Road Trip 2012 Part 3: Close to the Elements

7/22/12: After some casting about, I’d arrived at the Bisti Wilderness trailhead: late afternoon after a long drive from Canyon de Chelly.  Where to camp?  The monsoonal rains were closing in fast.  A couple from Arizona were huddled in their Volvo at end of road past the trailhead; their camp was wrapped up in tarps. 

I went back to the trailhead to think.  I was exhausted.  No more driving, I was going to have a poke at this area tomorrow, period.  The road was good and gravelly, so getting stuck if the rain was intense was unlikely.  Thunderstorms were now all around us.  I sat in Trixy and ate my salad.  Intense intermittent rainfall; lightening strokes and subsequent thunder in every direction.  I saw several strokes leap upwards: hmmm, maybe there was fulgurite (lightening-formed rock) out there someplace.  I wasn’t going looking.  No signs of an end, just more clouds, light, noise and drama.  I had a full panorama in every direction.  It had initially been interesting to watch the storms move across the land; discreet downpours and areas of darkness.  Now this was becoming worrisome with the impending night.  The ground was getting soggy; I hoped the rainwater would evaporate or infiltrate by morning. 

I decided to sleep in Trixy.  Many manipulations later, I achieved vague comfort.  It was dark; I watched the monsoonal show, figured out how to crack the windows enough to achieve ventilation without letting in too much rain, and eventually slept.  A quiet woke me around 1am.  Stars were visible.  I shoehorned my way out of Trixy, set up my bivy, and went back to dreams.  Coyotes howled periodically throughout the night.

A night's rest, Bisti Wilderness Area, New Mexico

I awoke with an internal groan.  It was approaching dawn, but the dramatic night and close quarters had not been good for rest.  I didn’t rush to wander out into the Bisti; needed to move slowly to find balance.  The ground was dry: good.  Trixy was not stuck: better.  The mud on my sandals would dry and come off: excellent. 

Trixy in the morning, Bisti Wilderness Area, New Mexico.  Note standing water to the right.

It was dead clear; I was guaranteed a toasty hike.  The Bisti has no trails; all of my directions said to just wander in and around in it, keeping track of location.  No problem; I had my real GPS so I was confident I could get back to the trailhead.  Geared and watered up, I headed in.  The Bisiti exposes the Fruitland Formation, a sequence of late Cretaceous rocks deposited in terrestrial environments.  I essentially transited horizontally and vertically between a pair of similar sequences: sandy stream deposits overlain by coal-rich shales that formed in swamps.  Basically, sand and mud.  Both sequences were intermittently punctuated by brick red clinker; layers of coal which had ignited and been reduced to a massive but pretty stratum.  The main Bisti attraction was its badlands – hoodoos and their brethren -created by these two lithologies; the buff colored sands forming the cap rocks and the white, black and green muds providing the rapidly eroding breakaways below them. 

Into the Bisti Wilderness, New Mexico

My guidebook said to walk a mile, cross the drainage, and go south.  I did, and was immediately in minihoodoo heaven.  I laughed internally; most of the hoodoos were less than a meter in height: pretty tiny on the landform spectrum.  None of the pictures I’d seen during my research had a photo scale included.  Haw.  No worries, they were neat; the sandstone cap preserved tan mud below it, underlined by a healthy layer of near black coal.

Minihoodoos, Bisti Wilderness Area, New Mexico

Fifty pictures later, I wandered north, encountering a swarm of microhoodoos.  Beyond the drainage, the sandstone layer in the upper sequence thickened, which seemed to thwart hoodoo formation, instead encouraging steep popcorn shale hills.  This lithology is an absolute barrier to plant growth, so the outcrop exposure was near 100%: just rock, sediment and fossils.  Hard to beat.  Fossils?   Right, besides being colorful, some Bisti are rich in petrified wood.  I saw a pair of large stumps, but mostly small platy pieces that had eroded from larger logs.  Since this was the Cretaceous, dinosaur bones were also possible.  I might have seen two: a socket joint-looking blob that lacked the laminar structure of petrified wood, and a possible metatarsal.  The latter could have been Recent and bovine, if it was a really really strange cow.

Microhoodoos, Bisti Wilderness Area, New Mexico

Following a debris trail of petrified wood chips, I traversed up a small drainage.  Ahead, I saw an almost perfectly square opening in the hill: a solution cave: cool.  The muddy rocks sometimes dissolve, forming short subterranean passages.  My research had warned of this hazard; not a good thing to fall into and vanish.  Well, this one looked approachable, so I decided to check it out.  Then I looked down.  The ground leading up to the cave was covered with dog-like tracks.  Maybe not dogs: I guessed that I had found a coyote den.  I decided not to pay a visit.

