Since I Have to Miss the Penumbral Wolf Moon Eclipse...

Nothing of great consequence in this post tonight, just a lovely moonrise. I was walking along the Tuolumne River watching the clearing skies from last night's storm (0.41", a bit more than expected). It had been very cloudy all day, but the sun finally started peeking out here and there. And then all of the sudden there was the nearly full moon.

The actual full moon takes place tomorrow at 11:21 AM (PST), and it will be accompanied by a penumbral eclipse, meaning that the moon will pass just along the edge of the Earth's shadow, and will be slightly darkened, but will not go through any kind of total blackness. Unfortunately at the moment of the eclipse, the moon will only be visible from the other side of the world. So I'll have to miss it, but that's okay.

The full moon in January is most often known as the Wolf Moon, based on a cultural memory of wolves howling in the woods outside of settlements in cold winter environments. That's not a memory of most people these days, although I could personally tell stories of coyotes howling in the desert on cold nights in places like Death Valley National Park.

Have you ever seen an actual wolf in the wild? I've had that privilege just once, in Yellowstone National Park in 2011. To this day thank Ryan and Laura for their alertness!

The view to the west wasn't so bad either. We've had a week of gorgeous sunsets.

The Harrowing Journey to the Valley of Death (21st Century Style)

When is the next bathroom? Will there be flush toilets at the campground? What about showers?

Geology field tripping in Death Valley National Park in the modern era is a far cry from the adventures of centuries past, specifically the 19th and 20th (the earth scientists living among the Native Americans in past centuries left no record, but they no doubt knew which rocks and minerals were valuable for tool making). In the 19th century the "earth scientists" were the few itinerant miners and prospectors looking for other kinds of valuable minerals, especially gold and silver (though the most valuable finds were probably the borates and talc). Just getting to the gigantic blank spot on the map was a challenge, and surviving in the harsh climate was a gamble.

At the beginning of the 20th century, access was improving, and rough dirt roads coursed up many of the valleys and crossed the less rugged passes of the mountain ranges. These roads were utilized by the first of the university-trained geologists who undertook the daunting task of mapping the Death Valley region. It wasn't that the rocks weren't exposed well. They offer some of the best exposures to be found anywhere. But the Basin and Range Province is so vast the few individuals who first worked in the region were limited simply by time and mortality. There was hardly enough time in one life to see it all!

By the 1930s, mining roads made for much better access, and the designation of Death Valley as a national monument by Herbert Hoover in 1933 led to increased tourist traffic. The mines began converting their hospitality facilities to tourist destinations, particularly at Furnace Creek. Paved highways allowed for quick trips out of Las Vegas or the Los Angeles region, and Death Valley began to feel just a little bit "urbanized". But not really. It can be easy to forget that this land is still the same harsh climate that it's been for the last few thousand years since the end of the ice ages. The heat and dryness can still lead to heat stroke and dehydration, and all it takes to bring one to the edge of mortality is a blown radiator hose or flat tire.

And so it was that we were making our way into the "Valley of Death" for our geology field studies class a couple of weeks ago. We had already searched for fossils at Sharktooth Hill, learned the basics of stratigraphy at Red Rock Canyon, and explored a dry ice age waterfall at Fossil Falls, but it was time to head east out of the Owens Valley and into one of the most isolated regions of the lower forty-eight states. We first crossed the relatively muted topography of the Darwin Plateau at the south end of the Inyo Range (top picture), and then took the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride down the steep highway to Panamint Springs and Panamint Valley. We made a short stop at the Father Crowley Vista Point (above). This site used to be a wide dirt lot on the side of the highway, but has been developed into a formal vista point with a simple toilet facility and protective fencing (gotta keep them tourists from falling over the cliffs...). The view is stupendous, with an excellent vista of the Panamint and Cottonwood Mountains across the way. There are complex relationships between the rocks of the Panamints, which are hinted at in the picture below, where dark flows of basaltic lava cover intensely folded Paleozoic carbonate rocks. The hill beyond exposes a granitic pluton.

The bottom of Panamint Valley holds more recent geologic phenomena, including the Panamint dune field and a fault scarp along the mountain base (the sunlit terrace)....

 ...and Panamint Dry Lake (below). Telescope Peak, the highest point in the park at 11,049 feet, is often graced by snow during the winter months. On the other side of the Panamint Range is Death Valley itself, which in large part lies at a depth of several hundred feet below sea level. Not many places around the world have such great relief.

From the Panamint Valley at about 1,000 feet we began climbing to cross the Panamint Mountains over Towne Pass at 4,956 feet, and in the setting sun we followed the long grade down the alluvial fan system to Stovepipe Wells at sea level. We pulled into the campground at dusk under a beautiful fiery sky.

 As the western sky faded, the light grew in the east as the full moon rose above the Funeral Range.

We had reached the Valley of Death, and it was a beautiful place. And there were flush toilets and showers!

OMG! It's the SUPERMOON! The moon really is super, but...

We'll just say I'm cheating here a little bit, and am using this post to show some of my favorite moon photographs. The moon is so steeped in human psyche and mythology. It is one of those things that is with us all our lives, and is more dependable than food, shelter, or trust. It rises and falls like clockwork, and for centuries it was our clockwork, along with the sun and stars. It is as dependable as the tides, which makes sense, since it is a major cause of the tides.

