I'm Glad Movies Like "Avatar" Aren't Metaphors or Anything: Exploring Black Mesa in America's Never Never

It's the stuff of science fiction movies. A pastoral peaceful society is overwhelmed by a technologically superior and more numerous invader because they were unlucky to be living on top of something valuable to the invader. Movies like Independence Day, Avatar, Cowboys and Aliens, War of the Worlds and so many others. In these movies the plucky group of survivors usually manage to fight back and somehow destroy or beat back the offending culture, because, well,  that's the way these stories are supposed to end.

This is a continuation of our exploration of America's Never Never, the vast desert lands of the Colorado Plateau that we explored last summer. Our previous entry was a trip into the world of the Ancestral Puebloans at Navajo National Monument. A few minutes after leaving the quiet serenity of a park preserving a part of the past we were thrust very much into the present at Black Mesa.

So how is this for a plot line for a movie?

A high plateau in the wilds of the American west. The escarpment rises dramatically out of the desert floor, with an extensive forest of Pinyon Pine and Juniper across the summit. A pair of ancient cultures calls the mesa home,  They've had their differences over the centuries but by and large they get along with each other. They make their homes on this beautiful mesa, subsisting on corn, squash, beans, and herding sheep. A few scattered springs provide life-giving water, enough to meet their modest needs.

Cue the darkened boardroom. Camera pans back to reveal a group of wizened old white men. They're discussing their plan.

"We are here to discuss the vast coal resource that underlies the mesa. There are billions of dollars just waiting to be dug up, and we must have that money..."

A voice from the back of the room: "But the mesa is in the middle of nowhere. There's no infrastructure. Where can we burn the coal?"

"But that's the wonder of our plan. There is a coal burning plant on the Colorado River 270 miles away, and another just 70 miles away. A railroad will suffice for the closer power plant, but for the more distant plant we have devised an ingenious plan. A pipeline!"

"A what? Pipelines carry liquids, not rocks! What madness is this?

"That's just it. We'll grind the coal into little bits, pump a bunch of water from the ground, and make a slurry mix! We'll be able to mine all the coal we want!"

The intern spoke up: "But sir, that's an arid environment. The water resources are limited. And people live there! They've lived there for hundreds of years! You'll be destroying a way of life". His voice wavered as he realized the mistake he had just made. A few eyes rolled, but mostly there was a quiet agreement throughout the room that this young man would not be in the organization for much longer.

The CEO spoke, and all eyes turned his way: "Forgive the young man's innocence. I'm sure we've all experienced moments of empathy, but luckily we've moved on from that. But he speaks to an important issue. Those people do technically own the land above our coal, and they need to be dealt with. What plans do we have?"

"The usual payoffs, sir. Offers of money and jobs. But here's the best part: the lawyer negotiating on behalf of those people? He's on our payroll! You may be assured that the royalties we pay will be a fraction of the usual rate!"

And the gigantic digging machines bit into the earth and rock....

This is of course a simplistic description of a very complex series of events that led to the development of two major strip mines on the northern end of Black Mesa. But the railroad is real (that's the storage silo that loads the railroad cars at the top of the post). And the slurry pipeline, the first and only of its kind was built and was used for several decades (one of the mines was shut down in 2005). The royalties paid for both coal and water were indeed far less than those paid at other mines, and the lawyer negotiating on behalf of the Hopi people, John Sterling Boyden, was indeed on the payroll of Peabody Coal. I've written on the issue previously; you can read it here.

The scale of the mining is hard to take in. You can watch the beautiful pictures and videos published by Peabody Coal (like this one) that tout the benefits of the coal mine, the jobs, and the reclamation of the landscape after the coal has been removed. I certainly can't speak to the feelings and thoughts of the Navajo and Hopi people whose land was exploited for the purpose of producing electrical power for the likes of Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas. There was certainly fierce opposition at all stages of mine development. I can't help but notice that the air pollution produced by the burning of coal did not foul the air of the three urban regions listed above, but instead contributed to smog across the Colorado Plateau, including the obscuring of the views from the rims of Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon. And the real profits did not accrue to the people who were the stewards and owners of the land, they went instead to Peabody Coal.

