Home From Back of Beyond: Images of a Harsh Country, Part One

Sunset through wildfire smoke at Arches National Park, Utah

If you are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia, you will remember the novel where the children go through the wardrobe into a magical world and live out their lives to adulthood. At the end of the story they step through the wardrobe back into our world where they are once again children. Little actual time had passed. A journey through alien lands like those of the Colorado Plateau is much the same. One can work and sleep and study and weeks will pass and little will change in one's life. Then, you are ripped away from everyday life and spend two weeks exploring corners of the world that you barely believed existed and each day, each hour is a life-changing experience. More happens in just two weeks than will happen in months or years of an everyday life.

The Rings Trail through Banshee Canyon in the Mojave National Preserve

I've been doing trips like this across the Colorado Plateau for 34 years now, and each one has been unique. There have been new insights and new discoveries every time. Sometimes there have been scary moments, and there have been moments of inspiration and beauty that border on the sacred. Our journey this year was no exception. I got to know twenty unique people, and we shared some interesting times together. I will no doubt have much to say about the geology and natural history of the places we visited in future blogs, but for the moment, I've gone through my 2,300 pictures and selected some of my favorites. It will take several posts!

The Mojave National Preserve is not actually part of the Colorado Plateau, but we needed a place to stay on the way there, and I can't think of a more interesting spot than Hole-in-the-Wall and Banshee Canyon (above). There's a trail that winds through the bizarre canyon with rings placed in strategic spots to allow access. It's not the plateau, but there is a connection: 18.5 million years ago a colossal rhyolite caldera eruption sent ash drifting across a vast region. The same ash exposed on the Rings Trail is also found on parts of the rim of the Grand Canyon near Peach Springs, Arizona.

The walls of Zion Canyon from Watchman Campground

We spent a night at Zion National Park which is crowded beyond all reason these days. Too many people want to share a very small space, and the experience of seeing the park is diminished by the crowds. The obvious answer is to make more parklands available, but our government is going the opposite direction, unfortunately. Still there are moments of peace and beauty. The red rock country is always more astounding at the beginning and the ending of each day when the canyon walls are lit by the horizon-level sun. I woke up at 5:45AM to see the sunlight on the canyon wall opposite our camp, and all was quiet. I could have been the only person there at that moment for all I could hear.

 The Transcept Trail follows the rim over the Transcept, a deep tributary to Bright Angel Creek which is itself a tributary tot he Colorado River. In any other place a canyon like this would be its own national park.

Grand Canyon National Park is another place where crowding is rampant and the atmosphere is much like Disneyland. But Grand Canyon is a much larger park, and there are many places where one can find peace. For one thing, a person can visit the North Rim, which gets a mere 10% of park visitation. And once there, walk a little bit. I spent an hour one afternoon walking the Transcept Trail, and saw only three or four people. I snapped the shot above from one of the many overlooks along the way.

The view upstream of Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River

The canyons of the Colorado River are rugged, to say the least (the Grand is just one of them). For decades Lee's Ferry was the only crossing for more than two hundred and fifty miles downstream (and almost as much upstream). In 1928 the Navajo Bridge was completed, allowing auto traffic to make the crossing unimpeded. The bridge was not designed for modern trucks and was augmented in the 1990s with a twin bridge of greater strength. The old bridge is now a walkway, and one can stand 700 feet above the Colorado River just a few miles downstream of the old ferry. California Condors soared overhead while we were there. I chose this picture because of the memories it stirred of my incredible journey down the Colorado in 2013 with my brother's family. The bridge was the last recent piece of human architecture we would see for nine or ten days. I was a tiny bit jealous of the rafters passing below, but I was on an epic journey of my own with a bunch of special people.

Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River near Page, Arizona

A short distance up the road was another imposing sight, the Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River. It's just a few miles downstream of Glen Canyon Dam, and was a local secret for a long time. Word is out now and the small dirt parking lot is often overrun with buses and tourists hiking in inappropriate shoes and without hats in the stifling (and dehydration-producing) heat. It is in the process of falling victim to "industrial tourism" as authorities are constructing a parking lot, a concrete pathway, and some fencing at the cliff edge. I guess the "improvements" are necessary, given the stupid chances I saw people taking to get their selfies on the cliff edge.

House on Fire Ruin in Mule Canyon. I photographed the ruin years ago without realizing the presence of the "flames" formed from differential weathering of crossbeds in the sandstone.

My most treasured moment came the next day. We were headed to one of the important cultural sites on the entire Colorado Plateau. A thousand years ago, Cedar Mesa was one of the most critical agricultural landscapes in the entire region, being a thousand feet above the barren deserts of Monument Valley and Mexican Hat, and thousands of feet below the mountains that were coated in snow for much of the winter. It was the sweet spot for growing large yields of beans, squash and maize. For centuries thousands of the Ancestral Pueblo people made the mesa their home, building villages on the mesa top, and cliff dwellings and pithouses in the alcoves just below the rim. They left the region totally in the late 1200s leaving behind thousands of cultural sites that are still only beginning to be assessed and excavated. Five regional tribes consider the lands to be sacred.

