants of a 23 million year old volcano. The scenery was so unique that President Teddy Roosevelt declared the region a national monument in 1908, just two years after the first monument was established at Devils Tower in Wyoming.

The small Bear Gulch Reservoir was constructed by the CCC during the Great Depression. It is maintained as wildlife habitat today (especially for the amphibians, which have suffered disastrous declines in recent years).

The park preserves the remains of five rhyolitic cones that once may have towered 8,000 feet high. Erosion has attacked the volcanic rocks with a vengeance, widening cracks and fissures to form the pinnacles for which the park is named. The mountain ridges are fairly arid, covered mainly with shrubs and Gray Pines, but deep in the canyons and gorges, pockets of cool moist air and permanent springs allow much more lush vegetation to thrive.

And yes, I realized I was standing next to poison oak (lower left side of the photo above).

No one realized it in 1908, but Pinnacles preserves one of the more exciting bits of geology in the state of California. By 1977, geologists had realized that Pinnacles was only half of the original volcano, and that the other half was on the far side of the San Andreas fault...some 195 miles away in southern California near Lancaster in the Mojave Desert. Down south, the rocks are called the Neenach Volcanics. Such huge lateral offsets provided overwhelming evidence confirming the theory of plate tectonics (the San Andreas fault is a transform-style plate boundary).

Oh, and there are some Pinnacles! I actually didn't have a good perspective on them on the trail I took on Saturday, but here are a couple...

I'll wrap up my exploration next time in the unique caves of Pinnacles National Monument.

Where are the Ten Most Incredible Places You've Ever Stood? The Runners Up

I've noticed that nearly every movie reviewer puts a list of the runners up at the end of their list of the top ten movies of the year. In that spirit, I'm putting up a set of pictures from the places that almost made my top ten list of the most incredible places I've ever stood. As before, there is no particular order to these personal choices. It's a bit like asking which of your children you love the most...

 Number 20: Horseshoe Bend, Arizona

A few miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam is a huge entrenched meander along the Colorado River. The deep blue color of the river isn't right; the silt has settled in Lake Powell, but it makes for a memorable color contrast. Learn more about Horseshoe Bend here.

Number 19: Antelope Canyon, Arizona

There are hundreds of spectacular slot canyons scattered across Utah and Arizona, and you don't have to pay to get into them, and the noontime tours can be extremely crowded, as in shoulder to shoulder, but there can be no denying that the long beams of sunlight reaching into the darkness of the labyrinth is a spectacular and unique sight. For more views, check out this link.

Number 18: Observation Point, Zion National Park, Utah

The Angel's Landing Trail in Zion is one of the most spectacular hikes in North America, but I can never forget my adventure of climbing to Observation Point on the other side of the valley and looking hundreds of feet down onto Angel's Landing (the Landing is the peak on the lower right). For more information about Zion, check out this link.

Number 17: Inspiration Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Bryce Canyon is one of the most intricately eroded landscapes in the world, and the spires, called hoodoos, look otherworldly. Almost as incredible is to walk among the hoodoos below the rim, so here is a shot of the fir trees growing in the impossible environment of Wall Street Canyon at Bryce.

For more information about Bryce Canyon National Park, click here.

Number 16: Captain Jack's Stronghold, Lava Beds National Monument, California

The northern flanks of Medicine Lake Highland are coated in barren flows of basalt from the gigantic shield volcano. Within the flows are miles and miles of lava tubes, long caves left behind as the lava drained out. This was the setting for the Modoc Indian War of 1872-73, yet another tragic story of destroying the culture and lives of a people, in this case so settlers could have more land to graze cows and grow potatoes. It's a haunting place to stand. For more information, click here.

Number 15: The Big Sur Coast, California

A mountain range rises directly from the sea. That's about the only way to describe the incredible Big Sur Coast of Central California. This is a view of McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer-Burns State Park. For more details, check out this post.

Number 14: Muir Woods National Monument, California

I read somewhere that Muir Woods is the most heavily visited national monument in the United States, and I understand why. It's one of the few old growth Redwood Forests left anywhere close to the Bay Area, and it is a wondrous place to wander about. The Redwoods are ancient trees, both in individual age (thousands of years), and in ancestry (back to the age of the dinosaurs). More information about this incredible place can be found here.

Number 13: Pinnacles National Park, California

Around 23 million years ago, a volcanic center of five rhyolitic cones erupted on top of the San Andreas fault. The fault split the volcano, and the two halves are separated by 195 miles. At Pinnacles National Monument, the jointed blocks of lava and lahars have been eroded into towers and spires. The High Peaks Trail is one of my favorite hikes in North America. For more information, check out this link.