Every time I see these mines, I hear the voice of John Prine and his immortal words in "Paradise":

"Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel

And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land

Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken

Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man."

Out in America's Never Never: What Water Does to Rock...

The Navajo flute player at work

The geology of Antelope Canyon is simple. Water (lots of it in a short time) and rock (specifically, the easily eroded but cliff-forming Navajo Sandstone). That's all it takes. There are other ingredients that make Antelope Canyon a memorable awe-inspiring experience: Sunlight and shadow for instance. The rock seems to glow with an internal golden light.

In the last post, I described the lengths we went to in order to arrive in Page, Arizona in time for our tour. These pictures should make clear why we tried so hard to add Antelope Canyon to our itinerary through America's Never Never, despite 140 mile detours. It is an extraordinary example of a sandstone slot canyon.

One thing that must be considered when visiting Antelope Canyon is whether you will visit the Upper Canyon or the Lower Canyon. The entrance fees are essentially the same, and you must be accompanied by a guide in each one.

The upper canyon is the most popular, probably for two reasons: it is a level walk on sand, and at the right time of day narrow beams of sunlight pierce the darkness of the canyon, which in places almost requires a flashlight (the entrance fee almost doubles for tours during those hours). It also requires being shuttled up a three mile long sandy wash that must be driven on to be believed. The lower canyon must be accessed by a series of stairways and ladders, and doesn't have the beams of light. But you park right next to the entrance and won't need to be shuttled. But it is my favorite for a different reason: the serenity. We've been herded like cattle in the upper canyon, shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other people. On our tour of Lower Antelope, we felt like we were the only people in the canyon (and we may very well have been).

By definition there isn't a lot of water in Antelope Canyon most of the time. It's a desert after all. The water comes during cloudbursts in the watershed upstream. The flash floods will send fast-moving slurry mixes of sand, mud, and boulders through the bottom of the canyon. Tours aren't held if there is a chance of thunderstorms in the canyons above. Tourists have been killed and injured in the past, and safety is a priority these days.

Simple geology, but a work of natural art. Enjoy the photos that follow, and look to the end of today's post for a special treat...

The flute player in the first picture? He played a beautiful composition that echoed off the glowing cliffs. I'm hoping he has some appreciation for the beauty he brought to our day. Here's a portion for your enjoyment!

There were other parts to this beautiful day. I'd show pictures of Horseshoe Bend, but I'm afraid I was grocery shopping while the crew hiked to see it (that's something that happens when you are the leader of a trip). Here is a post from last year's visit to the incredible entrenched meander...

I recalled the Navajo Beauty Way prayer...

With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty around me, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

Out in America's Never Never: Barriers and the Thin Line of Civilization

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

In math, getting from Point A to Point B is hardly a problem. It's a straight line most of the time, or an arc, determined by some kind of equation. Getting from point A to point B can be a problem in a city, since buildings are often in the way, yet a good map or a vocal GPS unit gives you plenty of routes and choices to avoid traffic and delays.

Out in America's Never Never, the vast desert encompassing the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range provinces, getting from Point A to Point B becomes a true challenge. Mountains may block the route, as the Forty-Niners found during the California Gold Rush (and earlier settlers like my ancestors, the Donners). There might be flat, open ground between one point and the other, but there might be no water. In a pre-automobile era, that was a serious problem. But out of all these examples the Colorado Plateau has one really impressive barrier: the Colorado River.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

What's the problem? It's a fair sized river as such things go, the biggest of the American Southwest, but it is hardly a trickle compared to many rivers back east and in the Pacific Northwest. Those rivers were barriers to travel, but numerous ferries and bridges soon solved access problems a long time ago (and numerous boats used the rivers themselves as a highway). The Colorado, though, is a geologically young river. It is rapidly cutting downward through the sedimentary and metamorphic rocks of the recently uplifted continental crust, and the consequence of this is an unnavigable rapid-filled river ensconced in a deep vertical gorge along its entire pathway through the plateau country. Until the Navajo Bridge (above, left) was constructed in 1928 the only place to cross the river between Moab, Utah and Needles, CA, a river distance of 600 miles, was at Lee's Ferry, about five miles upstream of Navajo Bridge (the completion of which put Lee's Ferry out of business). The ferry was the only spot on the river whose approach was not overly complicated by vertical cliffs.