Petrified wood fragments, Bisti Wilderness Area, New Mexico 

I was out of water in any event.  Four liters had gone fast, and geez, the sun had gotten high.  Time to bolt.  I navigated back to Trixy with the expected ease, and headed north to Farmington, New Mexico.  I found a Starbucks inside a Safeway and escaped the midday heat to write and get current on imagery backup, happily drinking a cup of medium roast.  Alas, this appeared to be the only Starbucks cafe lacking wireless; this earned me many apologies from the staff.

My next destination was the Angel Peak Scenic Area, south of Bloomfield, New Mexico, just east of Farmington.  I headed out in the afternoon monsoon.  East on Route 64, south on Route 550, east onto the access road.  Hmmm, I was in the San Juan Basin, here primarly a thick accumulation of petroleum-rich sands and muds.  As I drove out to Angel Peak, the landscape was punctuated by natural gas wells.  Angel Peak appeared.  OK, if I used my weaker eye and blinked rapidly, I could sort of see the resemblance to a classic angel with long robes and big wings.  Angel Peak crowned another area of badlands, this time in the early Tertiary Nacimento Formation: younger than at Bisti, but the same sort of geomorphology in action.  Alas, no hoodoos, but the classic largely vegetation free arrangement of rounded hills, striped in tan, purple and brown.  It was pretty.  Almost 40% of New Mexico is badlands; this must mean something.

The BLM had constructed a number of picnic areas and a campground in the Scenic Area.  While it was still midafternoon, I was happy plan on camping here and having a brief travel day.  The trip was beginning to wear at my resilience and resting and contemplating this area would be great.  I drove to the campground.  Dead center of each tiny campsite was a picnic table, blocking any possible tent pad.  Clever installation. 

I got out and looked around.  Whoa, the area was not quiet; the mutter of pump engines came from every direction.  Only the BLM would create a Scenic Area and then populate it with gas wells: or maybe the other way round.  Bugger.  I went back to one of the picnic areas.  A bit quieter, and it had nice big covered picnic sites where I could camp out.  Cool; I could sleep on a table and enjoy a full panorama. 

I set up camp accordingly.  The afternoon monsoon started.  Not much rain here, but wind.  I figured it would die down, so I lay on my table and watched storms cross the horizon, some close, some far, but not as intimate as at Bisti.  There was also a forest fire north, near Durango in Colorado.  It was cooking up pretty fast, highlighted by sunlight north of the storm fronts. 

Abortive Camp, Angel Peak Scenic Area, New Mexico

At twilight, storms continued to cruise through.  My shelter was at the edge of an overlook; the wind alternately raced up the cliff, or reversed and blew strongly over and down it.  This was fun during dinner.  Eventually it was time to crash on the table.  I arranged all of my stuff carefully on the seats.  More storms, more wind, and sleep, sort of.  I was warm enough in my light sleeping bag, but the wind would periodically inflate it: disturbing.  I got up to visit the pit toilet.  When I got back, my bag, pad, and gear had blown all over the shelter.  I thought, bugger, this is ridiculous.  So I got into Trixy for the second night in a row.  I found a better position than at Bisti, and slept.

7/23/12: I woke to an annoyingly calm morning.  The fire in Durango was still burning; still lots of incipient thunderheads all around.  Grumbling, I drove back to Bloomfield.  The main streets were full of large white pickup trucks with safety flags, radio antennae, extra gas tanks in the beds, and sleepy looking drivers.  I assumed it was the morning rush hour: commutes to various petroleum sites.  This was intense déjà vu for driving in Newman, Western Australia, only the trucks there were all coated in iron ore dust, not mud, and badged for petroleum, not mining. 

I had half a plan for today.  Check out Aztec Ruins National Monument, visit the TWS office in Durango, then ???.  I arrived at Aztec Ruins shortly after the site opened, sharing the Visitor Center with a couple of French families and a batch of local (?) pre-teens doing an outdoor education program.  The Monument features a number of large Puebloan ruins; the “Aztec” label is an inaccuracy from early Europeans. 

