A Resolution Recommendation: See the World. See as Much of the World as You Can

Grapevine Mountains in Death Valley National Park

When I first began to think about what I wanted to do with my life sometime in my teens, I knew I wanted a job that would take me outdoors for much of the time. When I was in high school, "earth science" or "geology" didn't exist as a course choice. So far as I knew, the "outdoor" major was to be a wildlife biologist, and I started heading that way. But in my first semester at community college, all the classes were full, so I took some course called "earth materials". The next semester I took "earth history", and a field course to the Grand Canyon. And by then I was hooked. I wanted to teach geology (many thanks to my first teachers, Marlin Dickey and Rod Parcel).

Death Valley National Park

My journey to a degree in geology was not an easy one. I did okay in my community college courses, achieving a pretty good GPA, enough to get me into a quality program at Pomona College, where I found the limitations of lazy study skills. I spent three years getting my act together, and another two working for the department before I started the graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Once again I was challenged to the limits of my abilities, especially with a young family to support. But I made it through, holding a crying baby at two in the morning while typing my thesis on a Commodore 64 computer with a daisy wheel printer.

The Trona Pinnacles in the California Desert at Searles Lake

Somehow, I made the cut for a position as a laboratory teaching assistant, and later adjunct faculty at Santa Barbara City College. I worked there for four wonderful years before I was fortunate enough to be chosen as an instructor of geology at Modesto Junior College, where I've been teaching for 31 years and counting.

The 2019 "Super-bloom" in the Mojave Desert of California

Geology provided my one of the greatest gifts of my life. A doctor explores the human body. A computer programmer explores the circuitry of processors. A chemical engineer explores atoms and compounds. But a geologist explores the earth. And I can't imagine a greater privilege. The greater privilege though has been that I have spent a third of a century introducing students to a world outside the confines of their home cities. There is nothing quite like seeing the response of a student seeing the Grand Canyon or Yosemite Valley for the first time in their life.

Mesquite Dunes in Death Valley National Park

Our world, despite our horrible abuses, is a wonderous place, still full of beauty and adventures. Seeing it is a marvelous journey, but having some understanding of how it came to be gives the adventure deeper meaning. Even the plainest of landscapes, say the Central Valley (to us the Great Valley) has a fascinating story, one filled with oceans full of mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, gigantic sharks, and savannas full of mammoths, giant sloths and sabertooth cats.

A Five-spot in Death Valley National Park

Not everyone can travel and explore the planet, for lots and lots of reasons. When digital cameras became widespread, and this thing called the blogosphere appeared some time back in the cyber-early Pleistocene, I finally realized I had another tool with which to share the world. In 2008 I started this blog, with the idea of posting lots of pictures of the beautiful places of the planet. It became a way of introducing the wonders of the planet with people far beyond the confines of my college. I never dreamed I would still be doing it twelve years (and more than 2,100 posts) later. I have always appreciated those who have read and responded over the years.

Yosemite Falls, the 5th or 7th highest waterfall in the world.

In any case, this post is sort of a year-end gift of images from the journeys this year of myself, Mrs. Geotripper, and my wonderful students. If you live in California, a lot of these places are within a day's drive. I took students to Death Valley National Park in February, and Mrs. Geotripper and I made another trip there in March to seek out flowers.

"Mirror" Lake, a seasonal pond on Tenaya Creek in Yosemite Valley. Mt. Washburn in the distance.

Yosemite is close enough to Modesto for a day trip, and I managed to get there on four different occasions this year, mainly in the fall and in the spring. It's a different place with every visit, with new discoveries to be made every time.

The Gateway in Yosemite Valley, with El Capitan on the left and the Cathedral Rocks on the right.

We had the occasion of my grandmother's 100th birthday as a reason to spend a few days camping in the Coast Redwoods of Northern California

Humboldt Redwoods State Park in Northern California

Our summer field studies class gave us the chance to explore the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. Use the search engine at the top left to check out "Travels in Cascadia" for the detailed stories of the places in the pictures that follow.

Mt. Shasta, the largest (but only second highest) stratovolcano in the lower 48 states.

Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point of the lower 48 states, near Neah Bay, Washington

The Olympic Mountains from Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park

Lupines in Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park, Washington

The upper end of Howe Sound, the southernmost glacial fjord on the west coast of North America, British Columbia from near the summit of Stawamus Chief near Squamish

Black Bear in Whistler, British Columbia in Canada

Rainy Lake near North Cascades National Park in Washington

North Cascades National Park in Washington

In September, we carried on an exploration of the eastern Sierra Nevada, traveling over Sonora Pass. We base-camped in Bishop for three days while we explored the High Sierra near Mammoth and June Lake, Mono Lake, and the White Mountains.

Sunrise out of Bishop, California, east of the Sierra Nevada

The White Mountains are an immense range reaching more than 14,000 feet, and containing one of the most unusual forests on the planet: the Bristlecone Pines. The trees live where almost nothing else can thrive, and they live for incredible lengths of time, as much as 5,000 years. From the Bristlecone Forest, one can take in more than a hundred miles of the Sierra Nevada crest, from Mt. Whitney to the Mammoth Lakes area.

The Sierra Nevada crest as seen from the White Mountains

The eastern Sierra Nevada is also a land of volcanism. We explored Devils Postpile, the Long Valley Caldera, the Bishop Tuff, and other features of recent volcanic activity.

Devils Postpile in the central Sierra Nevada

The Sierra Nevada is also one of the finest places in the world to study the effects of the Pleistocene glaciations. The June Lake Loop is an awesome valley that also serves as a gateway to the higher alpine parts of the Sierra.

Silver Lake on the June Lake Loop of the Eastern Sierra Nevada

Mono Lake is an enclosed basin filled by a saline inland sea. It is one of the most important stops on the migratory bird flyway, and the story of its preservation from the schemes of the LA Department of Water and Power is a rare (but still ongoing) environmental victory.

Mono Lake, near Lee Vining, California, east of the Sierra Nevada

Our journey home took us over Tioga Pass and through the high country of Yosemite National Park including Tuolumne Meadows and Tenaya Lake.

Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park

Our journeys weren't always on the surface. An October field studies class took us underground at Black Chasm Caves in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. There are more than a thousand limestone and marble caverns in California!

Black Chasm Cavern near Jackson, California in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode

Our last journey of the year took us north to visit family in Oregon and Washington. The weather was not optimal, but I had a brief view of Mt. Rainier from the shores of Lake Washington one morning. The mountain looms over the Pacific Northwest in more than one way. The volcano is close enough to threaten urban areas on the Puget Sound.

Mt. Rainier from Lake Washington, near Seattle.

But in the end, don't forget about the most important place of all: home. There is a bit of nature hanging on anywhere you might live, even in the midst of the biggest cities on Earth. Find that place you can get to without too much trouble and expense, and get to know it well, maybe know it better than anyone else. Learn the birds, the mammals, the bugs, the reptiles. Get to know the rocks and plants. Watch them change over the course of the year. Your life will be richer for it.

The Tuolumne River in Waterford California, my home place

I wish for you the most wonderful of new years and new beginnings, even with the challenges that face us all. Thanks for reading!

The Tuolumne River in Waterford, California.

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!

Can You Name the Third Highest Cascade Volcano?

Can you name the second highest? How about the highest?

It's probably not a fair question for most of you. I've always had a mind for the elevations of mountains, having memorized them effortlessly throughout my life, ever since I learned of the existence of topographic maps. I've even been irritated at the advent of the GPS system because they recalibrated the official heights of many of the iconic mountains of my youth. It's confusing.

But anyway, about those Cascades...

The Cascade Range extends from the Lassen Volcanic Complex in Northern California to Mt. Garibaldi in the southern part of British Columbia. The chain of active volcanoes is the result of the subduction of the Pacific Ocean crust beneath the North American continent. Portions of the oceanic crust melt and rise towards the surface. Once in awhile one or the other volcanoes erupts as did Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and 2004, and Lassen Peak in 1914-17. Others are less active, but they are close enough to population centers to constitute a serious hazard.

The highest volcano in the chain is Mt. Rainier in Washington at 14,411 feet (4,392 meters). It was actually much higher, perhaps 16,000 feet, but debris avalanches and glacial erosion have torn away the older summit. The mountain has more glacial ice than any other mountain in the lower 48 states, and an eruption combined with melting ice would present a huge threat to the urban areas in the southern Puget Sound.