Number 12: Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra Nevada

The most incredible wall of rock that I know is the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, a two-mile high barrier to storms and human travel. No highways cross a stretch of something close to 200 miles of mountain peaks. The Owens Valley is a deep fault trough that once was going to be one of the most important agricultural regions of California, but because of water diversions by Los Angeles, is now a sagebrush desert. Each canyon hides treasures, and I spent much of my youth exploring as many of them as possible.

Number 11: The Great Western Divide, Sequoia National Park, California

My own personal terra incognita, the Great Western Divide is a high sub-range in the middle of Sequoia National Park across the Kern River from the main Sierra Crest. It's one of the last major parts of California that I haven't set foot on, but I've looked in from the summit of Moro Rock. There are lots of places left to explore in my life...

And another Number 11 (because it's my blog and I make the rules): Mono Lake, California

Mono Lake probably belongs on another planet. It's one of the strangest sights in a state filled with strange sights, a lake that is three times as salty as seawater, with a simple ecosystem of basically algae, brine shrimp and brine flies, but the simple combination is a food source for millions upon millions of migratory birds. The edge of the lake is lined with strange tufa towers that formed along freshwater springs.

And that's my highly personal list of the second ten most incredible places I've stood, and it was just as hard to pick out as the first ten! I'd love to hear about more of your favorite places. Put them in the comments, or send me a story that I can post as a guest entry in Geotripper!

A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: You can tell the world is an incredible place when these are the runners up...

This month I've been searching the archives for my favorite posts after ten years of geoblogging. The last two posts involved the ten most incredible places I've ever stood. What's striking is that as wonderful as these places are, I was quickly able to come up with ten (eleven, actually) more sites that weren't any less spectacular. So I posted this on May 19, 2014 as a follow-up to the list of the "best 10 places"...

I've noticed that nearly every movie reviewer puts a list of the runners up at the end of their list of the top ten movies of the year. In that spirit, I'm putting up a set of pictures from the places that almost made my top ten list of the most incredible places I've ever stood. As before, there is no particular order to these personal choices. It's a bit like asking which of your children you love the most...

 Number 20: Horseshoe Bend, Arizona

A few miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam is a huge entrenched meander along the Colorado River. The deep blue color of the river isn't right; the silt has settled in Lake Powell, but it makes for a memorable color contrast. Learn more about Horseshoe Bend here.

Number 19: Antelope Canyon, Arizona

There are hundreds of spectacular slot canyons scattered across Utah and Arizona, and you don't have to pay to get into them, and the noontime tours can be extremely crowded, as in shoulder to shoulder, but there can be no denying that the long beams of sunlight reaching into the darkness of the labyrinth is a spectacular and unique sight. For more views, check out this link.

Number 18: Observation Point, Zion National Park, Utah

The Angel's Landing Trail in Zion is one of the most spectacular hikes in North America, but I can never forget my adventure of climbing to Observation Point on the other side of the valley and looking hundreds of feet down onto Angel's Landing (the Landing is the peak on the lower right). For more information about Zion, check out this link.

Number 17: Inspiration Point, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Bryce Canyon is one of the most intricately eroded landscapes in the world, and the spires, called hoodoos, look otherworldly. Almost as incredible is to walk among the hoodoos below the rim, so here is a shot of the fir trees growing in the impossible environment of Wall Street Canyon at Bryce.

For more information about Bryce Canyon National Park, click here.

Number 16: Captain Jack's Stronghold, Lava Beds National Monument, California

The northern flanks of Medicine Lake Highland are coated in barren flows of basalt from the gigantic shield volcano. Within the flows are miles and miles of lava tubes, long caves left behind as the lava drained out. This was the setting for the Modoc Indian War of 1872-73, yet another tragic story of destroying the culture and lives of a people, in this case so settlers could have more land to graze cows and grow potatoes. It's a haunting place to stand. For more information, click here.

Number 15: The Big Sur Coast, California

A mountain range rises directly from the sea. That's about the only way to describe the incredible Big Sur Coast of Central California. This is a view of McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer-Burns State Park. For more details, check out this post.

Number 14: Muir Woods National Monument, California

I read somewhere that Muir Woods is the most heavily visited national monument in the United States, and I understand why. It's one of the few old growth Redwood Forests left anywhere close to the Bay Area, and it is a wondrous place to wander about. The Redwoods are ancient trees, both in individual age (thousands of years), and in ancestry (back to the age of the dinosaurs). More information about this incredible place can be found here.

