Travels in Cascadia: The Toughest Hike I'll Ever Do...Stawamus Chief in British Columbia

Note that I didn't say the toughest hike YOU will ever do. Every hiking experience is individual, and this one left me...breathless. Stawamus Chief is one of the most popular hikes in the Vancouver-Squamish region of British Columbia, and when we passed through the area last July, I knew I needed to give it a shot.

Stawamus Chief is a granite dome that rises more than 2,000 feet above the east end of Howe Sound, the southernmost fjord on the west coast of North America. The dome actually has three summits, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and the trail climbs to the first summit in a little over a mile. That doesn't sound so bad, does it?

The beginning of the trail is pleasingly flat, rising gently through the Stawamus Chief Campground. The wide flat trail offered no clue about what would follow. I know it sounds dramatic, but from the moment one takes the first step upward as the trail starts the climb in earnest, the trail is relentless and steep.

Some of the steps are on wood stairwells, but the rest of them are large uneven stone blocks that I found challenging. And there are no breaks. Many trails are steep, but most all of them have short breaks were the trail is level for a few steps. Not this one. It never stops climbing.

I climbed higher and higher, and grew more exhausted with each step. The thought was slowly building in my head that I was no longer young, and that some trails were simply too tough for overweight 60-somethings. But then another thought immediately followed: this quite probably was the only chance I would ever have at making the summit. Who could know if I would ever be here again, and with time marching on, my ability to climb would no doubt degrade with age. It was probably the toughest hike I would ever do (in the future sense). I decided I had to do it, and kept going. And going.

Everyone's experience will differ, of course, and some younger and healthier people would not have that much of a problem on this trail. Part of my own worries weren't so much the climb, but the descent. All of those huge steps had to be repeated, but going down, and I worried about the impact on my knees and ankles. But I had already come so far.

Stawamus Chief is a granite dome, and the resemblance to Half Dome in Yosemite Valley is unmistakable. One of the things about Half Dome is that it was never covered with glacial ice. The dome took it's iconic shape from exfoliation of the outer slabs of granite. The corners and edges snapped off as the pressure of burial was released upon exposure to the surface. Glaciers at the base quarried away the fallen rocks.

Stawamus Chief was different: as I approached the summit, a most unusual rock emerged from the trees. It was a boulder perched on a granite platform. It was a classic example of a glacial erratic, a rock left behind as the glaciers that flowed over this surface melted away. Unlike Half Dome, the summit of the Chief had been covered by glacial ice. And not just a little...the ice here was over a mile thick!

In the end, I didn't make the true summit. The young men in our group reported that another twenty minutes and 200 feet of hard climbing remained ahead. I just wasn't up to it. But I did make it to the summit ridge, which provided a stunning view of the eastern end of Howe Sound. From this elevation, the glacial origin of the fjord was obvious. And I was happy to be where I was. Elated, even. And thrilled to be alive (literally!).

The knees and ankles took the expected pounding on the way down, but no lasting damage was done. I would live another day, and take on the next challenge. It could well have been the toughest hike that I would ever do (in the future sense; I've done some really tough hikes over the years), but the neat thing about life is that you never know what comes next. Maybe I won't do this trail again, but there are many other trails and challenges ahead. Again, that sounds dramatic, but finding one's limits is always an exercise in drama.

Wait a Minute...What Happened to the Rocks I Picked Out?

Something kind of extraordinary happened on campus this week. I was pausing between classes and saw a large truck and a crane downstairs in the staging area for the Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab. The crane was dumping gigantic rocks onto the ground. "My" rock collection had arrived!! You might remember that early last month I went 'rock collecting' in the Sierra Nevada foothills for the rocks that will be part of the displays and landscaping of the outdoor. All 60 tons or so...

Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/12ScDYWbP4yoBq/giphy.gif

My response about their arrival on campus was predictable...