There are more bridges today, but there is still a 300-plus mile stretch between Navajo Bridge and Lake Mead at Hoover Dam where there are no crossings (except the footbridge in Grand Canyon near Phantom Ranch). Travel through the Colorado Plateau country is still complicated by this fact (and frankly, it should remain so).

The paved highways give us a somewhat false sense of easy access, as they must also surmount or circumvent barriers in the landscape formed by river canyons and vertical cliffs. As long as there is gas in the tank, a working air conditioner, and properly tuned engine, we give little thought to how tenuous our control is over our localized environment. A flat tire on a deserted road on a blazing hot day can be life-threatening. And small geological events can have far-ranging consequences.

The original plan for our trip (conceived a year earlier) was to leave the North Rim of Grand Canyon and scoot down the slopes of the East Kaibab Monocline into the Navajo Section of the plateau country. We would cross the Colorado River at Navajo Bridge, turn at Bitter Water onto Highway 89 to Page, Arizona, where we would have a slow-paced tour of Horseshoe Bend, Glen Canyon Dam, and the incredible Antelope Canyon. From there it would be a fairly quick drive to Navajo National Monument, where we would be camping for the night. It was meant to be the most leisurely day of the trip.

Oh well....

The picture above gives a hint about how geology made our day a constant exhausting race against time. The Vermilion Cliffs are a prominent part of the Grand Staircase, revealing early Mesozoic formations, including the Chinle, Wingate and Kayenta. The Chinle, at the base, is composed of easily eroded shale and siltstone, and is subject to slope failure. In the picture above, looking across House Rock Valley, the lower slopes look tilted because they are part of a huge rotational slide.

If you take a big group through this region, you will need to make the camping reservations five or six months in advance, and even at that I nearly missed getting reservations for Arches National Park and the North Rim of Grand Canyon. As such, once the schedule has been established, it can't be easily changed.

But geology can change. Highway 89 from Bitter Water to Page starts out in spectacular fashion, climbing a slope of Chinle to a big cut through the Echo Cliffs, composed of the Wingate, Kayenta and Navajo formations. The view from the upper highway is a stunning panorama of Marble Canyon, the Vermilion Cliffs, and the East Kaibab Monocline that forms the margin of the Kaibab Plateau and Grand Canyon.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

The problem for the road engineers was getting across the Chinle slopes. The Chinle doesn't like highways on the flatlands (swelling and settling of the clays turns the best planned highways into roller-coasters), but it especially doesn't like roads on slopes.

Ultimately they chose to put the road across an ancient landslide not unlike the one in the Vermilion Cliffs above. It is especially visible in Google earth images, where a white outcrop of Navajo Sandstone can be seen well out of place next to the highway (below).

Source: GoogleEarth

In February, a portion of the old slide gave way, destroying a significant stretch of the highway. This wasn't the kind of slide that could be fixed easily, and the road will be out of service for a long time. The Echo Cliffs constitute a significant barrier to east-west travel, and between Bitter Water and Tuba City, only one dirt road crosses it. The state is in the process of paving the track, but it was nowhere near done when we passed through.

Source: Lee Allison, at http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2013/03/adot-estimates-35-million-to-repair.html

If we were going to see the Navajo Bridge and the Colorado River, we would need to make a 140 mile detour to get to Page and our other objectives. And then backtrack around 70 miles.We barely made it to our tour appointment at Antelope Canyon at 3 PM. We got to see Horseshoe Bend, but the visit to Glen Canyon was cut very very short, and we didn't reach camp until well after dark.

Source: Arizona Department of Transportation

It was a long day...but spectacular, just the same. More later!