Aztec Ruins was something of a cultural center from the 9th to 12th centuries; a much longer occupation than at Betatakin.  Since it's also located adjacent to the Animas River, it supported a much larger population in bigger, free-standing structures.  No sandstone alcoves in view.  The excavated portion of the site, West Ruin, was a 500 room, multistory great house, incorporating a plaza and couple of freestanding kivas.  There are other similar scale structures in the Monument, but they are unexcavated and off limits.   

When I entered the VC to study the exhibits, the desk ranger practically thrust a self-guided tour brochure at me.  The daily heat was building, but I determined to spend a good hour wandering around.  The brochure proved to be a good guide to West Ruin, pointing out stylistic changes in its construction, reflecting different phases of occupancy.  The great house appeared to be planed off; I guess a lot of the upper stories were removed for post-Pueblo building.  Hard to be sure; the site was really cleaned up. 

Part of West Ruin great house, Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico

The tour led through a series of rooms within the pueblo.  Damn, the builders were small.  I almost but not quite had to crawl.  I paused a few times to feel the small spaces.  They were barren, via excavation and reconstruction.  I had difficulty imagining them as lived places.  Where these small cramped rooms for storage?  Warm places to sleep in the winter?  The guide indicated that they were full of trash, and in one case for human burial.  It was hard to tell. 

The tour eventually led to the Great Kiva, which had been reconstructed by the early heroic archeologist who worked this area early in the 20th century.  This large circular building, used for meetings? rituals? staying cool? was by far the largest space I’d seen in a Puebloan structure.  Its walls had been resurfaced with adobe and painted (red and white), giving a sense of completion lacking elsewhere in West Ruin.  This made it much easier to imagine this as a dynamic space.  I chatted with a ranger here for a good fifteen minutes.  I apparently asked the right question – about the source of the limestone foundation rocks in the kiva – which sent her into a long fascinating soliloquy on Aztec’s builders and recent archeological work.  OK, I asked intelligent questions too.

 

Interior of restored great kiva, Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico

This thorough look at Aztec Ruins took more than an hour: most of the morning.  A small park but a worthy stop: another gem. 

On to Durango.  North on Route 550 into Colorado, up the Animas River Valley.  Lovely Cutler Formation redbeds (more terrestrial rocks) dipping northwards on both sides of the drainage.  Another fire south of town, under aerial attack by a pair of helicopters. 

I found the TWS office, and chatted with my colleagues for a while.  They unequivocally convinced me that the next thing I should do was to drive the San Juan Scenic Skyway; a 240 mile loop through the San Juan Mountains north of Durango.  I’d contemplated on this already; more new rocks, enticing in spite of fatigue. 

Trixy and I headed north on Route 550, upwards into overcast skies, after a thorough reprovisioning.  We needed a lot more than fluids after a week on the road.  Rapid cooling; my first stop at Coal Bank Pass was at 10,640 feet.  A relief after the desert, even with gray skies.  Many of the peaks around me were over 12,000 feet.  Wow, trees, different flowers.  The landscape was beginning to look vaguely glacial as well; the Animas Valley was certainly filled by ice numerous times, based on the moraines visible around Durango, and the peaks had the ice-carved look of horns, cirques, and their relatives. 

View south from Coal Bank Pass, San Juan Skyway, Colorado

We sped on, passing large pickups from Texas and Oklahoma pulling trailers - containing horse, houses, or ORVs, but not all at once (I hope), and being passed by large SUVs and sports cars. 

Molas Pass (10,910 feet) and descent into Silverton: an old mining town.  I'd seen lots of abandoned headframes, wastage piles, and other debris along the road.  I cruised through town, glad to be off the winding road for a bit.  A paved main drag, but dirt streets.  Huh?  The downtown felt very touristy in a blue collar sort of way: tourist saloons, t-shirt shops.  Most of the big Texan pickups seemed to be here.  I dodged horse poop more than once.  Weather beaten houses, old cars.  Didn't need clothes or alcohol, so Trixy and I kept moving.

Abandoned headframe and mining debris, San Juan Skyway, Colorado 

Over the drainage divide, and now down the Uncompadre River Valley (U-shaped by glaciers).  Thus far, the road had been cutting down section.  I'd reached the down: the outcrops were now Uncompadre Formation; mashed-looking greenish crystalline basement rocks.  I'd last seen similar stuff at the bottom of Grand Canyon.  Much closer here, and telling a different story; these are the weathered roots of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains (an older orogeny than the current Rockies), which grew and were eroded during deposition on the Colorado Plateau.  The Paleozoic and older Mesozoic rocks I'd seen earlier on the trip weren't laid down here: it was uphill then.  Like all mountains, the Ancestral Rockies were eventually worn down and buried, only to become part of the current uplift. 