But if you remember the scene in "Elf" when Buddy thought Santa was in the store only to discover he was a fake, well, I had that moment too. I saw that something was off about the rocks I had selected. Something was different about them. Below was the rock that I selected a month ago, when it was 85 degrees out, and rain had not fallen in months...

And here (below) is the rock they claim I picked out. This after nearly two weeks of rain and cooler temperatures. This rock is clearly on a PALLET of LIES!

Well, okay, maybe it isn't on a pallet like the others, and maybe it is the same rock I picked out. But you can now see one of the main reasons I picked it, and why it will be sitting in a position of honor by the entrance sign to the outdoor nature lab. Not only is it a unique rock that is found in our region (the latite of Table Mountain), it is also a miniature ecosystem of mosses, lichens, grass, and other organisms. To see it, just add water!

In any case, we now have an astounding variety of the rocks that are found in our region. There is marble from the Calaveras Complex, the host rock of the many caverns that are found in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

There is a gigantic chunk of the quartz from the Mother Lode veins, the source of the gold that played such a huge (and devastating) part in the history of California. Sorry, no visible gold (although I'll keep looking).

One of the most striking rocks are the "tombstone rocks" of the Foothills Terrane, large fins of slate and phyllite that were once mud and silt on the ocean floor. The rocks were crushed against the western edge of North America, metamorphosed, and tilted vertically. We'll be putting them in the ground in the same vertical orientation. It will be a dramatic sight at the southern entrance to the lab.

The next step comes at the end of the week. I'll get to help direct the placement of the rocks! I'll try not to be insufferably picky..."Could you rotate that one about four inches? Great! Wait...I liked it better the way it was...". An update will follow.

I Went Rock Collecting Today...For Really, Really Big Rocks

I'm thinking how many times I've been on a field trip looking at a massive boulder composed of some kind of interesting rock and making a joke about how we would need a crane to get the thing back to school. I'll be darned if that very thing didn't come true today.

I was up in the Sierra Nevada foothills, choosing out some really big rocks, and we may very well be using a crane to move them back to campus. At least one of them weighs about 3 1/2 tons, and in total there will be about 60 tons of them. So yes, maybe my rock collecting habit has gotten out of hand. I need professional help.

Well, I might need professional help for something, but it's not for a colossal rock-collecting habit. I was selecting rocks representative of the geology of the Sierra Nevada foothills to become part of the landscaping of our new Great Valley Outdoor Nature Lab that is being constructed right now adjacent to the Great Valley Museum at Modesto Junior College.

At this particular quarry near Knight's Ferry on the Stanislaus River I was selecting boulders of Table Mountain latite (a volcanic rock broadly similar to basalt). These are the rocks that make up the dramatic inverted stream that winds its way among the towns of Sonora and Jamestown along Highway 108. I was also picking out some large granite and greenstone boulders to representing the bedrock found in the Sierra Nevada. We'll also be choosing some of the unique metamorphic "tombstone" rocks that stick out of the ground across the Mother Lode.

Meanwhile back on the campus of Modesto Junior College the outdoor nature lab is starting to take shape. We live in a flat valley, but the lab will have some topography, some small hills at the east end to represent the foothills. They will be planted with native trees and shrubs, and the trails and pathways will be lined with the rocks and boulders that we selected today. One of these days, the lab might look something like the scene below (which is actually at the quarry; they're showcasing what can be done with their rocks). It's incredible that the lab is finally happening. The science faculty at MJC have been fighting for an outdoor lab for three decades. It's been hard to be patient!

Driving Through the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: Exploring the Underside of the Volcano

Quick, name the nation's oldest national park. I'll even give you a clue, it starts with 'y'. Did you guess Yellowstone? You are right. Did you guess Yosemite? You are also right, in a sense. Have you ever said "Yosemite" when you meant "Yellowstone"? I've done that plenty of times.