For more information about progress with Highway 89, check out http://www.azdot.gov/us89/

America's Never Never: North Rim or South Rim? It's a Grand Canyon everywhere, does it matter?

It means a lot to these guys anyway. The Kaibab Squirrel is a (sub)species of squirrel that lives only in the ponderosa forests of the North Rim of Grand Canyon. The most closely related species is the Abert Squirrel that lives on the South Rim of the canyon (and other parts of the Colorado Plateau), and never do the twain meet. The populations became separated at the end of the last ice age, and geographic isolation in different climates has led to differences between them.

We continued our exploration of America's Never Never, arriving at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park (after making our way through a herd of buffalo). I've been using the term "Never Never" after a region in Australia that is far off the beaten track, though full of fantastic geologic scenery. In a similar way, the Colorado Plateau is largely a barren wilderness, but it also encompasses some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. And some corners can hardly be described as isolated and lonely. Grand Canyon is one of those places: it gets as many as 5 million visitors a year.

It's a grand place, and one can choose to visit the developed parts of the park on the North Rim or the South Rim. One might wonder if it makes much difference which rim to visit if one is visiting for the first time. It's an interesting choice.

It really depends what you are after. If you are after the complete "industrial tourism" experience with IMAX theatres, four-star hotels, fancy visitor centers and complete visitor services including grocery stores, curio shops, restaurants, and full cellular service, then maybe the South Rim should be your destination. It is in fact the destination for something like 90% of the people who visit the canyon.

The North Rim is the flip side of the Grand Canyon experience. It usually takes several hours more to get there, and the nearest town of any sort is more than an hour away. There is a single hotel complex offering cabins, and a simple camp store. There is a one room visitor center, a laundromat/shower house, and not much else. What is the serious tourist to do?

In my mind, there's not much of a contest. I enjoy my visits to the South Rim, but I prefer the quiet and the coolness of the North. It is as much as a thousand feet higher than the South Rim, and instead of a dry pinyon forest with occasional ponderosa groves, the North Rim has meadows with extensive forests of ponderosa, fir and aspen. The road to the viewpoints on the Walhalla Plateau is rarely crowded, and the viewpoints are stunning. Cape Royal and Angels Window offer excellent views of the Proterozoic Grand Canyon Supergroup and the famous angular unconformity that separates it from the overlying horizontal Paleozoic sediments (above).

Point Imperial offers a unique perspective on possible origins of the Grand Canyon. It looks over the edge of the Butte Fault and East Kaibab monocline into the lower country to the east. The Colorado River comes from this lowland and crosses the 8,000 foot high plateau heading west. The question that geologists have been struggling with for decades is how the river could have done it. There are many ideas, and few conclusions.

And then there are the quiet walks along the rim. The Widforss Trail goes five miles past the head of a deep gorge called the Transept, and to a beautiful view down into the Granite Gorge. The Uncle Jim Trail loops out to Uncle Jim Point at the head of Bright Angel Canyon. And if you aren't feeling particularly ambitious, follow the Transept Trail from Bright Angel Lodge to the Campground. That's what I did with my free time that day (oh, not to mention the pizza at the deli; it's not a completely savage wilderness).

Anyone on the North Rim should walk the short distance to Bright Angel Point. You'll have company, but the view is memorable. A fairly large number of people walk the Transept, but on the day I was there, I shared the trail with just four other people. It was quiet, cool and beautiful. I've never been closer to California Condors than here along the trail. They hang out, waiting for a tourist to drop I suppose.

In any other setting the 3,000 foot deep Transept would be a national park in its own right. Here it is but a tributary to Bright Angel Creek, which is a tributary to the Colorado River. The trail follows some gentle ups and downs through shallow swales and passes a modest Ancestral Puebloan ruin.

The campground is perched almost on the edge of the Transept, and the best-situated campsites offer views, but scenery is a short walk in any direction. It is a wonderful place.