I was beginning to feel worn and uplifted too.  Maybe it was the elevation, or the windy road (now called the Million Dollar Highway).  We continued through Ouray; would be scenic in less sucky light.  The valley lowered and opened into narrow farmland.  A left turn on Route 62 at Ridgway, cutting across small drainages, then sharply southeast on Route 162 towards Telluride.  The sky was still gray; I was making good time.  Through Placerville and Vanadium, and traffic stopped.  Many trucks and end-loaders up ahead; as we eventually crawled past; the road had been blocked by a debris flow.  This was the clean-up crew.  Cool.  Glad I was not caught in the actual event.  Trixy got a coat of red mud on her rocker panels and bumpers. 

The turn to Telluride.  Would I ever come back here?  Who knows, so I went to check it out, immediately knowing I was in a different reality when I saw a well-populated running path and was passed by a series of Porches and Volvos.  I knew Telluride was a high end ski resort, but the meaning of this was stark after seeing Silverton and being in the field for a week.  Condos.  Sushi bars.  Boutiques.  Brokerage agencies.  New houses, spiffy cars.  Many, many, thin, fit-looking people.  No horse trailers.  No one from Oklahoma.  Well, the market under the tourist center did have gluten-free cookies.  I was both uncomfortable and bemused by the feelings that Telluride seemed more comfortable and friendly to me than Silverton. 

Down the Dolores River Valley, narrow at these high elevations.  What an appropriate name for a darkening road on an overcast evening.  Where was I going to sleep?  My atlas showed several campgrounds; they were all full and cramped with RVs.  It got darker.  We passed through Rico: nothing there for me.  The valley remained tight.  Darker, I was getting anxious.  We came to Roaring Forks Road: a route into the San Juan National Forest.  What the heck, at large camping looked good at this point.  Trixy thus took me up a good road, but cut into a steep slope in Cutler Formation (muddy red beds).  There was utterly nowhere to pull off.  One mile, three miles.  

Eventually we reached a hairpin turn, and an adequate campsite.  I gratefully stopped, savoring the sudden silence.  I set up my tent, staking down the fly just as the clouds began to dispose of their excess moisture.  There was a lot of it.  I ate sitting in Trixy; cold rice and saag paneer.  Not bad.  The rain got harder.  I looked at maps and read my travel guides.  A slight hiatus, and I broke for the tent.  Rain continued for most of the night.  I discovered that my rain fly leaked.  Bugger, at least it was not too voluminous.  I slept, wondering briefly if this drainage was prone to debris flows.  If so, well, Trixy and I would get a quick ride back down the valley.

Roaring Forks Road camp, San Juan Skyway, Colorado

7/24/12: Morning: partially cloudy.  Was that blue sky?  Yes.  Three days of the elements: it was time to go back to the desert.  

Road Trip 2012 Part 2: Onto the Navajo Nation

7/19/12: Early departure, a two hundred mile day ahead.  I’d planned to transit northeast to Monument Valley and view the mesas and buttes.  Hesitation; I’d talked to a lot of tourists who had been or were going there.  It sounded crowded, and I worried about finding a quiet place to camp.  It would likely be hazy.  During my post North Kaibab siesta, I decided to divert to Navajo National Monument.  It was on the way to Monument Valley, with interesting cliff dwellings and hikes. 

So north from the Kaibab campsite, fuel and weak coffee in Jacob Lake.  East and downhill off the East Kaibab Monocline.  I’d woken to overcast skies; better for driving, also cut the haze.  Around a curve, and there were the Vermillion Cliffs, across House Rock Valley.  I was loosing elevation but going upsection into younger rocks.  Farewell to the Paleozoic for a while; here was newer stratigraphy to comprehend.  The Vermillion Cliffs delimit the southern edge of the Paria Plateau, another step in the Grand Staircase.  The Paria dips to the north; it’s famous for the numerous slot canyons that slice it up in Utah.  Sigh, maybe on some other trip.

Vermillion Cliffs, Arizona

The road ran along the base of the Cliffs; lovely exposures of Moenkopi, Chinle and Moenave Formations in purple, lavender, and many shades of red.  The colors reflect terrestrial origins; Triassic streams and their brethren.  Echoes of the movements of North America; the rising mountains to the (current) west, a gradual drying with drift away from the equator.  But cliffs mean recycling; I passed fully house-sized blocks of Moenave (I think), fallen from the heights. 