Castle and Beehive Geysers at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Yellowstone technically is the nation's oldest national park, having been established in 1876 by an act of Congress, but Yosemite gains credit as the first "idea" of a permanently protected area when the valley was ceded to the state of California in 1864 by Abraham Lincoln.

Yosemite Falls from Swinging Bridge in Yosemite Valley

It's hard to think of two parks more different from each other. Yellowstone, with geysers, hot springs, bison, and moose. Yosemite, with huge vertical cliffs of granite and high alpine peaks. In Yosemite, the bears break into your car. In Yellowstone, the bears occasionally eat you.

Sunset in Yosemite from the Gateway View

The parks in one sense are very similar, and the similarity can be summed up in one word: "felsic". The word combines the mineral "feldspar", and the chemical "silica". These are the principle components of the plutonic rock granite, and the volcanic rock rhyolite. The rocks are identical in chemistry, but differ in origin: granite is silica-rich magma that cooled slowly deep in the crust, while rhyolite is a volcanic rock that often forms during extremely violent eruptions. The rocks of Yellowstone are mainly rhyolite and related rocks that formed in caldera eruptions, while those of Yosemite are principally granitic.

El Capitan in Yosemite Valley

We've reached the culmination of our journey across the most dangerous plate boundary in the world. As I've said before, it's not as dangerous today as it was in the Cretaceous period, but we can use these rocks to better understand subduction zones elsewhere in the world (it's a lot easier to study rocks at the surface than it is to drill miles into the crust, after all). We started the journey on the coast at Point Reyes National Seashore, worked our way along the Marin Peninsula, crossed into the Coast Ranges at Lick Observatory and Del Puerto Canyon, crossed the Great Valley, and worked our way up into the Sierra Nevada. And now we stand in Yosemite Valley, one of the most spectacular exposures of granitic rock on the planet.

Lassen Peak and Brokeoff Mountain, an active volcanic center in the southern Cascades Range

The subducting slab of oceanic crust in Cretaceous time was heated, and water that was released changed the melting point of the rocks at the base of the continental crust. The masses of molten rock worked their way up into the upper crust. Some of the rocks erupted at the surface as large Andean-style volcanoes, or as rhyolitic caldera eruptions. The chain of volcanic features is called a magmatic or volcanic arc. The surface may at times have even resembled Yellowstone, although present day Lassen Volcanic National Park or Mt. Shasta provides the best analog. But deep in the crust the rock was cooling slowly, developing into large crystals of quartz, feldspar and mica, then principle minerals of granite and related plutonic rocks.

El Capitan Granite, with gray-looking quartz crystals, white feldspar, and black biotite mica

Yosemite Valley provides a 3-D view of seven or eight different intrusions of granitic rock (for the purists, these include granite, granodiorite, tonalite, and diorite). Some of the rocks, principally the granite, stand out as bold cliffs like El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks. Other rocks were more easily eroded and formed recesses. The combination gives Yosemite the unique appearance that sets it apart from so many other glacially carved canyons.

When you visit Yosemite, take a moment to realize you are exploring the underside of massive volcanoes, quite literally Yellowstone or Lassen or Shasta from the inside out. It never ceases to amaze me that while the 3,000 foot cliffs are spectacular, they once were buried 4 or 5 miles deep in the crust, and that erosion has removed the missing rock (and filled our Great Valley in the process).

Half Dome from Washburn Point above Yosemite Valley

We've completed our exploration across the most dangerous boundary, and we are still alive! It's been several months with lots of interruptions, so you can expect a compilation of all the posts soon so you can get the whole story in one place. I hope you've enjoyed the journey!

Driving Across the Most Dangerous Plate Boundary in the World: These Rocks are All Wrong!

