7/14/12:
My vacation began at about 7:20 PM on Saturday night. I was lined up with about 1600 other people
at the start line of the Davis MOOnlight Half Marathon. It was hot and clear; I was tired from a day
of final trip preparations. Also
impatient; the race was starting late.
Finally, a countdown, and we headed out.
One hour and about 55 minutes, 13.1 miles, and many, many turns later, I
crossed the finish with a good sprint. I
was satisfied with my time given the heat and crowded trails. My running companions finished; we staggered
around the rapidly cooling Davis night, hydrating, eating, stretching, and
debriefing our runs. Home and a final
night in my bed.
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| MOOnlight Half Marathon medal and recovery items |
Finally,
Bakersfield; the south end of the Sierra finally looming out of the haze. Time to turn east and over Tehachapi
Pass. Trixy climbed out of the Valley,
transecting us over the southern Sierra tip.
Great Valley sediments, granodiorites (sensu lato), metamorphic rocks,
and granite all in various states of deformation sped by in the outcrops. Tehachapi was bigger than in memory; a Home
Depot looming over the road. Downhill
into Cameron Canyon, and suddenly I was in the Mojave: high desert and the western
margin of the Basin and Range Province.
Goodbye to the Sierra and anything resembling normal tectonics, i.e.,
what I’d dare explain to my classes.
Joshua trees dotted the landscape.
The road turned northeast for a while along the Garlock Fault, which
offsets the south end of the Sierra Nevada., giving it a sort of geographic
tail which extends out to the southwest.
I’d noticed this anomaly in college, and learned the Garlock’s origin at
least twice in grad school, but forgotten it each time. Oh well, the current interpretation is
probably different anyway.
East
again, past Mojave town (no sign of weird airplanes in the 100 degree heat) and
Edwards Air Force Base (ditto) to Barstow, my first stop. I was beat from the road, the heat, and the half
marathon. It was hard to think, much
less pull my tired body out of Trixy. I
forced myself to indulge in a cheap motel to ensure recovery for the rest of the
journey. But gawd, I was in
Barstow. The nexus of I-15 and I-40 was
necessary for tomorrow’s travel, but Main Street was full of tired people on
the way to somewhere else: like me. I
could not feel a reason to be here.
Frustrating, uncomfortable, no sense of the place. Nothing to do but sleep and move on tomorrow.
7/16/12:
Awake at 6, up and off for a quick look at the Rainbow Basin, north of
Barstow. I’d come across this geological
attraction in a general travel guide; it sounded photogenic. So a good 45 minutes post sunrise, I turned
onto Fossil Cliff Road, bathing Trixy in dust for the first time this summer. This being America and a BLM-managed site,
the Rainbow Basin was largely a driving loop.
Fine, I wanted to move on soon. I
stopped and hiked up a very narrow drainage that cut through deeply eroded and
highly deformed muds and silts. More
ignorance. I don’t know the origin of
the Rainbow Basin strata, but they certainly predate the current extent of the
Basin and Range. The drainage was also
full of sand, pebbles, and boulders of at least three kinds of granite and a
black volcanic rock. Where did they come
from? I diligently took pictures; the
early light was stunning in places as it highlighted the sharply cut rocks. But not an inspiring landscape; the pale
olive, gray and pink rocks felt too washed out; not the spectrum I was
expecting. Maybe I was just tired from
the road.
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| Rainbow Basin, north of Barstow, CA |
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| Rainbow Basin, north of Barstow, CA |
Disquiet
was a fine introduction to entering Nevada and soon passing through Las Vegas,
which has always felt very profane to me.
A quick fuel stop in the smog, and I headed further northeast towards
Utah. At about the Rt. 95 junction, the
Basin and Range began to feel familiar.
Why? I looked at the exposures –
oh, the ranges were now held up by limestones, the diced up remnants of the western
margin of North America: Paleozoic reefs.
Limestone erodes slowly in deserts, so this made steeper, more dramatic ranges. They were more linear too; maybe some
fundamental change in the bedrock. All
this felt more rational; I could see and track any number of sedimentary
layers. I could relax.
Fifteen
minutes through Arizona, and into Utah.
The Virgin River appeared to the right of the freeway; wow it was deep
orange brown; there must have been a lot of monsoon upstream. I-15 headed up the Virgin River Gorge; this
cut transected the eastern edge of the Basin and Range, and exited onto the
Colorado Plateau, where I’ll spend the next ten days or so. Like so much of the other geology of the
Western United States, the Colorado Plateau is weird; it’s a thick sequence of
Phanerozoic and Precambrian sedimentary rocks which sit on an amalgamation of older
metamorphic and igneous basement. That’s
not weird; this basically describes the geology of much of North America. What’s strange is that the Plateau –
encompassing the Four Corners region, has risen more or less upwards over a
mile, without much faulting or folding.
The Phanerozoic stratigraphy dips gently to the north (more or less)
forming the Grand Staircase – the progressively exposure of younger rocks from
south to north from Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, through to Cedar
Breaks. Now this is rational geology; a
layer cake on a gross scale, but a lot of interesting variety.