This discussion of North Rim vs. South Rim leaves out a lot of other possibilities...there is the drive through the Hualapai lands to the bottom of Grand Canyon at Diamond Creek or that strange glass walkway perched on the rim of the western Canyon. There is the road that accesses Hualapai Hilltop and the isolated village of Supai. There is the road out to Toroweap and Vulcan's Throne. There is the wilderness of the Shivwits Plateau out west, a "twin" to the Kaibab Plateau with barely a road or trail anywhere. And there's that totally opposite way of seeing the canyon, from the bottom looking up rafting along the Colorado River, an adventure I am eagerly awaiting in less than two weeks.

Out in America's Never Never: Erg-onomics of a Desert Park

That's right, geologists can't help themselves. They like puns. This isn't a discussion of how to sit properly in a national park, or to hike without causing carpal tunnel syndrome in your toes. It's about sand, lots and lots of sand. Enough sand to cover as much as 625,000 square kilometers (about 240,000 square miles). My home state of California totals a little over 420,000 square kilometers, to give a bit of a comparison. Large "seas" of sand dunes are called ergs.

On our second day out in America's Never Never, we had reached Zion National Park in southern Utah. The park is justly famous for the sheer cliffs that tower over the valley floor, and for the beautiful scenery along the Virgin River. The scenery exists primarily because of one formation: the Jurassic aged Navajo Sandstone. The bold cliffs which sometimes have sheer drops of 2,000 feet (600 meters) are composed of cemented dune sands of an erg that once extended from southeastern California to Wyoming and Idaho. There are few if any places like it in the world today.

This vast amount of sand had to come from somewhere. Recent studies have demonstrated that it was probably eroded from the Appalachian Mountains and transported by rivers to the Midwest. The evidence is mineralogical, but it also makes sense because the eastern mountains were the only range in Jurassic time with enough elevation and extent to account for the approximately 60,000 to 140,000 cubic kilometers of sand (14,000-34,000 cubic miles). Some material may have come from the rising Sierra Nevada magmatic arc, but that range was small in comparison.

The Navajo Sandstone ranges in color from pure white to dark reddish-brown. Iron oxide minerals provide the color. Their presence may be related to petroleum that may have once existed in the unit (if it did, it would have been a resource to dwarf Saudi Arabia).

Zion National Park is just one of the spectacular exposures of the Navajo Sandstone to be found in the Colorado Plateau region (our stop in Valley of Fire also was in the same unit). It is in Zion that the greatest thickness of the unit is achieved, and the scenery is truly grand. A visit to the park should always include an exploration of the Narrows of the Virgin River, and if one is in good shape, a visit to Angels Landing or Observation Point is a great idea. If one is straining one's neck by looking up at the cliffs, a drive to Lava Point is in order. From the end of the gravel road, one can look down into the canyons from above.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

If you are having trouble imagining the sand dunes themselves, hop on over to nearby Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park to the east of Zion National Park. We did, and had a great time looking at (and playing in) recycled Navajo Sandstone. The park has examples of several types of dunes, and has areas of active dune formation and migration as well as dunes that have been anchored by vegetation.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

Coral Pink Sand Dunes are far too limited in extent to be considered an erg (in the United States, only the Algodones Dunes of Southern California are considered to be of sufficient extent at 800 square kilometers). It is fascinating to think that the sand of which the dunes are composed once was carried in a Mississippian-sized river from a vast mountain range in the eastern United States, formed dunes in one of the largest sand seas ever to exist on the planet, was locked in solid rock for 200 million years, and only a few thousand years ago was released to bounce in the wind once again.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

Out in America's Never Never: Desert Water...Gambling with 30 Million People

This water is flowing in one of the driest places in America (and naturally, too)

Water. Nothing in the world makes you appreciate it more than not having it.

In the desert, water is the factor that decides life. An organism adapts to the lack of it, or that organism disappears. The plants of America's Never Never either store it, have deep taproots, or they wither and die until the next flash flood. The animals either live near the few precious springs, or get their water from the plants that they eat.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River

The region between the Sierra Nevada and the western edge of the Colorado Plateau includes some of the driest landscapes in the world. Nearby Death Valley averages 1 or 2 inches of rain per year, and in some years receives none. The most it has ever received was 4.5 inches or so.