The view from Muir Beach Overlook, midway between San Francisco and Point Reyes National Seashore

Point Reyes National Seashore: Is it land's end, or ocean's end? From a human point of view, it is the former. This is the far west of North America, and you can't go any farther without a boat or plane. But if we consider the oceanic crust that was being subducted beneath the continent here, it is the latter. It's where the ocean floor came to an end by being consumed and presumably melted within the Earth's mantle, the subcrustal layer that extends to the core some 1,800 miles down. In any case, it is the starting of our journey across the most dangerous plate boundary in the world. As I've pointed out before, it isn't presently the most dangerous boundary; it changed long ago, and the stripping effect of erosion has revealed the inner workings of the subduction zone that produced much of California's present-day landscape.

Drake's Beach, with outcrops of Purisima Formation that reminded early sailors of Dover.

But the rocks at Point Reyes are all wrong! As was mentioned in the first post of this series, an ocean-continent convergent boundary (a subduction zone) consists of three structural features: an accretionary wedge, a forearc basin, and a magmatic arc. The wedge deposits should be found nearest the coastline, and the granitic or volcanic rocks of the magmatic arc would be found far inland. As we look around at our journey's starting point at the lighthouse at Point Reyes, we find rocks related more to the magmatic arc. There are exposures on the Point Reyes peninsula of granitic rock, metamorphic rocks, and the silica rich sediments that have been eroded from them. Why are things out of order here?

It's due to the structural changes that resulted in the cessation of subduction and the beginning of movement on the San Andreas fault. At transform boundaries like the San Andreas, the crust and upper mantle (the lithosphere) are shifting laterally. The rocks west of the fault, Point Reyes, the Central Coast's Salinian Block, Los Angeles, San Diego and the Baja Peninsula are moving as a unit to the northwest, more or less towards Alaska.

Around 30 million years ago the rocks of Point Reyes were in Southern California. Around 29 million years ago a major restructuring of plate boundaries took place. Granites and metamorphic rocks related to the Sierra Nevada were sliced off and started their northward journey and we find them today underlying the lighthouse at Point Reyes. And that's where we now start our journey across the most dangerous plate boundary.

Source: USGS (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1127/)

I'm afraid we've got a bit of a walk before we can get in a car and start driving. The lighthouse at Point Reyes is situated midway up the cliff above the sea, and we've got a climb of about 300 steps to reach our road. The rocky headland where the lighthouse is located is composed of granitic rock and some overlying late Cenozoic sedimentary rocks.The rocks are resistant to erosion and stand as a high rocky point.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

Take a few deep breaths and start climbing...

The cliffs of granitic rock are steep and nearly vertical. If you listen carefully, you may hear the barking of sea lions in the small coves below. During the right time time of year you may spot some of the migrating whales offshore.

The climb, though, is worth the effort, because when we reach the top of the hill there is a marvelous view to the north towards one of the longest unbroken sandy beaches in central or northern California. One might think it would be a popular swimming beach, but the fierce winds, high and unpredictable waves, and cold water make for uncomfortable conditions.
From this lofty perch we can make out the mountainous terrain of Inverness Ridge, composed mostly of the granite and metamorphic rocks of the Salinian Block. The gentle westward slopes expose sedimentary rocks of Miocene and Pliocene age, deposited during the long journey northwest from Southern California when the rocky basement was submerged beneath the ocean waves. Active dune fields can be found along the extensive beaches of the peninsula.

The peninsula is protected from development as Point Reyes National Seashore, and is a haven for wildlife. On our drive towards the "mainland" we are likely to see numerous bird species, including California Quail. A herd of Tule Elk graze the grasslands along the road.

The road climbs over the crest of Inverness Ridge and descends to the village of Inverness and the shores of Tomales Bay. We've reached the San Andreas fault, the second most dangerous plate boundary in our narrative. Maybe the rocks will be "right" when we find a way to cross the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates.

The Sierra Beyond Yosemite: Donnell Vista and Sonora Pass

It's gloomy and foggy, and I haven't seen the sun for days. It's a few more weeks before field season (Death Valley!), but I can't help exploring the sunnier places from warmer times. I'm looking back at the pics from our fall semester where we explored a lot of places in the Sierra Nevada that aren't Yosemite.