This trip has felt different than my last several jaunts, domestic or international.  My interior seems more settled, less troubled.  I feel less relief at leaving the normal behind; not more internal continuity, but less roiled.  Transitions seem to be proximate causes for this; different work, different martial art, different sports.  I may just be more deeply fatigued, given endurance racing and an intense job.  No worries, I’ll take smoother and more even as long as it lasts. 

Northwest and a hairpin over the Colorado River at Marble Canyon.  South to Bitter Springs, now with the Echo Cliffs to the east.  Through Antelope Pass, another step up the Staircase into the Navajo Sandstone: Jurassic sand dunes.  The same stuff all over the Plateau and a bit beyond: truly an erg in the Saharan style.

Clearer and hotter as Trixy and I headed into Page, the home of the infamous Glen Canyon Dam and Navajo Generation Station.  This coal-fired complex is climate alteration in action (not that I had much moral superiority, burning hydrocarbons as I rode past).  While Page has a great new school complex and lots of churches, it is also the spawn of Lake Powell (the death of Glen Canyon) and its attendant recreation: large powered watercraft.  Nonetheless, it did have fuel.  And a Walmart, which was avoided.

I punched further east across a rolling Navajo Sandstone surface; remnant fossil dunes protruding through drifts of sand – modern dune – likely eroded from them.  This was the Navajo Nation; an area about the size of West Virginia that’s home to about 200,000 Navajo (and Hopi on their lands near the core of the Nation).  Access to the land is proscribed without invitation, other than towns, parks, and tourist facilities.  And the through roads: first world arteries through the Nation.  Passing among a different culture at high speed gave me vague echoes of past third world experiences.  The Navajo have been pastoralists for the past few centuries; family ranches dotted the landscape; sheep, cattle, horses and at least one goat dotted the plains.  The randomness of both reminded me of the high veldt of South Africa; maybe the rolling landscape as well.  This raised comparisons to Australia.  The Aboriginals seem to cluster in their settlements, rather than this spreading out; perhaps this reflects the hunter-gatherer culture.  Both cultures have been deeply abused by European immigrants; both have recovered somewhat, at least partially through art.  Here in Navajoland, art takes the form of jewelry, rock painting weaving, and pottery.  I am sure these forms have traditional uses, but they are also a great income source, if the density of curio tables at every tourist stop is an indication. 

Outside of Kaibeto on Route 98, Trixy rolled over 100,000 miles.  I’ll buy her a new air filter in Farmington to celebrate.  Kaibeto, hmmm.  I’d been crossing the Kaibito Plateau (more Navajo Sandstone), but this place name and others – Comb Wash, Black Mesa – kept tweaking my memory.  Running northeast on Highway 180, the origin finally came to me; this is the territory of The Monkey Wrench Gang.  This novel by Ed Abbey documents the exploits of a quartet of characters who are sick of the desecration of the Southwest by development; their ultimate goal is to blow up Glen Canyon Dam.  The narrative’s sense of place, humor, and outrageous exploits were an inspiration to me and many others to explore the Southwest.  I passed a coal train and the conveyor belt from the Black Mesa coal mine that are both blown up in the book.  Eerily, though I had not seen these machines before, they looked just like my mental imagery from my readings.  I smiled.

The Navajo National Monument turnoff.  Nine miles through the Nation, slowing for cattle and horses on the road.  The campground was rustic and largely empty; excellent.  I picked a site in the most remote corner, and set up my tent, just in time for the afternoon monsoon.  As I wrote earlier, it was largely an overcast day; this foreshadowed a long afternoon storm.  I sat in Trixy and read, napped, and wrote.

Rainbow and monsoon, Navajo National Monument, AZ

Eventually, a break in the weather; time for a hike to view Betatakin ruins at Tsegi Point.  Betatakin is a 11th Century settlement.  The 150 or so Ancestral Puebloans who lived here farmed along the stream bottoms in the miles around the site.  It was occupied for less than 100 years; like the rest of this culture, the reasons behind this are lost.  I was interested to learn that the Zuni and Hopi at minimum are the builder’s descendants.  Betatakin and Keet Seel, the other accessible ruin in the Monument, are still used for ceremonial purposes.

I shadowed a French family along the paved trail.  Everyone I met here was either French or American.  Do the French favor American archeology?  I’ve read that Germans have fondness for travelling the remnants of Route 66.  I didn’t ask. 