Number 13: Pinnacles National Park, California

Around 23 million years ago, a volcanic center of five rhyolitic cones erupted on top of the San Andreas fault. The fault split the volcano, and the two halves are separated by 195 miles. At Pinnacles National Monument, the jointed blocks of lava and lahars have been eroded into towers and spires. The High Peaks Trail is one of my favorite hikes in North America. For more information, check out this link.

Number 12: Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra Nevada

The most incredible wall of rock that I know is the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, a two-mile high barrier to storms and human travel. No highways cross a stretch of something close to 200 miles of mountain peaks. The Owens Valley is a deep fault trough that once was going to be one of the most important agricultural regions of California, but because of water diversions by Los Angeles, is now a sagebrush desert. Each canyon hides treasures, and I spent much of my youth exploring as many of them as possible.

Number 11: The Great Western Divide, Sequoia National Park, California

My own personal terra incognita, the Great Western Divide is a high sub-range in the middle of Sequoia National Park across the Kern River from the main Sierra Crest. It's one of the last major parts of California that I haven't set foot on, but I've looked in from the summit of Moro Rock. There are lots of places left to explore in my life...

And another Number 11 (because it's my blog and I make the rules): Mono Lake, California

Mono Lake probably belongs on another planet. It's one of the strangest sights in a state filled with strange sights, a lake that is three times as salty as seawater, with a simple ecosystem of basically algae, brine shrimp and brine flies, but the simple combination is a food source for millions upon millions of migratory birds. The edge of the lake is lined with strange tufa towers that formed along freshwater springs.

And that's my highly personal list of the second ten most incredible places I've stood, and it was just as hard to pick out as the first ten! I'd love to hear about more of your favorite places. Put them in the comments, or send me a story that I can post as a guest entry in Geotripper!

Good-bye to 2018: 12 Months of the Joy of Geology

Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park

It's been a year. There are lots of ways of looking at the events of 2018 and so many of them are tragic and unjust. But there is always hope as well. There are still the beautiful places of the Earth, and always a chance to seek them out, no matter where you are. That's the joy of being a geologist and a teacher. Or being anyone with a curiosity about our planet. What follows are twelve months of exploring our planet from my base in California's Great Valley.

Merced National Wildlife Refuge, south of the city of Merced.

Where does one go in January? So much of the countryside is covered in snow, but California is kind of special in that regard. We get to visit the snow if we want and then we can go home to our valleys and coastlines. The migrant birds know all about this. Millions of geese and other species spend their summers in the Arctic, but when the snows come they fly south and spend the winter in a series of wetlands and prairies that have been preserved in places like the Great Valley. Our destination in January was the Merced National Wildlife Refuge. There were thousands of Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, Ross's Geese, and multitudes of ducks. It is an overwhelming experience to stand at the edge of the wetlands and imagine this valley hundreds of years ago before agricultural development took over 95% of the landscape.

Zabriskie Point and Manly Beacon in Death Valley National Park

The most satisfying aspect of a teaching position in geology is the chance I have to share the incredible planet with my students in my classroom of course, but also in the field. In February our intrepid crew headed out to Death Valley National Park in the Basin and Range Province of eastern California. The valley is a vast fault graben with 11,000 foot peaks next to valley floors below sea level. It is the hottest place in the world and the driest place in North America, yet 20,000 years ago it contained a 100-mile long freshwater lake and grassy savannas with horses, camels, and mammoths. Some of the fish who inhabited the lake still survive today in isolated spring-fed ponds.

Natural Bridge in Death Valley National Park

Death Valley is recognized as the premier geology park in the national park system, containing rocks as old as 1.7 billion years, and including layers and intrusions from every period in Earth history ever since.

We survived a phenomenal windstorm on the last night of our trip. I hate to say I littered in a national park, but somewhere out on the dunes there is a tarp that blew away from under my tent in the night.

The Ghirardelli Store in Hornitos within the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode

Our field studies in March were closer to home. We journeyed through the southern Mother Lode of the Sierra Nevada. We saw ghost towns, old mines, and the quartz veins that were the source of the ores of the California Gold Rush in 1848. The ruins in the picture above are the Ghirardelli Store in Hornitos. Before he made chocolate in San Francisco, the man sold supplies to the miners in the Mother Lode.