That's the thing. Say "Sierra Nevada", and a lot of people will immediately think of the beautiful valley of the Ah-wah-nee, John Muir's favorite place on the planet, and in many ways mine as well. But the floor of Yosemite Valley is about 7 square miles. The national park covers 1,190 square miles (3,081 square kilometers). But the Sierra Nevada? It covers 39,612 sq miles (102,594 km²).  You could hide more than 30 Yosemite parks in the rest of the range. It is in fact the largest single range in the lower 48 states (large mountain systems like the Rockies and Appalachians are made up of numerous smaller sub-ranges).

So we are off onto a short exploration of some of the wonderful corners of the Sierra Nevada that aren't Yosemite Valley. We are following a week's worth of our trips last fall that took us over the range at Sonora Pass and down the east side of the range as far as Lone Pine and Mt. Whitney. We'll also explore the other national parks of the range, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, which we visited on a second trip.

We began our journey in some serious smoke from a series of fires burning through the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The drought and the fires have been catastrophic. We made a stop at the Twain Harte Lake exfoliation site. I wrote about it back then, and it was picked up on Reddit and IFLS, links that led to the post being the most read ever on Geotripper (12,400 hits and counting). We emerged from the smoke and climbed the upper reaches of the Stanislaus River, approaching Sonora Pass, which after Tioga is the highest paved highway over the Sierra Nevada at 9,624 feet (2,933 meters). Tioga Pass in Yosemite is 9,943 ft. (3,031 m.).

In a series of ice ages, glaciers covered about 30% of the range, reaching as low as 3,000 feet or so in some of the deeper canyons. Yosemite is simply the most famous of the glacially carved gorges, and many others are of incredible and spectacular beauty. This was not always fully appreciated, and some of these wonderful wild canyons were dammed for irrigation storage and domestic use. Hetch Hetchy is the most familiar, but the canyon below Donnell Vista on Highway 108 has also been inundated. Still, the glacial heritage of Middle Fork of the Stanislaus is evident from the viewpoint. The steep canyon walls of granitic rock and the overall U-shape of the valleys are the result first of ancient river erosion and then modification by thick rivers of ice.

If you look at the second picture above, you can see some unusual looking mountain peaks. Their blocky flat aspect indicates they are composed of something different than the "expected" granitic rock. They are the remains of lava flows, ash flows and volcanic cones that once covered this part of the Sierra Nevada. Indeed, until 9 or 10 million years ago, the Sierra looked far more like today's Cascades Range than the lofty glacial peaks we see today. There were a number of snow-covered stratovolcanoes, but much of the remainder of the range was composed of lower hills. The upper reaches of Highway 108 where it crosses Sonora Pass cut through some of the volcanic rocks.

We stopped a mile or two short of the pass to get a detailed look at the granitic rocks. Depending on the relative proportions of plagioclase and orthoclase feldspar and quartz, rocks may be identified as granite, granodiorite, tonalite, diorite, or monzonite. The rock exposed just below the pass is called the granodiorite of Topaz Lake, dated about 89 to 83 million years ago, during the Cretaceous era. It was intruded in the deep crust about 4 or 5 miles down where it cooled slowly, forming visible crystals of feldspar, quartz and dark minerals like biotite mica and hornblende.

Glaciers scoured the surface of the granodiorite, polishing it and providing a nice view of the structure of the rocks. Some of the orthoclase (potassium feldspar) has formed huge blocky crystals easily visible in the shot below. Even better, during the intrusion process, blocks of the surrounding rock broke off and sank into the magma. Composed of minerals that had higher melting points, it didn't melt, but instead persisted as an alien mass in the granitic rock. Such inclusions are called xenoliths. They provide a peek at what existed here before the intrusion of the magmas.

We drove over Sonora Pass and headed into the barren lands beyond. Our destination was the site of a gold rush, but not the one that Californians are familiar with.