The trail terraced along the rim of Tsegi Canyon, eventually to the overlook.  I looked out.  A number of erosional alcoves formed recessed amphitheatres in the sandstone; they reminded me of similar features in the Wittenoom Formation in Australia.  Some of the latter showed signs of transient Aboriginal use; charcoal and petroglyphs.  Betatakin was a very different level of habitation.  It sat in the deepest amphitheatre, subtle in the afternoon post-monsoonal shadow.  Its structures were dark tan like the rock, striking in their humanness – people lived here – but also seeming a right blend with the environment.  I took pictures, glad I’d lugged my telephoto the mile from the campground.  More details popped out as I contemplated; it was much bigger than at first glance.  I’d been ambivalent about going on a ranger-guided hike (the only way to have access) to Betatakin the next morning; this convinced me to sign up.

7/20/12 - 8:15 am: I met the ranger and four other hikers – all women - for the five mile roundtrip.  We followed a trail built by Civilian Conservation Corps for archeological research – I’d love to know the full story of the personalities behind this.  Like early paleontology in the Western US, it sounds like the first round of archeology was dominated by a few strong individuals.  They got the basic work done; like paleontology, it’s now being refined and updated with new work and techniques.  For example I learned later at Aztec National Monument that the local pottery, based on mass spectrometer analysis, contained traces of cacao.  So the Ancient Pubeloans were in contact with groups in Mexico.  No other way to know this. 

I was glad for the CCC work as I made the lovely 1000 foot drop through the Navajo Sandstone, especially after the ranger pointed out the crack that the Puebloans used to ascend.  Before the descent I had spent ten minutes staring up Long Canyon; Navajos hid from Kit Carson’s pogrom along this through going stream; the Puebloans farmed there.  The hike had frequent pauses as the ranger, a Navajo, told us about medicinal plants and human history (a little geology too).  Good stuff; calibrated properly for the audience.  I was touched when the ranger’s personality came out.  She recited the historical facts well, but when talking about Navajo culture (her mother is an herbalist, her grandfather was a medicine man) her face would animate and her language would switch to a mix of 20-something American and Navajo dialects, e.g., “like, my family’s had this outfit (ranch) for years” with interrogative on the final word. 

View up Long Canyon, Navajo NM, Arizona

We came to Betatakin after a sweaty final mile along a sandy drift; probably wind and stream formed.  The upper part of Tsegi Canyon is also a bit of relict Pleistocene forest.  In contrast to the sage-dominated landscape we’d hiked through, this area had dense growth of Gambel oak, Douglas Fir, aspens, and many other regionally unusual plants, including poison ivy.  We hiked through a microforest, pretty cool.  I presume that the orientation of this canyon plus sufficient water, have allowed this biota to hang on. 

Up close, in its alcove, Betatakin looked both solid and ephermal.  People built this by hand 600 years ago.  They are gone save in various legends, but the place has persisted.  Betatakin originally had ~120 rooms, but now has about 90; via a post-habitation landslide.  While we had a good view, it wasn’t possible to actually enter the ruins.  The structures are fragile, and plenty of loose rock is still available should gravity become interested.  I felt privileged to be close.  The tour concluded with a look at a variety of pictographs.  Allowed to hike out on my own, i.e., fast, I decided to visit more Puebloan ruins on this trip.  I’ve been hooked.  I’ll have to come back here for the Keet Seel ruins; that’s a 17 mile return hike.  

Betatakin Ruin, Navajo NM, Arizona

A final stop at the VC for a book on archeology and I was off.  So to Monument Valley or not?  The haze looked thin, so I made the turn at Kayenta and raced the 22 miles up Route 163, passing pickups and mobile homes, being passed by American muscle cars.  An abundance of the latter seemed to be driven by Europeans; an Americana part of the holiday I assume, though I can’t imagine stuffing a family of four into a Mustang for a thousand miles.  Monument Valley was heralded by Agaltha Butte; one of a series of peaks that define a series of north-south dikes of mafic igneous rock, often encasing forlorn chunks of De Chelly Sandstone.  

Monument Valley Tribal Park –the point of access - was everything I expected.  It was a genuine tourist trap, and rightly so; the Monument Valley landscape is world class.  However, the development is the moral equivalent of a casino in that it draws a large part of the tourist population and is basically a mint for the Navajo Nation, between the entrance fees, hotel (fantastic at sunrise I bet), restaurant, gift shop, tours, and museum.  Alas, for my purposes, the haze was present, and it was very much way too crowded.  I did not want to subject Trixy to the long bumpy dirt road among the buttes and mesas.  I took the obligatory pictures and headed south towards Canyon de Chelly.