The
Virgin River Gorge was stunning. Besides
being narrow, it exposed the effects of the normal faults that cut the western
edge of the Plateau; big slices of rock sliding off to the west, becoming Basin
and Range. I managed to stay on the
road. Also nice to say hello to the
strata of the Grand Canyon.
Fatigue
was setting in; the slightly cooler temperatures (I was now at about 4000 feet)
helped a bit. St. George, Utah, and a
relieved adios to I-15; time to turn southeast to the North Rim of Grand
Canyon. Hurricane, Canyon City,
Fredonia; the small towns of the Arizona Strip.
I passed the turn off to Toroweap, in the Western Grand Canyon. 52 miles of dirt to the Rim; a spot where
recent volcanoes once dammed the ancestral Colorado. I badly want to go to Toroweap, besides the
geology, it sounds barren, unpopulated, and scenic. But not in Trixy, who would loose vital
underparts; a field vehicle would be nice.
The
road climbed the spine of the East Kaibab Monocline towards Jacob Lake. The East Kaibab Monocline? The Colorado Plateau is far from flat;
besides the erosion generating the Grand Staircase, it’s gently warped into to
a series of higher and lower areas; the East Kaibab is one of the former.
Higher,
6000 feet, 7000 feet. Finally the turn
south and the run to the Canyon. I had a
camping spot in mind in the National Forest north of the National Park, which
I’d used in 2008. The road transited a
number of meadows; scant wildflowers gave them a slight color: nice touch. I found my turn, and went onto gravel. Thank god the bedrock here is limestone; not
much dust. I found the campsite; empty. I climbed out of Trixy, stretched, picked out
a tent site, and then the afternoon monsoon started. 45 minutes of lightening, hail, thunder, and
rain later, I climbed out of Trixy, stretched, and realized the ground was too
soaked to contemplate making camp. So I
went for a long walk in the forest.
Eventually,
camp, dinner, and the warmth of my sleeping bag. I’d driven about 870 miles in two days. This was intense and exhausting. Hopefully it was transition time, leaving the
normal behind and getting into journey mode.
7/17-19: I camped at this spot for three nights. Being familiar, I knew it would be a good
place to transition from home and drive mode into a slower, observant
frame. At about 8000 feet, it was also
right for altitude acclimation.
If
you know me you know that the Grand Canyon is as close as I have to a spiritual
center anywhere on this planet. The
developmental and experiential reasons for this are many; it’s something I feel
in my core. While my connections have
been deepest when I am below the Rim, I knew this trip needed to start with
touching base here. So I got up the first
morning, tweaked my camp, and drove the final twenty miles to the Canyon. I parked and walked through Grand Canyon
Lodge, scoring a relatively strong cup of coffee, out to Bright Angel Point.
The
Canyon was still there. I was still
here. I sat at the point and watched the
light change for an hour. The air was very
hazy; the San Francisco Peaks were visible but without much detail, 60 miles
away. I am not sure if this unclarity was
from the regrettably ambient pollution from California, Mexico, copper smelters
and coal power plants in Arizona or the severe drought conditions much of the
Four Corners have been experiencing for the last couple years. Oh well, I did not need pristine conditions,
although it was a bit harder to sense the scale of the gorge due to the
decreased contrast. Home is home.
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| The Eastern Grand Canyon, from Point Imperial. Note the haze! |
The
next two days passed in a succession of drives, hikes, and contemplations. I went to Point Imperial and contemplated the
eastern Canyon for an hour, then repeated at Cape Royal. The awful light for photography freed me to
simply look and see details: jointing patterns in the Coconino Sandstone and
the Supai Group, the almost regular vertical ribbing below the Palisades of the
Desert. Both of these viewpoints are on
the tourist route, for good reason, so at no point was I alone. This was as expected and not annoying. I heard the usual global spectrum of languages. If the English speakers are any guide, most
conversations fell into four categories: 1) geographic or geologic
interpretations (usually wrong – reversing north and south was common), 2)
efforts to cajole whiny children or adults into at least looking at the view,
3) passive aggressive spousal conversations, and 4) genuine appreciation of the
Canyon. I imply no judgment in listing
these; it’s possible that the element of sublime rapture was missing as neither
location was a “first viewing” and much driving on windy roads was involved in
getting to them.
Dawn
patrol; I was on the trail to Cape Final well before sunrise. I’d scouted this hike previously, and figured
I could manage two miles in the predawn light on an unknown trail. I got to the Cape, and it was – hazy. I wasn’t surprised. However, a new Rim view, so I sat and watched
it for a long time. Peering into the
Canyon was unsatisfying, so I went to the North Kaibab Trail and descended. The North Kaibab goes to the Colorado (5500
feet lower) in fourteen miles. I aimed
to drop to the Supai Group; two miles plus and and 2000 feet. Getting down was good; the haze was defeated
by short range photography. Excellent;
if I was seeing, I was shedding the extraneous masses of home, work, and
routine. I even talked to other hikers
and a ranger.
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| At Cape Final, looking towards the South Rim |
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| Detail of Coconino Sandstone, North Kaibab Trail. |
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| Brahma and Zoroaster Temples from Bright Angel Point, North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ |
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