We'll Pretend I Saw the Superbloom the Same Way I Hiked the Pacific Crest Trail Today

I showed up late and at the wrong address for the party. There have been so many reports of the "superbloom" of wildflowers around Southern California this winter and spring that I was anxious to do some traveling and see the sights. I finally had an excellent excuse to head down south this last weekend (giving a community lecture in Hemet), and we started watching for flowers while we drove Highways 99, 58, and 395 as well as Interstate 215 through the Mojave Desert and Cajon Pass. There were scattered patches of flowers here and there, but not in any sense a superbloom.

There is a real dichotomy between northern and southern California right now. We are still getting storms and precipitation in the north, but the storm door closed in the south a month or more ago. We left home in a cool green landscape, but somewhere south of Fresno, the grass turned brown. It got hotter, and on Saturday in and around Hemet, the mercury hit the century mark (at least according to my car's thermometer). We didn't have enough time to check out Anza Borrego or the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve because of time constraints (and it was probably too late anyway).

Selective editing is a wonderful thing at times, however. On the way back home yesterday, we opted to follow Cameron Road through the wind farms near Tehachapi Pass instead of staying on the freeway. We came across patches of flowers in several protected coves, and hence these carefully aimed photos that suggest a wildflower wonderland!

The flowers thrive on these barren slopes in part because a lot of larger plants cannot. It's arid, as the hills here lie in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada, and the winds are nearly constant and fierce (hence the wind farm, one of the largest in California). The winds are generated by the pressure differential between the Great Valley near Bakersfield and the Mojave Desert near the town of Mojave. Tehachapi Pass is the lowest point between the two, so the winds funnel through the opening. It was certainly windy on Sunday.

We stopped at the intersection of Cameron Road and Tehachapi-Willow Springs Road. This is the spot where the Pacific Crest Trail crosses the road in the midst of hundreds of wind turbines. There are some nicely designed interpretive signs near the intersection, and if you look carefully you'll see that Mrs. Geotripper took one of the photos that they used!

And about that bit about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail today. It's like selective editing in pictures: I didn't say I hiked the whole PCT. But I did hike on about fifty yards of it at the Cameron Road crossing, so I technically didn't lie. It is perhaps not the single most scenic part of the trail, but it has some charm, especially at the right time of year. Solitude is sometimes a nicer virtue than scenery.

You Mean That Aliens Didn't Do It? New Research on Mima Mounds in the American West

Mima mounds south of Seattle, Washington

What's life without a little mystery? For years, geologists and geomorphologists have been curious about a landscape that shows up on prairie lands around the American West. It's a regular pattern of low hillocks called mima mounds. The hills are a few feet high and a few dozen yards across. They generally occur where there is a clay substrate that sometimes causes pools to collect between the mounds. These are called vernal pools, and for the few months that they hold water, they support a large variety of unique plants and animal species.

Mounds in the Yokohl Valley region in the Sierra foothills near Sequoia National Park.

The mima mounds are a mystery because their origin is not exactly clear. Early settlers thought they were burial mounds for Native Americans, but that is not supported at all by archaeological research. Some have suggested that they result from disruption of the soil by earthquake waves. The mima mounds I photographed from above (first picture) were in Washington near the margins of the vast continental glaciers, and some have speculated that they formed as a result of meltwater flooding in some fashion. Other less scientifically oriented observers suggest that aliens from space have something to do with their formations (landing pads, maybe?).

Mima mounds near Willms Road in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Knights Ferry on the Stanislaus River.

Of course, some people suggested that the origin might be a bit simpler (remembering Occam's Razor: among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected). They suggested generations and centuries of activity by ground squirrels or gophers resulted in the formation of the mounds. In the prairie environment, the mounds would give the rodents a better view of approaching predators, and their burrows would stay drier, being above the impermeable clays.

I was pleased to run across some current research on the origin of these enigmatic mounds by Manny Gabet at San Jose State University, and the verdict is...gophers. Generation after generation of gophers, building their mounds in the same place over time. Gabet doesn't insist that this is the absolute explanation for all mounds, but the computer modeling provides strong support for the idea. The mounds would develop after around 500-700 years.

Snow patches outline mima mounds at Tehachapi Pass in southern California (photo by Mrs. Geotripper).

Sorry, alien lovers...maybe Roswell has some new evidence.

More Land-Use Oddities from the Mojave Region: The Tehachapi Loop

In yesterday's post, I was musing over the intense use of the land in the western Mojave Desert, in which we mine the land, the water and the air for resources we want and/or need. As we continued our drive west, I was reminded of one more historically significant use of the region: a transportation corridor. The town of Mojave is a crossroads, joining highways and freeways leading out of the eastern Sierra Nevada, Las Vegas and all points east, Bakersfield and the rest of the Central Valley, and of course Los Angeles.

The Sierra Nevada has always been a barrier to travel of all kinds: paths, wagon trails, roads, and railways cross the mountains in only a few places, and those few places present engineering challenges. No paved roads cross the mountains for well over 150 miles between Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park, and Walker Pass well south of Sequoia National Park (Sherman Pass has a paved former logging road that is inappropriate for heavy traffic). The only freeways exist at Donner Summit and Tehachapi Pass, which is where we found ourselves on our recent trip.

I go over Tehachapi Pass several times every year, and on this trip I was looking for some more "short cuts" so we took Woodford-Tehachapi Road which winds its way across a ridge high above the main freeway for a number of miles before rejoining Highway 58 at Keene. The road provided wonderful views of the Southern Sierra Nevada and Tehachapi Mountains (above and below).

One cannot drive over Tehachapi Pass without an awareness of railroads and trains. As the only rail line between Los Angeles and the Central Valley, it is one of the busiest single-track mainlines in the world, averaging 40 trains a day. The rail line was constructed between 1874 and 1876, and as can be seen in the photos above, the engineering must have been a nightmare. The mostly granitic landscape is intricately eroded with steep slopes. Ultimately the tracks required 18 tunnels and 10 bridges. And still there was one spot that defied all normal efforts at maintaining the needed gradient. William Hood, the civil engineer who planned the route, hit on a unique solution. He built a 0.73 mile loop that gained the needed 77 feet. A 4,000 foot long train could pass over itself.

The Tehachapi Loop. The lower tunnel is in the cut on the left side of the photo

I have known about the loop for many years, and once visited the tunnel at the lower end, but unlike my railroad aficionado friends, I never realized that there was a really nice overlook of the loop from higher up on Woodford-Tehachapi Road. That's what I discovered on my trip the other day.

 I've since found out that the high-speed-rail system planned for California will utilize Tehachapi Pass. It will be interesting to see where they put the tracks for the HSR, and it will be especially interesting to watch a train climb the pass at more than 100 mph. To my train-lover friends: will that be possible? Just 31 minutes from Bakersfield to Palmdale...wow!