Monument Valley, Arizona

Southwest on Tribal Route 59 through even more valleys defined by even more steps in the Grand Staircase.  This analogy was beginning to fail me as I travelled further on the Colorado Plateau.  There are so many broad upwards and downwarps that the “steps” run every which way.  For example, heading to Canyon de Chelly, I was going back downsection into the Paleozoic, sort of violating the analogy.  Like most good geology, the model rarely survives contact with reality. 

I was getting tired; Monument Valley was over 100 degrees; now, at 5 pm, the temperature was holding at 90.  Trixy and I intersected Rt. 191 at Many Farms (not visible, just lots of kids on skateboards).  This was the turn south to Chinle, the Navajo town adjacent to Canyon de Chelly, where I’d booked a hotel room: time to get clean.  I thought, an easy 20 minutes.  Road work turned this into more than an hour.  I got to Chinle on metabolic fumes.  Checked in, I ran to my room to make sure the bathroom functioned in all its capacities.  A long shower, a run (in the gym; it was still 90 and monsoonal outdoors), another shower, some laundry, and sleep. 

7/21/12:  Awake at 4:30.  Why?  I had no idea.  Maybe my internal clock was finally set to be up and coherent for early morning photography.  Problem: early morning here seemed to be around 6:30.  Canyon de Chelly is another National Monument, but the canyon floor remains actively occupied and farmed by Navajo family.  Tourists are limited to rim views, one hike, and guided tours.  I aimed to do the first two.  I like this accommodation of traditional use with tourism; it seems like a compromise that provides both traditional and appropriate visitor access. 

Trixy and went out the South Rim Drive.  I was excited; I was actually up and out early enough.  I when to the Spider Rock overlook: the iconic view of Canyon de Chelly.  No one was there – cool.  I went to the overlook.  The Canyon was both hazy and 100% backlit.  Bugger.  Still, this is what nature provided, so I took pictures, and studied the gorge as I worked my way back to the hotel. 

A massive amount of carbs and a carafe of marginal coffee later complements of the hotel breakfast bar, Trixy and I retraced our route along the South Rim Drive.  The light was much better now, even with the sun relatively high and lower contrast. 

Canyon de Chelly was genuinely beautiful.  All the accolades in my guidebooks were unequivocally well deserved.  In contrast to the Grand Canyon, with its many cliffs and intervening ledges, here there was the rim, a vertical cliff of sandstone, and a flat valley floor.  The Canyon deepened upstream, becoming more striking with depth.  The bottom lands were dotted with Navajo dwellings, and cultivated fields.  The colors of these features, joined to the sheer walls of the canyon, were lovely.  OK, I liked the bits where erosion had highlighted the fossil sand dunes as well.  It’s been the most moving site so far on this trip.  I can’t believe it took me 32 years to get here.

Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly National Park, AZ, during the afternoon monsoon.

Canyon de Chelly National Park, AZ

The walls and floor of Canyon de Chelly are peppered with dozens of Puebloan ruins.  Only one is available to tourists; White House Ruin trail on the Canyon floor.  After Navajo National Monument, I had to go see it.  So did at least 100 other visitors.  A 700 foot drop, again shadowing any number of French families.  Signs at the bottom reminded visitors not to photograph Navajo dwellings.  This did not apply to looking at the Navajo crafts for sale at the many tables set up along the trail.  I didn’t.  White House Ruin, named for one vaguely gray-white structure, was tucked into a niche at the base of a sheer cliff.  In contrast to Betatakin, It looked like this cavity had been eroded by stream action rather than landslides.

White House Ruin, Canyon de Chelly National Park, Arizona

Egress from Canyon de Chelly via the North Rim Drive.  I was getting a little tired, and the views, while continuing to be heart-stopping, were beginning to blur.  A T-junction and south on Tribal Route 12.  I was in the Navajo backcountry.  The road was pretty beat up, but still in good nick by California standards.  I passed many settlements: Wheatfields, Upper Wheatfields, Navajo, Fort Defiance.  As I zoned out I had time to collate my drive through cultural observations: 1) there’s an age gradient in Navajo dress, from traditional in the elders (western wear on the men, long dresses on the women) to urban in the youth.  2) Everyone seemed to drive American made (or badged) vehicles.  3) Navajos like to play in the water and fish, based on the crowd at Red Lake. 