Yosemite Falls in Yosemite Valley

In April, Yosemite National Park took center stage, as we took two field studies trips there. One of them was the morning after an epic flood that closed the park for a day or two. When we got there, the Merced River was still at flood stage and the waterfalls were booming.

Mt. Rainier in Washington

In May, family matters found us on a plane out of Seattle, Washington. We left for home in the early evening while Mt. Rainier was capturing the last rays of the sun. As you may have read in the last post, Rainier (14,411 feet) is the tallest volcano in the Cascade Range, and has more glacial ice than any mountain in the Pacific Northwest. The potential of eruptions happening under the ice makes Rainier one of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. Lahars (volcanic mudflows) could overwhelm some of the cities of the Puget Sound.

Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado downstream of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam

One of the greatest adventures one could ever experience is an in-depth exploration of the Colorado Plateau. It is a showcase of geology with a treasure trove of national parks and monuments. In June, our intrepid crew headed out to plateau country where we explored Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Great Basin National Parks. The region is so extraordinary that a place like Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River isn't even in a national park or monument.

House on Fire Ruin in Bear's Ears National Monument

One of the great crimes of the present administration in Washington D.C. was the attack upon the Bear's Ears National Monument. Even though the law didn't allow it, the park was reduced in size to 15% of what it had been before. And for the sole purpose of money, i.e. oil drilling and uranium mining. I hope the courts do the right thing this year.

Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park

In July Mrs. Geotripper and I escaped the heat and dust of the Great Valley and headed north along the coast, eventually reaching Olympic National Park in Washington. Hurricane Ridge is one of the most stunning viewpoints in America. The views take in the alpine peaks glaciers of Mt. Olympus, the temperate rainforests of the valleys, and the coastlines around Port Angeles. The mountains are composed of oceanic sediments and seafloor crust pushed upwards by the motions of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

We stayed close to home in August, but almost every morning found me walking the Parkway Trail along the Tuolumne River where it flows from the Sierra Nevada foothills onto the floor of the Great Valley. Birders (including me) discovered 115 species on this trail over the course of the year.

Valentine Cave in Lava Beds National Monument

The resumption of classes in August and September found me and my students on the road again. We explored the Cascades Volcanoes, including Mt. Shasta, Lassen Peak, Medicine Lake Highland and Lava Beds National Monument. Lava Beds has miles of lava tubes, one of the greatest concentrations in the world.

In October we went underground again with an exploration of Black Chasm Cavern. The cave has been carefully managed so that visitors can see cave decorations that are absolutely pristine. The cave has thousands of fragile speleothems called helictites. I call them stalactites on acid...

November was the lost month. The horrific fire in Paradise caused air quality to suffer throughout the state and the school shut down for a week and a half. It's the first time this has happened, and our scheduled field trip to Pinnacles National Park was postponed to the beginning of December. We went underground again, in yet another kind of cave. It wasn't limestone or marble, and it was a lava tube even though the Pinnacles are volcanic. It's a talus cave, one caused by giant boulders falling into and covering a narrow canyon. Hikers are in near total darkness for upwards of a quarter mile.

December arrived and along with it came the holidays. We have family all along the coast from California to Washington, so Christmas for us was a very long road trip. On our last night we stayed near Mt. Shasta in Northern California. The sunset provided beautiful lenticular clouds around the summit of the second and third highest volcanoes in the Cascades (you'll have to check out the last post to learn about that one).

And that was the story of my year and that of my students and Mrs. Geotripper. We saw a lot of incredible things, and my whole purpose in describing these places is to encourage you to explore them for yourselves. I know that this is impossible for many, which is quite literally why I write this blog. But if you can make time and get away, seek out the wild places where you live. If your local college offers field studies courses, consider getting back into school for some personal enrichment. I guarantee you won't regret it.

If you live in the vicinity of Modesto, the Modesto Junior College Geology Department will be offering a great line-up of field studies courses. We'll explore Death Valley again in February, the Southern Mother Lode in March, and Yosemite Valley in April. In September we'll head out to the Eastern Sierra Nevada and Owens Valley. In October we'll travel through the Mother Lode, and in November we'll be back to Pinnacles National Park.

But our premier trip with be on June 26-July 10 when we head to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest. We'll be exploring Olympic and North Cascades National Parks, Vancouver Island, and the Coastal Mountain Ranges around Whistler and Pemberton. It will be a memorable experience. If you are interested, keep an eye on this blog, follow our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1920712791360611/, or the class web page (soon to be updated) at http://hayesg.faculty.mjc.edu/GeologyPacificNorthwest.html.

See you on the road!