Mt. Shasta (14,162 feet; 4,317 meters) is the second highest Cascades volcano, and the most voluminous stratovolcano in the chain (two basaltic shields, Medicine Lake Highlands and Newberry Crater have an even greater volume). It has erupted roughly every 600 years with the last eruption about 200 years ago.

Now this is where things get sticky. The third highest peak in the Cascade Range is normally taken as Mt. Adams in Washington at 12,280 feet (3,740 meters). But it all depends on how you define "mountain" or "volcano". Geographers often consider a hill to be a mountain if it has a prominence of 400 feet or so. By that measure, a subsidiary peak on the summit of Rainier, Liberty Cap (14,112 feet; 4301 meters) is the third highest peak in the Cascades, but it isn't a separate volcano. That honor goes to the volcano in all of these pictures that I took over the last two days while traveling home through Northern California. It's the peak that never gets enough respect. Even the name is diminutive: Shastina.

Shastina rises to a height of 12,355 feet (3,760 meters), and has a prominence of 450 feet from the main cone of Shasta. It formed in a series of eruptions about 9,800 years ago.

Clouds covered the main summit of Shasta this weekend, so Shastina stood out as a separate and unique peak as we drove south. On other trips, it doesn't dominate the skyline in quite the same way, but it is still a huge mountain. It's the flattened peak on the right side of Shasta in the picture below. In you mind's eye, you could erase the main summit and still see an awesome volcano.

Dear Washington State: All is Forgiven...The Airliner Chronicles Returns

The Pacific Northwest has this problem. It has two particular things in great abundance: trees and clouds. It also has volcanoes, but much of the time the first two obscure the latter. At Christmas I drove to the Seattle area and spent three days, and never laid eyes on Mt. Rainier, the gigantic stratovolcano that looms over the Puget Sound region. In the last week I had occasion to fly to the Seattle area, and being the month of May, I figured I had a pretty good chance of seeing some of the Cascade volcanoes. It started out pretty well as we left Sacramento, since I could see Lassen Peak off in the distance and then it disappeared. The clouds obscured the views all the way to Washington with the sole exception of a brief look at Mt. Adams, and the view below of Mt. Rainier.

Yeah, somewhere in there is the summit of Mt. Rainier.

That was okay. I had four days of walking and driving around Kent and Renton, and figured there would be a view once in awhile of the massive volcano. Nothing doing. There were tantalizing glimpses while driving around, but there were always trees in the way. Washington was disappointing me.

The flight home was scheduled to take off at 7:50PM so I figured there were too many things that would happen to either delay the flight until after sunset, or the clouds would be there again. But we boarded the plane on time and while taxiing down the runway I got the best ground-based picture of the mountain on the entire trip. It wasn't much, but it was something. 

And then we took off. It was hazy, and we took off towards the north and did a long turn towards the south, long enough to make me wonder if we were going to pass Rainier on the wrong side. But as the plane banked there was suddenly a very big mountain in the window, and Washington with all her trees and clouds were immediately forgiven. The mountain was stunning in the evening light.

Mt. Rainier from the runway at SeaTac.

At 14,411 feet, Mt. Rainier is the tallest volcano in Cascades Range, and is exceeded in volume only by Mt. Shasta in Northern California. It was once even higher, but glaciers have removed 1,000 feet of rock or more from the summit.  Because it is by far the tallest mountain in the Pacific Northwest it is completely covered by the largest mass of glacial ice in the lower 48 states, about a cubic mile (I read somewhere that it contains half of the all the glacial ice in the lower 48, but I can't find the source and would welcome any corrections from those who know such things). Aside from the "normal" threats that volcanoes might present to a given region (lava flows, ash flows, and that sort of thing), the snow makes the mountain far more dangerous. It's not hard to imagine why: any small eruption would melt a vast amount of ice, forming volcanic mudflows called lahars that are capable of flowing for many tens of miles, and threatening many of the cities along the southern part of the Puget Sound. The entire city of Tacoma is built on a mudflow that thundered down the mountain 5,000 years ago. The last major eruption occurred around a thousand years ago, although minor activity may have occurred several times in the 1800s. 

We flew south as the sun was sinking below the horizon and several other volcanoes appeared out of the gloom. Those pictures will come later. By way of explanation, the term "Airliner Chronicles" refers to the very first blog series I ever put together way back in 2008. One of my earliest posts in the series was also an evening shot of Rainier. By some strange convergence, that post received its first and only comment just two days ago!