Tales From the Semi-Super-Bloom Tour, Part 3: On the Road to Yosemite

Mrs. Geotripper and I didn't see the legendary "Super-Bloom" in Southern California. We didn't have the time or patience to deal with the crowds and trampling and helicopter landings in fields of flowers. We instead set out to find the evidence of spring in some less heralded and less crowded places that were perhaps not in a state of a once-in-a-decade superbloom, but showed some delightful color nonetheless. At the end of March it was the Mojave Desert and Death Valley National Park. Then a week ago we headed up to Yosemite Valley.

Yosemite Valley is just coming out of the throes of winter, so we weren't expecting any flowers there, and as such we were not disappointed. But our journey from the floor of the Great Valley and through the Merced River Valley provided us with an explosion of color. The prairies east of Merced and Planada were rich with Blue Dicks.

We climbed into the foothills and made a brief stop in Midpines where we saw these Baby Blue Eyes (above), and blooming Redbuds that aren't exactly really red.

Our road dropped into the canyon of the Merced River, and we followed the swollen river upstream. As we approached the village of El Portal, the flowers grew thick along the slopes. Golden Poppies were common, offset against the somber metamorphic rocks of the Shoofly Complex.

I've seen Golden Poppies growing in a wide variety of habitats throughout California, from high mountain slopes to deep forests to desert plains. No wonder they were declared our state flower.

We turned a corner and were greeted by slopes covered with purple lupines and Golden Poppies.

It's not a "super-bloom", it's merely a drought-free spring. But spring in the Merced River canyon is a colorful affair. It's a privilege to live close enough to see these beautiful slopes.

Tales From the Semi-Super-Bloom Tour, Part 2: Death Valley National Park

The Desert Five-Spot (Eremalche rotundifolia) has to be one of my favorite desert wildflowers. I don't see it often because it is rarely blooming during my customary visits to Death Valley National Park in February. It's mysterious because it always seems to be hiding its five spots in a globular-shaped bloom that doesn't seem to open out entirely. For these reasons, our visit at Death Valley National Park was extraordinary. We saw some of the Five-Spots in all their revealed glory.

We were on the third day of our Semi-Super-Bloom Tour of California. We were seeking out not the news-making corners of the state that are attracting tens of thousands of people, but the quieter places that haven't been in the news because they didn't quite as much rain as the places like Elsinore and the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve. There are flowers out there, maybe not as abundant, but beautiful just the same, and there were no crowds.

Death Valley is the driest place in North America, and the hottest place in the world (so far). Wildflowers are a precious gift in such a place, although they are not in any way out of place. Life finds ways to thrive in even the harshest of Earth's environments, and the flowers of Death Valley are no exception. The seeds can lie dormant in the soil for years, and once they germinate they can grow fast and lay down more seeds for the future. In the process the plants become a food source for all kinds of insects and animals, and as such are an important link in the ecosystem.

Knowing where to look for wildflowers is important when the rainfall is more sparse or later than usual (as is the case in 2019). Many of the usual tourist magnets like Zabriskie Point and Badwater were lacking in flower displays but a drive south towards Jubilee Pass and the ruins of Ashford Mill (15 miles or so) provided some scattered color. We saw what I assume were Yellow Cups (above) and Phacelia (below). Gentle corrections are encouraged!

I haven't figured out the name of the flower below yet.

But Desert Gold is hard to miss. When a super-bloom does occur in Death Valley, there are millions of them on the slopes of Jubilee Pass. There were scattered patches of them, especially along the highway, where the runoff from the pavement provides an extra edge in the water supply for the seeds.

Hairy Sand Verbena is a familiar sight from super-blooms past. We found a few of them along the road near Ashford Mill.

These are plants at the cusp of existence. They arose out of some late storms that provided the water needed to germinate, but it is a only few short weeks before temperatures soar and the desiccating winds begin to blow. Life will once again go into hiding to wait out the searing months.

Scenes from a Superbloom (Part 2), and Evidence of a Snowball Earth (in Death Valley???)

Death Valley is a wondrous place at any time of the year, although it can be darned uncomfortable. There is value, however, in understanding the limits of human existence, which is something you indeed experience when the temperature reaches 120 degrees or so. I prefer visiting at times other than summer as a rule, and late winter is often ideal. We've been bringing students out here in February for more than a quarter century, and I never get tired of seeing this place.

 

But every decade or so, events conspire to turn a journey to Death Valley into something very special. The geology is always there and in your face (and in your nose, ears, and shoes). But if there have been a few precious rainstorms spaced just right in the fall, you can experience an explosion of life in the desert. Seeds that have lain dormant in the thin soils for years will suddenly germinate, and the barren rocks will be painted bright yellow, with lavender and white undertones here and there.

Beck Springs formation on the left, and Kingston Peak formation on the right.

We had driven just a few miles past Ashford Mill for a chance to look at some of the rocks from the earliest history of the North American continent. Around a billion years ago, an earlier supercontinent (called Rodinia, not Pangea) was stretching and started to fracture and break up. A series of fault basins developed in what is now Arizona, Utah, Montana, and here in Death Valley. Sediments filled the valleys, producing a three-mile-thick sequence of sedimentary rocks preserving several hundred million years of Proterozoic history (the time before complex multicelled life came to dominate the ecosystems of Earth). The mouth of the canyon below Jubilee Pass provided accessible outcrops of the three formations, the Crystal Springs, Beck Springs, and the Kingston Peak.