Northern Convergence: A Different Kind of Convergence More Than a Century Ago in Craigellachie

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real

Canadian Railroad Trilogy - Gordon Lightfoot

As we crossed the mountains of British Columbia on our geological journey through western Canada, I was becoming aware that whenever we stopped I seem to hear trains in the distance. It makes sense; in mountainous country, highways tend to follow railways, which were sometimes constructed along ancient trails, which followed the gentlest passes. Railways had a somewhat special role in the settlement and development of North America. Completion of the railway across the United States, culminating in the ceremony of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869 transformed travel across the country. It turned overnight from an arduous dangerous journey of months by horse, oxen, and foot, to a comfortable ride of several days.

The construction of the transcontinental railroad was a huge accomplishment, crossing the prairies, the Rocky Mountains, and Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada. It was one of the more significant events in U.S. history. But on our journey through Canada, I began to wonder if there hadn't been an even more impressive event north of the border.

We pulled into Craigellachie at the border of the Shuswap Highlands and Monashee Mountains. We were visiting the small park commemorating the driving of the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885. Having just come through hundreds of kilometers of rugged mountainous terrain, we could understand why the "last spike" was so far to the west. The explorations and route planning of the architects of the railway must have been challenging to say the least.  For one, there was the winter. Many of the high passes presented special challenges from avalanches, or spring flooding in the river canyons. Farther to the east, the railroad had to pass through kilometer after kilometer of muskeg, the soft spongy swamplands of near-Arctic landscapes.

A monument to the last spike was erected at the centennial in 1985. We noticed that there is no lack of activity on the rail line, as at least five trains barreled through during our short visit (including the one above; the picture doesn't give the sense of motion, but it was moving fast).

I couldn't help but notice in the commemorative painting of the driving of the last spike that the person driving the spike was a dignitary who I suspect had rarely lifted a hammer in his life. It's not that I bear any animosity towards him (his name was Douglas Smith, a main financial backer of the railway), and in fact he was quite a philanthropist. But why is it that the dignitaries always get to shovel the first bit of dirt on a major project, and then let thousands of hard-working and hard-living workers (the "navvies") struggle for years to complete the project? Then, when the job is done, they come back and pretend to do a hard thing like driving the last stake? I guess it would be too much trouble to remember the names of the navvies, especially the ones who gave their lives in the service of the railways.

The centennial monument had something interesting on the flanks: representative rock samples from each of the Canadian Provinces. Above is a piece of anorthosite from Newfoundland. Anorthosite, a plutonic rock containing a large proportion of plagioclase feldspar and a few dark minerals, is known mostly from very ancient rocks, generally a billion years or older. It was also found on the Moon, making up the lunar highlands.

The Saint George granite out of New Brunswick is another plutonic rock that apparently is an excellent construction stone that has been quarried for years. It is Devonian in age, about 380 million years old.

The granitic gneiss from Wollaston Lake in Saskatchewan is an ancient rock, around two billion years old. The region has produced uranium.

British Columbia provided a chunk of jade from Mount Ogden. The jade is representative of rocks that formed in a convergent plate setting under great compressive stresses. Jade is of course valuable as a semi-precious gemstone. The outcrops are associated with exposures of serpentinite, a rock we are familiar with back home in California.

The visitor center offered up a chance to pound stakes into a railway, though I had more fun using their equipment as a rock hammer...

One of my favorite songwriters of all time, Gordon Lightfoot, wrote a song commemorating the centennial of the building of the railway, the Canadian Railroad Trilogy (the first stanza is quoted above). I like how he honored the navvies, those who did the actual work (the song was the first place I ever came across the word). Here is a YouTube of his performance of the song in Reno in 2000. Enjoy!

We are the navvies who work upon the railway
Swingin' our hammers in the bright blazin' sun
Livin' on stew and drinkin' bad whiskey
Bendin' our old backs 'til the long days are done