Pictographs on sandstone near House on Fire Ruin

The region is public land, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, a chronically underfunded part of the federal government. The archaeological sites have been ravaged by the resident pothunters and grave robbers who live in the region and think that these resources are their own personal cash cow. I read somewhere that around 90% of the known sites have been attacked by pothunters, sometimes using picks and shovels, sometimes with bulldozers. They'll even charter helicopters to fly them into remote sites. With this vandalism in mind, politicians and stakeholders worked for years to propose a national monument, and when Congress failed to act, President Obama made the monument a reality. Bear's Ears National Monument was established in 2016. In an egregious betrayal of the law, the present administration shrunk the monument by 90%. The act is being challenged in court, but mining companies are already staking claims. It's a hideous shame.

Ruins in Mule Canyon

We walked up Mule Canyon listening for the ghosts of those who came before. We found House on Fire ruin, some eerie hand prints on an overhanging rock, and several other incredible ruins (a long way) up the canyon. I walked six miles in the hot sun with not enough water (I don't recommend walking with insufficient amounts of water). It had been around fifteen years since I last traveled up the canyon.

One of my special moments happened as I was waiting for two new tires to be installed after we got a series of flats. Right there in the city limits of Cortez, Colorado there was a little prairie dog town. They ducked every time a car went by.

The picture above needs explanation. That's a cloud, yes, but an unusual one. It's a pyrocumulus cloud, generated by the disastrous La Plata (416) Fire that was burning north of Durango, Colorado. Huge plumes of superheated air rise and cool in the upper atmosphere, condensing to form the gigantic clouds. Unfortunately they don't produce any significant precipitation (wouldn't it be nice if wildfires came with their own extinguishers?). But looking at the drought-induced fire burning beyond the ruins of Mesa Verde caused me to consider the "cycle of life", or more correctly the cycle of human habitation. Many hypotheses concerning the abandonment of the region by the Ancestral Puebloans involve extended droughts and overuse of the available resources. The drought in 1285 AD had lasted around 25 years.

We are currently in another drought that has now lingered for two decades. The Colorado River supplies water for cities and farms across the entire southwest, but the two giant reservoirs that store most of the water are barely half full, and if the drought continues (as predicted by some global warming scenarios), the lakes will become useless pools and cities throughout the region will be in serious trouble as a result. The Ancestral Pueblo people left for wetter climates 700 years ago. What alternatives will the current residents have?

These are my favorite pictures from the first six days of our journey. More will be coming!

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!

Playing "Where's Waldo" with Bighorn Sheep in Zion National Park

How many Bighorn Sheep can you see in this picture?

One of the surprises of a visit to a place like Zion National Park is the possibility of seeing some of the rarer large animals. We were taking a "short cut" through the park last week on our way to the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. The lower valley was crowded, just as one would expect in the height of summer (not unlike Yosemite). We headed towards the much less crowded eastern entrance road when my son spotted some large animals on the ridge above, maybe two miles up the highway from the Zion Tunnel.

Would a slightly closer view help?

I stopped at the first safe pullout and walked back to try and find them. I didn't at first, but then realized they might have walked over the ridge. I walked up the road and across a rock bench and then saw them across the canyon.

Okay, I'll point to them...

They are well camouflaged. I was photographing just the two that I had spied, and then realized another three were nearby. It was a group of ewes and lambs. 

Desert Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni) were wiped out in the Zion region in the early 1900s. They were mainly done in by diseases introduced by domestic sheep who grazed the region. In 1978, 14 sheep were re-introduced to the park, and according to the National Park Service, they did poorly at first. They are doing well now, numbering around 400.

There were once millions of Bighorn Sheep across the desert southwest, so much so that they were a primary food source for the ancestral Puebloan people and other groups. 

The sheep are one of the most common motifs in the rock art (petroglyphs) found across the American West. Over the years, though, I have seen relatively few live ones. It was wonderful to see them roaming free, back in their ancestral homeland.

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.

Explore the Wonders of the Colorado Plateau: Join Geotripper and the AAPG on May 23-29, 2015!

Antelope Canyon, on the Navajo Reservation near Page, Arizona

The Colorado Plateau, the region encompassing large parts of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado, is one of the great geologic showplaces on planet Earth. Within the region, one can see in vivid colorful detail nearly two billion years of Earth history, from the ancient Proterozoic crust exposed at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Cenozoic lake sediments that formed the strange hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. The plateau country has been central to many of my blogs over the last five years, including three major series: Time Beyond Imagining, Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel, and The Abandoned Lands. In addition to being a bountiful source of information about the past, it is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world.