And we take it for granted. We might go weeks without paying attention to it as we go about our daily lives. Honestly, unless you have seen a headline in the last few days, can you say what phase the moon is in right now? No looking...

If you have seen some headlines, the "supermoon" has arisen once again. The moon is going full on the weekend at the same moment that it is closest to the Earth. Reading the articles, one might expect that you'll be able to reach out and grab a piece of green cheese right off the surface. Like in the picture above, which I snapped on a long November journey across the Colorado Plateau (that's Black Mesa near Kayenta and Tuba City in the background).

In a case of full disclosure, here is how the moon really looked that night. A zoom lens is a wonderful tool! The moon will indeed be larger than normal this weekend...by about 14%. But a rising full moon is always a pretty sight, so I hope you will check it out.

It will look much bigger than normal as it rises above the horizon on Saturday. Philip Plait, the Bad Astronomer has provided a marvelous explanation of the optics of a big moon in this article, which I highly recommend.

From Goblin Valley, Utah

Have a great weekend. Share some great pictures if you get some!

A Convergence of Wonders: Journeys in the Pacific Northwest, Day One

A Convergence of Wonders is a chronicle of our recent journey through the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rocky Mountains. This the first day's story...

I'm shaken to wakefulness by the insistent alarm going off. Oh jeesh, what time is it? 5 AM? What time did I go to bed? 2? There was so much to be done, getting ready to get two dozen people on the road for two weeks. We never really finished packing our own stuff until the wee hours. I shake off the cobwebs, and we head across the farmlands to pick up the van on west campus, and meet up with the others. Of course, I was the last to arrive, four or five minutes late.

There is a lot of adrenaline in the first moment of a trip; it's all that we could think about over the last few months, and the moment of departure has arrived. Everyone looks wide awake and ready to go. Fortunately, there is a cure for this: California's Central Valley. For the first 200 miles we drive across the monotonous fields and plains, and I have a hard time finding much to say by way of commentary. Two hours brings us to a rest area for a short break, and another two hours gets us to the first gasoline stop in Anderson. The landscape has been shifting, and snowcapped peaks appear on the skyline.

One peak in particular stands out, directly ahead of us. Mt. Shasta (14,179 feet; 4,322 m) is the highest volcano in California, and is only 300 feet short of being the highest mountain in the state. It is our first destination for the day. We see it more than three hours before we arrive at the end of the road on the flanks of the mountain at around 7,000 feet.

Something had been worrying me in the last few weeks. One has to plan a trip like this a year in advance, and sometimes we make choices that looked good on paper at the time, but which are more questionable at the moment of truth. Late June is often a good time to explore the northwest, but a heavy snow year and a cool spring were unpredictable back in January. There was a lot of snow on the peak, and presumably on mountains all across the route ahead.

And indeed, although the road was open, there was still a lot of snow in evidence. Eight feet of it! Not for the first time, I was forced to say "imagine that the rocks" while describing an outcrop covered by the white stuff.

Still, it was beautiful, the day was clear, and we could see forever...

One very sad view was to the south. The alpine crags in the distance were the Castle Crags, one of the state parks slated to close soon because of the California budget crisis. It irritates me that Republicans consider it more important to protect their rich benefactors than to find the $22 million to keep 70 state parks open. The granite peaks are a dramatic sight for travelers on Interstate 5, and closing park will prevent access to a marvelous outdoor classroom.

I was growing concerned that we would be seeing a few too many signs like this...

Mt. Shasta is a magnificent mountain. It was our first introduction to the volcanic peaks of the Cascade Range, which formed as a result of convergence in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which lies off the coast of Northern California, Oregon and Washington. It is a few hundred feet shorter than Mt. Rainier but is the most voluminous of all the Cascades volcanoes. Seen from the north, it is clear that Shasta can be considered a composite cone, with at least four previous incarnations over the last half million years. The highest peak is the Hotlum Cone, which formed within the last 9,000 years. Shastina, on the right, developed in a series of eruptions around 9,800 years ago. The short peak in the middle is an eroded crater rim of Misery Hill, which is a much older cone. California's longest glacier, Whitney, flows between Hotlum and Shastina. It is about two miles long.

Shasta was a looming presence for most of our day. Late in the afternoon, it still was visible off to the southwest as we approached our camp at Lava Beds National Monument.

We arrived about 6 PM in our camp at the Lava Beds Research Center. The camp looks sort of barren and austere, but the view was spectacular. We could see across the Tulelake Valley to peaks on the horizon many tens of miles away. We ate a quick picnic dinner, and the students outfitted themselves for an early evening exploration of some of the local lava tubes (more on these in the next post). Having already proved over the years that I could crawl on my belly through lava tubes, I chose to sit back and enjoy the coming sunset.

If roads closed by snow were a bad omen, then the sunset was a good one...the sky turned golden as the sun broke through the stratus clouds overhead.

The stratus clouds started to dissipate, and began glowing...

And then for a few moments, the whole horizon seem to catch fire.

It was a beautiful ending of the day, but the show wasn't over. It was the night of the full moon, and the glowing orb soon rose over the flank of a nearby cinder cone

Our first day on the road was ended! Tomorrow we would be exploring Lava Beds National Monument. More in the next post...