Home From the Back of Beyond: Some Images of Strange and Wonderful Places

Thunderstorm near Bandelier National Monument

No, it's not a volcanic eruption, but with the light show that followed that evening, it might as well have been. We were in the high desert of New Mexico at Bandelier National Monument, and the monsoons had arrived early. The lightning flashed every second or two for hours that night. It was magical.

Joshua Trees outside of Rainbow Basin, Mojave Desert of California

I'm back from a long, but epic journey with my students through one of the most intriguing landscapes in North America, the Colorado Plateau. We crossed the California deserts to Arizona and New Mexico, swinging north through southwestern Colorado and southern Utah. Our last few days brought us through the Basin and Range Province of western Utah and Nevada.

Banshee Canyon in Hole in the Wall, Mojave National Preserve

As with all trips, I try to do new things whenever I can, but the real purpose was to open a different world to our students. This class was a hybrid course that explored the geology and archaeology of the region. It's a marvelous region for doing such a class, as humans have impacted the landscape, and the landscape has left its mark on humans.

The Citadel ruin and San Francisco Peaks from Wupatki National Monument, Arizona

The land has seen a parade of cultures over the centuries. Understanding why they abandoned the region in the past has a lot to do with understanding the limits of life there today. Sometimes the problems are the same. The Ancestral Puebloans may have left because of 25 year drought. We are in the midst of a 15 year drought today, although we experienced a very short reprieve from the dryness. A lot of ran fell in the weeks before our arrival. The desert was unusually green for this time of year.

Meteor Crater was impressive as always, a reminder that sometimes situations on our planet change in a hurry.

The Crystal Forest at Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

Some of our stops were familiar to most people, such as Petrified Forest National Park. People may have heard of it, but many haven't visited. It's a bizarre landscape of badlands topography and horizontal forests of trees that wouldn't be out of place in the Redwood forests of California, yet are more than 200 million years old.

The slot canyon at Kasha Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Other places are exceedingly obscure, although they don't deserve to be. Kasha Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument is one of those places. Unless you are from Cappadocia, Turkey, it is one of the most unusual landscapes you'll ever see. The slot canyon is one of my favorite hikes anywhere.

The greenery was really pretty stunning after fifteen years of crippling drought. The drought is not broken by any means, but the rainy conditions over the last few weeks allowed us to imagine this landscape under a different climate regime. At Chaco Culture National Historical Park, the rangers described the plant growth as the most intense they had ever seen. The elks wandering near the campground were looking downright fat (of course the doe was probably about to drop a calf).

Chaco Canyon represented the height of the political power of the Ancestral Puebloans, in the period around 1150 AD. By the 1200s they were building the fortresses of the cliff-dwellings in Mesa Verde. It wasn't the culmination of their society, but the prelude to abandonment. Whatever the reason, the canyons fell silent around 1285. The people had migrated south and east into the Hopi mesas area and the riverlands of the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park, one of the largest of the cliff cities.

One of our stops was especially eerie. Castle Rock was one of the last of the Ancestral Pueblo dwellings to be constructed. It came to an end after only a decade or two with a massacre. Archaeologists discovered more than three dozen slaughtered people in the excavations.

Castle Rock, in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

The last part of our trip went back to the geological aspects of the plateau country. Despite having visited the Natural Bridges National Monument nearly two dozen times over the years, this was the first time I was able to hike under Sipapu Bridge, probably the second largest natural bridge in the world. The opening is more than 200 feet high, and from the bottom, it is immense. Those are mature cottonwood trees in the picture below!

Sipapu Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument

We made the very hot hike to Horseshoe Bend near Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. An entrenched meander, the loop formed when the land rose, trapping a river in its floodplain pattern. The stunning cliffs are composed of the Navajo Sandstone, the remnants of a Jurassic-aged sand dune "sea" that once covered many western states.

Horseshoe Bend, near Glen Canyon Dam. The Colorado River runs clear because the dam has captured the silt that once gave the river its name. Algae is able to thrive in the clear water.

The culmination of the Navajo Sandstone is found at Zion National Park in southern Utah. The Virgin River has carved an incredibly deep slot canyon at the Narrows. In many places the river fills the entire valley floor, meaning a hike is a wet affair. I didn't hesitate!

So, I am home for a couple of days, and will try to pick up the pace with a few long-delayed blog entries. You can certainly expect more information from our last couple of trips in the plateau country as well! It's good to be home for a spell.