The Crystal Springs formation preserves ancient algal structures called stromatolites. They are the oldest evidence of life in California (but not in the world; life had already been on the planet for two billion years). The Beck Springs formation (in the dark hill below) is composed mostly of dolomite, which formed at tropical, even equatorial latitudes.

The presence of tropical rocks makes the Kingston Peak formation a real enigma. It's composed in part of a strange conglomerate referred to as a diamictite. The large boulders are in a matrix of muddy sediments such as one might expect to find on the ocean floor. The puzzle is: where did the large rocks come from? Big boulders don't usually get carried far out to sea unless they are encased in icebergs.

Icebergs? In the tropics? Even the most intense of the ice ages that we've studied from the last two million years never approached the tropics. They barely crossed the northen flanks of the United States. As evidence mounted, geologists started to realize the occurrence of an ice age more intense than any other ever discovered. The Snowball Earth hypothesis suggests that the entire planet may have been covered by ice around 700 million years ago, except maybe for a narrow strip at the equator.

We walked across the alluvial fan for a closer look at the Beck Springs and Kingston Peak rocks, but were distracted somewhat by the incredible flower display.

I got down on the ground and tried to get a few shots from a ground squirrel's point of view. If nothing else, the local rodents are able to  look around and say "salad" today!

The explosion of life on the barren desert floor was just stunning. These plants are supremely adapted to survive in this most harsh environment, and it was such a privilege to see it happening.

There were trade-offs, of course. The storms that brought the flowers also brought devastating flash-floods that destroyed roads. We couldn't visit some of our normal outcrops, so I had to redesign our itinerary for the next day. That led to a rather fine adventure, one in which we drove through a mountain range. That's "through", not "over". More in coming posts!

Scenes from a Superbloom: Death Valley 2016 (Part 1 of 2)

I could have made up a detailed geological description of the geology of this alluvial plain at the south end of the Death Valley graben. This is a geology blog, after all. But we were there in the middle of February during the most extraordinary flower show, a "superbloom", in a decade. A series of fall storms were spaced just well enough to wake up the myriads of seeds that hide in the soil, biding their time and waiting for the right conditions to bloom. And this was the time. I'm showing flowers today!

First and foremost is the Desert Five Spot (Eremalche rotundifolia). I'm in Death Valley every year during February, and I might see a few flowers scattered about even in dry years, but I only find the Five Spots during years like this, and I have almost no good pictures of them. That changed this year!

The slopes were covered with Desert Gold (Geraea canescens). A few Desert Golds seem to sprout in the dry years, but if there is water, these are the flowers that turn the slopes and fans bright yellow. It almost feels like walking through alpine meadows, yet one can never escape the sense that these flowers are growing as fast as they can, setting seeds, and dying as the hot winds begin to blow (and the hot winds can come at any time of the year).

Another dependable flower even in drier years is the Desert Sand Verbena (Abronia villosa). There were lots of them in the washes at Ashford this year.

The Ashford Mill was built to process gold ores from a mine a few miles away in the Black Mountains. A bit of gold was produced over the years, but the total output was described as providing the owners with little more than "groceries and lawsuits". Not much is left beyond a few walls and foundations, but they provide a decent frame for viewing Telescope Peak.

The Black Mountains form the eastern wall of the south part of Death Valley, and they are one of the most rugged mountain ranges to be found anywhere. The steepness results from the rapid uplift of the mountains (or rapid subsidence of the valley floor, or both), and the slow rate of erosion in the exceedingly dry climate of eastern California. In this season of "plenty" (in the relative sense, of course), they provide a somber backdrop to the rich display of flowers across the valley floor.

In the next post, we'll check out a few other flowers from another spot just up the highway.

In Death Valley: What a Difference a Year Makes, What a Difference a Decade Makes

February 13, 2016

This spring is shaping up to be an extraordinary year for wildflowers at Death Valley National Park. There have been a series of wet storms (by Death Valley standards) and they have been spaced in such a way as to provide the best possible conditions for germination and growth of plants. Those who have visited Death Valley under "normal" conditions will have memories of barren rocky alluvial fans, naked slopes of bedrock, and a distinct lack of greenery. That most certainly is not the case this year. The wildflower show has started early, and it is robust.

We were in Death Valley over the weekend for our annual geology field studies trip, and one of our traditional stops is an exposure of the Pahrump Group of rock layers at the base of Jubilee Pass about twenty miles south of Badwater. The rocks record the ripping apart of the ancestral North American Continent around a billion years ago, and they are interesting no matter the season. The black hill is composed of Beck Springs formation, a dolomite deposited in a fault trough under tropical conditions. The orange rocks are the Kingston Peak formation, a rock that includes probable glacial deposits. In a tropical, even equatorial setting. These rocks record what may have been the planet's most intense glacial episode, a period when much of the Earth was covered by glacial ice (it's called the Snowball Earth Hypothesis).

But on Saturday, the hills and slopes were alive with Desert Gold and Verbena. And there were lots of green sprouts, promising even more growth in coming weeks. Officials are suggesting this might be one of the ultra-rare "superblooms" that occur over decades rather than years.

February 2015

Contrast the same spot as it appeared last year at the same time. We found a few flowers hidden in the washes, but clearly there was no explosion of life in that dry year in a place that is drier than anywhere else in North America.

February 2005

I've been privileged to see just a handful of extraordinary growth years. The only one I have digital images from was in 2005. It provides a nice comparison to what is happening in Death Valley right now. That year was a real challenge as we faced heavy rain and wind for most of the trip. The portrait below illustrates my morning observations that year. I'm thankful that we had perfect weather this last weekend.

I'm hoping to make a special trip out there in a few weeks to see how things are progressing.