One single thread of water winds its way through this parched land. From the Wind River Range in Wyoming and the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River gathers the snow melt from countless high mountain ridges and flows for 1,450 miles through one of the driest environments on the planet. In the five million years that it has existed in its present course, the river has excavated untold cubic miles of rock, filled in the huge delta at the head of the Gulf of California, and filled numerous hidden groundwater aquifers. Only in the last 100 or so years has the river been altered from this condition, due to the intervention of a unique new species on the planet. We have changed everything about the river and the balance of water use in the region. But for how long?

We spent a day traversing this dry landscape between the Mojave Desert and the edge of the Colorado Plateau near St. George, where we got a sense of just how dry this land is, and also how we have altered the balance of water use in the region. Our stops included the aptly named Valley of Fire State Park, and Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

The red sandstones of Valley of Fire are called the Aztec Sandstone, a Jurassic layer that is related to the Navajo Sandstone that makes up much of the scenery on the Colorado Plateau. Here in Valley of Fire, the rock has been jointed and fractured, and spheroidal weathering has turned the rocks into a wonderland of jumbled rounded boulders. The rocks were caught up in a compressional event in Cretaceous time called the Sevier Orogeny. Older Paleozoic rocks were pushed up and over the Aztec along a series of thrust faults. When the Colorado River established its present course, headward erosion along the tributary streams (in this case, the Virgin River) exposed the deeply buried rocks.

Water was available along the Virgin River, so Ancestral Puebloans and other cultures have lived here for thousands of years. They left a visible record of their existence in the form of petroglyphs in the desert varnish that covers many of the rocks. Their villages were small, in keeping with the limitations imposed on them by the lack of water.

Hoover Dam and Lake Mead

Contrast the existence of these small villages with the huge metropolis of Las Vegas. Or Phoenix. Or Los Angeles. For in the same way that the Virgin River made a small villages possible, the Colorado River allowed huge cities to exist in the desert. Phoenix survived for years with groundwater, but the water accumulated in the ice ages, and can never be replaced. A water table that began at a depth of 30 feet now lies hundreds of feet lower. The Central Arizona Project allows Phoenix to put a big straw in the Colorado River and draw out large amounts of water. Los Angeles got along with water they accessed (stole) from the eastern Sierra Nevada and Owens Valley, but they grew too much and needed more. Canals draw water into the Imperial Valley and further towards reservoirs that ring the L.A. Basin. Las Vegas is the most dependent; groundwater provides only 15% of their water. The rest comes from the river's big storage facility, Lake Mead. To their credit, they put some of it back. A permanent river with a constant flow of thousands of gallons per minute flows from their water treatment plants back into Lake Mead (remember, downstream users, you get what Las Vegas flushed away!). None of the river's water flows into the Gulf anymore.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

We stopped briefly at Callville Bay (in part to "add" some water back to Lake Mead), and were shocked to see the problem that faces these cities, and all the other stakeholders in Colorado River water. All the white, bleached area in the photo above is supposed to be under water. It hasn't been underwater in a long time, due to a horrific drought that has gripped the region for the last decade (and the drought continues). Lake Mead has dropped to historic lows, less that 50% of capacity.

Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States, holding around 28 million acre feet of water, equal to two years of "normal" flow for the Colorado River. The reservoir is perilously close to "dead pool" level where it won't be able to generate hydroelectric power. What happens when the water runs out?

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

At Valley of Fire, we were amused by the antics of the small Antelope Ground Squirrels. When they got too hot, they buried themselves in the sand to cool off.

Unfortunately, we don't have the choice of burying our heads in the sand. We take for granted that we turn a knob and water comes out. It may not always be that way. The inhabitants of the American Southwest have some hard decisions coming as global warming continues to change our environment.

Oh, the dog in the opening photo? It's cooling off in Rogers Spring, one of the natural springs that flows out of a fault zone on the north side of Lake Mead near Valley of Fire. There is a bit of water to be found even in the driest places.