The Sierra Nevada Underground: Natural Bridges of Gold Rush Country

In our last post we had a look at one of the showcase caves of the Sierra Nevada, Moaning Caverns. They are well-known, if for no reason other than the billboards along Highway 99, and the leaflets in restaurants all over the region. And the cave is spectacular. Far less known are some cavern features just a few miles away as the crow flies: Natural Bridges.

Most people hearing the name will think of Natural Bridges State Park on the beach in Santa Cruz. The caves we visited are a long distance from the coast. They are located on the upper reaches of Coyote Creek, a tributary of the Stanislaus River that drains into New Melones Reservoir near Columbia State Historical Park. It's in the middle of the Mother Lode Gold Rush country.

The bridges are at the end of a hike of about a mile on a good trail, although we were surprised by a bit of mud and snow on the trail last Saturday. It was slippery in a few spots, but we got down the hill okay.

There are two bridges that span Coyote Creek. I thought for a long time that the creek had breached a cavern below the river bed, and that erosion had carved the openings below the bridges. The facts are a bit more complicated. There was a canyon first (no caverns), and a set of springs that emerged from the sides of the canyon. The springs were full of dissolved calcium carbonate, and as the water evaporated, calcite deposits, called travertine, were left behind. They perhaps would have resembled Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. The springs grew larger and larger, and eventually spanned the creek. Somewhere along the way, the water breached the base of the springs and flowed through, and even eroded into the underlying marble.

The creek usually has a modest flow, although I've read of flash floods that backed up and flowed over the top of the upper bridge. The water has pooled under the bridges, in some places 7-8 feet deep. In warmer weather, visitors will swim or float inner tubes through the caves. Last Saturday, we looked at the snow, and most of us chose to stay dry. It is possible though to explore several yards into the caves on dry rock.

The lower entrance to the main bridge/cave is wide with a large clear pool of water. In the afternoon, the sun reflects off the surface and shimmers on the roof of the cave.

Some of the springs that formed the travertine are still active, and pour into the pool from the ceiling of the cave entrance. There is a constant chorus of dripping and pouring water.

After exploring the upper cave, we made the somewhat more complicated trip downstream to see the lower bridge. There is a trail, but it climbs the south slope in a few seemingly illogical spots (although trying to bushwhack through the "shortcut" soon convinced us otherwise).

Around a third of a mile downstream, the lower bridge comes into view. Like the upper bridge, the water has ponded inside, requiring a swim or float to get through. There are rock ledges that provide dry access for some distance into the upper entrance.

Both of the caves show the effects of decades of visitation and occasional examples of wanton vandalism, but plenty of features remain, especially those that are out of reach in the darkness above. Since the construction of New Melones Reservoir, the caves fall under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Reclamation, so the caves have some degree of protection, and the area was free of trash and garbage when we visited.

Maps and description of the trail can be found at http://www.usbr.gov/mp/ccao/newmelones/planning_visit.html#hiking. Parking is provided along an older route of Parrots Ferry Road a few miles north of the Gold Rush town of Columbia. It can also be accessed from Vallecito on Highway 4. There is a vault toilet at the trailhead, but not along the creek. The trail is particularly beautiful in the spring when the wildflowers bloom.

Geologists Travel...Part II

Continuing one geologist's travels in 2009...

Three weeks were spent on the Hawaiian Islands, an absolutely glorious journey with enough sights (and pictures) to last a lifetime. Here, Halemaumau crater on Kilauea is belching out tremendous amounts of sulfur dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere. The eruption began only a year or so earlier, with a vent 300 feet across and 600 feet deep. Lava is bubbling inside.

A July trip to Balboa Beach in Southern California saw the arrival of unusually large waves from a tropical storm off Baja. A couple of people were actually killed by them.

July also saw a trip to Lake Tahoe, the giant subalpine lake (1,700 feet deep) formed as a huge fault valley (graben) was dammed by lava flows. Mount Tallac, on the skyline, is composed of metamorphic rocks intruded by Mesozoic granitic rocks.

September included a field studies journey to the Cascades of Northern California and southern Oregon. We toured Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake (above), Lava Beds, and Lassen Volcanic National Park.

October was a field studies trip to the central Mother Lode, including an exploration of Black Chasm cave.

November included a tour of Pinnacles National Monument (above), and a Geology Club tour of Natural Bridges near Columbia in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode.

And for December, a lot of family, and a quick look at the Grand Canyon!