Yosemite Valley: Winter and Acorn Woodpeckers

It's such a beautiful place. Yosemite Valley has so many moods that seem to change daily. On Saturday, we had a glorious time exploring the freshly fallen snow and the golden colored oaks and dogwoods under the soaring cliffs. Yet with all the incredible scenery, we also got to see a bit of Yosemite's citizenry preparing for the coming winter. No bears (darn), but some interesting birds.

Picture by Mrs. Geotripper

It started with that solitary dead Ponderosa Pine that is situated in the Cook's Meadow between the old Yosemite Church and Yosemite Village. The dead snag gave us a frame for pictures of the dry Yosemite Falls, but we noticed that things were moving about the tree. We realized after a moment that there were at least three woodpeckers hard at work on the branches and trunk.

A bit of research later revealed them to be Acorn Woodpeckers (I'm a geologist, not an ornithologist; I'll try to remember their names in the future!). The birds collect acorns and store them in the holes they peck in old snags like the one we were looking at.

The woodpeckers live in groups. One will often be guarding the acorn supply while others are out foraging. They actually chase insects, but the acorns represent a secure backup food supply.

I guess the one below thought we looked suspiciously like marauding squirrels...

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

The other birds we saw on Saturday were the ravens. They seem to do quite well in all seasons of the year, both here in Yosemite, and other parks across the American West, including Grand Canyon, Arches, and Death Valley.

Photo by Mrs. Geotripper

If you have to hang out on a cold day, it might as well be in a place this pretty.

The days are short, and the sun was getting low. We decided to head up to Tunnel View to see the sunset. That's next...

A Spring Day in...Oh, Yosemite, you are such a tease!

Part of Upper Yosemite Falls

I was writing the other day about our slightly out-of-the-ordinary spring storm that brought us some much needed rain in the Great Valley. The next day, we had our spring field trip to Yosemite Valley, our chance to investigate the spectacularly exposed interior of California's Mesozoic magmatic arc and evidence of the work of Pleistocene glaciers. Oh, and a chance to see some spring wildflowers and greenery on the valley floor. The reality was a bit different!

Half of El Capitan

The valley's iconic features, the high cliffs and leaping waterfalls, were playing hide and seek with the tattered remnants of Friday's storm. Fresh snow covered the green shoots in the meadows. Yosemite was not what we were expecting!

It's not that we were disappointed. The view from the Wawona Tunnel was spectacular, even if most the rocky cliffs had "half" for a prefix: Half El Capitan, Half Sentinel Rock, One-third Cathedral Rocks, and No Dome...

 Bridalveil Fall and the adjacent Leaning Tower were as wonderful as always.

Knowing how dry this year has been, it was comforting to see that a bit more water would be available as runoff in the next few weeks. There have been precious few storms this year. Tioga Pass was still open in January! Walking across a frozen Tenaya Lake in a T-shirt in January was a bizarre experience.

While I was taking a picture of the meadow, a pair of ravens snuck up behind me, looking maybe for a treat. I think they weren't quite ready for this snowstorm either...

There may have been snow and clouds, but it just seemed to add to the mystery of this magical place. We were able to see most of the outcrops we were looking for, and even a partial Yosemite is one of the most unique places on planet Earth. The picture below shows my students and their first encounter with this special place. Many of them had never been to Yosemite Valley before. Moments like this are one of many reasons that I love teaching.

Vagabonding across the 39th (er, 38th) Parallel: A Hoodoo Homily in Three Parts

For more than two weeks last July we were vagabonds exploring the geology along a route that was mostly near the 39th parallel through Nevada, Utah and Colorado (our last junction choice had landed us south of the 38th). We rarely planned our route more than a day or two in advance, and we made an informal rule that we would make every effort to see something new every day, and if we were in a familiar place, we would try and see it in a new way. And that's what brought us to Bryce Canyon National Park.

Bryce Canyon, you say? Haven't we been there many times? Well, yes, but almost always with a big bunch of students and a highly restricted schedule. We've usually had time for the visitor center, one or two viewpoints, and one quick hike below the rim. It's ok under the circumstances, but I have not had many chances to explore the park more fully. On this trip, we spent a night and spent as much time on the rim as we could. Three parts? The less-crowded south end, a sunset at the north end, and a deserted morning in the most heavily trafficked part of the park. For many hours in the midst of July we had the park to ourselves.

We headed out during the afternoon to the southernmost viewpoints in the park, Yovimpa and Rainbow Points. The long ridge of the Paunsaugant Plateau ends at this point at an elevation of more than 9,000 feet. The two viewpoints have sweeping views of the Grand Staircase off to the south, and north towards the rest of the park and the Aquarius Plateau beyond. I was mostly entranced by the sunlight on the orange and white towers (which are called hoodoos).

When you arrive at Bryce Canyon National Park, you have reached some of the youngest sedimentary rocks on the Colorado Plateau. Below the rim, the rocks are gray shales and sandstones of the Mesa Verde Group, and date from the end of the Cretaceous Period, the last stand of the dinosaurs. The pink and orange rocks of the rim of Bryce Canyon belong to the early Cenozoic Era. The lime-rich shale is called the Claron Formation, and it originated in a vast freshwater lake complex.

 We moved on to Agua Canyon for a new perspective...

I'll bet that the single hoodoo in the image below has a name, but I don't know it. I know I've seen it in a lot of books. Someone fill us in!

A bit further along the road, we found Natural Bridge. Given that a bridge is supposed to have been formed by a river, this should actually be called an arch. It is one of the most striking features we ran across.

 A pair of ravens were having an argument in a nearby Ponderosa tree...

Somehow that reminded us that it was dinner time, so we went to camp and whipped something in a can. We wanted to check out the sunset at Fairyland Point...that will be covered in part two...