The Great Unconformity, the erosional boundary between the Proterozoic rocks of the Yavapai Orogeny and the Cambrian Tonto Group exposed in Diamond Creek on the Hualapai Reservation.

On May 23-29, 2014, I will be conducting a tour through the heart of the Colorado Plateau under the auspices of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The trip will begin and end in Las Vegas, Nevada, and will be a 1,000 mile loop through Grand Canyon National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreational Area, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Zion National Park. The purpose of the journey is to provide an introduction to this fascinating landscape to anyone with an interest in geology, including geologists, teachers, students, and their family members. One does not need to be a member of the AAPG to participate. We will travel in rental vehicles (friendly drivers provided!), and stay in hotels at or near the parks. The fee, including all transportation costs during the trip, accommodations, tour fees, park entrance fees, and the trip guidebook, is $3,100 ($3,300 after 4/24/14). The fee doesn't include food, or travel to and from Las Vegas, where the trip will originate.

The Colorado River at Diamond Creek on the Hualapai Reservation

What will you see and learn? Our route will begin in Las Vegas. As we leave town, we will have a first look at the Colorado River at Hoover Dam, and then drive southeast on Highway 93 to Kingman Arizona. We will have a close look at the Peach Springs Tuff, remnants of a vast explosive eruption that blanketed thousands of square miles, providing some evidence of the origin of Grand Canyon.

From Kingman, we will head northeast on the longest remaining stretch of Route 66 to Peach Springs. At this point we expect to make our way down Diamond Creek, the only place where one can drive to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We will have a close look at the Proterozoic and lower Paleozoic rocks of the canyon, formations not easily accessed in most parts of the Grand Canyon. If we are lucky, we may run across a herd of bighorn sheep.

We will then drive to the south rim of Grand Canyon, and spend a day exploring one of the most spectacular gorges in existence. Some free time will be available for a hike into the canyon, or for an optional canyon overflight. Relatively short (but steep) hikes from the rim provide access to the upper Paleozoic rocks of the plateau country, such as the Coconino Sandstone, Toroweap Formation, and Kaibab Limestone.

The following day we will work our way east to the canyon of the Little Colorado River and the Navajo Reservation. We will be exploring the Mesozoic formations of the plateau, including the Moenkopi, Chinle, Kayenta, Wingate and Navajo formations. Along the way we will stroll out to Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River (below) and the incredible Antelope Canyon (the top photo), one of the most dramatic slot canyons to be found anywhere. We will spend a night in Page, Arizona, next to Lake Powell.

Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam.

From Page, we expect (weather conditions permitting) to follow Cottonwood Canyon to Grosvenor Arch and Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah. The road follows the Cockscomb monocline, one of the major Laramide folds on the plateau (the southern extension of the fold forms the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon) through the heart of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The spectacular road exposes much of the Mesozoic stratigraphy found in the region, including the Tropic Shale, the Entrada Sandstone, and the Dakota Sandstone. Kodachrome Basin is a small gem of a park containing unusual sedimentary "pipes" that formed in the Entrada Sandstone.

The Cockscomb monocline near Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah.

From Kodachrome Basin, we will climb through the Cretaceous sediments of the plateau country, including the Tropic Shale and Mesa Verde Group. We will arrive at Bryce Canyon National Park, which exposes one of the youngest formations on the Colorado Plateau, the Claron Formation. The hoodoos of Bryce are some of the most photogenic rocks to be seen anywhere. There will be time to hike below the rim for a completely different perspective on the unusual spires.

Wall Street Canyon in Bryce Canyon National Park

Leaving Bryce, we will head south along the Sevier fault and then turn west at Mt. Carmel Junction to drive into Zion National Park. Zion Canyon provides the best possible look at the incredible Navajo Sandstone, a Jurassic deposit that preserves the evidence of a vast sand sea that once covered a large part of the western United States.

Our route will take us on a little-traveled road through the western and northern part of the park to Lava Point. Along the way we will traverse a unique inverted stream, and pass through some rarely seen lava flows and cinder cones.

Leaving Zion, we will head southwest back to Las Vegas.

The guidebook for the trip was written by myself and my son Andrew, an anthropology professor at Modesto Junior College. It includes a great deal of information on the natural and human history of the plateau, as well as the geology.

There are a host of other wonders along the route! I've been writing about this country for a long time, introducing you, my readers, to one of the most beautiful and geologically rich corners of our planet. We've traveled together in words and pictures, and I would love the opportunity to travel with some of you in person this summer. Join us!

Detailed information and registration forms can be accessed at on the AAPG site (click here)  I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have by emailing me at hayesg (at) mjc.edu.