I stopped for fluids in Window Rock, the capitol of the Navajo Nation.  I was the only non-native in the store.  No worries, good to feel the dissociation.  Now east on Route 264 to Gallup and New Mexico.  I began to see other Caucasians.  Many were driving foreign cars. 

My destination was the Bisti Wilderness Area (more new geology) north of Crownpoint.  Gallup provided a salad, fluids for Trixy and me, and a near lethal dose of overwhelming urban crowdedness.  I fled east on I-40 over the Continental Divide; this continued the agony as I tried to stay alert at the speed limit of 75 mph.  It was after 6, and I was fading quickly.  Finally off the motocross and north on Route 371, back through Mesozoic sandstone cliffs onto a higher undulating plain of shaly rocks.  Back onto the Nation.  A few differences from Arizona; lots of graffiti on road signs, many undefaced, hand lettered signs for substance abuse recovery programs.

The drive across the plain provided frightening views of the evening’s monsoon: rainfall and lightening in every quadrant of the compass.  Crownpoint came and went; where the hell was this place?  I was still in the Navajo Nation; I knew that much from the vehicles. 

Finally, the BLM sign to Bisti appeared.  It did not agree with my atlas.  I cast around and decided that my atlas wrong and should be burned.  I took the turn; three miles of gravel, finally a trail head.  

Road Trip 2012 Part One: Exfoliation: Home to Grand Canyon

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. 

MOOnlight Half Marathon medal and recovery items

 7/15/12: A deep stiff sleep, enough to get Trixy packed up and get on the road.  East across the Great Valley to Manteca, then southeast towards Bakersfield.  The day heated rapidly.  The Great Valley is underlain by a thick pile of marine sedimentary rock – muds and sandy landslide deposits - shed from the volcanoes that once capped the granites of the Sierra Nevada.  Today’s Andes Mountains are a pretty good analogue.  These marine rocks are covered by a veneer of yet more sediments – largely terrestrial - shed from today’s Sierra Nevada and its associated halo of metamorphic rocks.  None of this was visible; only the road and numerous towns – Turlock, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kingsburg, Visalia, Tulare, Earlimart, separated by numerous fields and orchards.  The air was heavy; I felt like I was at the bottom of the Great Valley when it was marine.  I kept drinking water laced with enough coffee to keep me functional.

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.

Rainbow Basin, north of Barstow, CA

Rainbow Basin, north of Barstow, CA

Escape from Barstow, across the high desert northeast towards Las Vegas.  I-15: I was still in the Basin and Range, which I’ve written about before, but this southwestern part of the province unsettled me.  It wasn’t pretty.  The landscape looked shattered, worn out, abused.  The mountains here are relatively broad and low in elevation, and buried deeper in fringing sediments, creating a gentler terrain; isolated smashed-looking peaks poking up through the alluvial fans.  I speculated to myself that this reflects the bedrock geology – lots of easily weathered metamorphic and volcanic rocks – and a longer period of extension- the Basin and Range is older here.  The colors were washed out, dull greens, buffs, and grays.  The topography was erratic; there was little apparent pattern to the orientation of mountains and valleys.  Again, I speculated that this reflected weirdness in the geology.  Whatever the varied causes, I was uncomfortable here, even at 70 mph.

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.

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. 

At Cape Final, looking towards the South Rim

Detail of Coconino Sandstone, North Kaibab Trail.

Final contemplation of a hazy sunset at Bright Angel Point; time to move on.

Brahma and Zoroaster Temples from Bright Angel Point, North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ

Work Road Trip to the Sierra National Forest

Work Road Trip to the Sierra National Forest

It's unfortunate when you are the designated photographer for a field trip to the Sierra Nevada.  Here are a few early images. 

Granite Textures, Mono Hot Springs

San Joaquin River in HDR, Mono Hot Springs

Yet more San Joaquin River in HDR, Mono Hot Springs

San Joaquin River near Mono Hot Springs

Granite at dawn, San Joaquin River , Mono Hot Springs

San Joaquin River Reflections, Mono Hot Springs

Mile High Vista, Sierra Vista Skyway, Sierra National Forest

Mile High Vista at night, Sierra Vista Skyway, Sierra National Forest
OK, it was humid and windy, but had to post.

One of "The Balls", Sierra Vista Skyway, Sierra National Forest

   

Merry New Year 2012

Another year, a few more pictures.  Many changes during this last orbital cycle.  Key to my the imagery below, I spend less time looking through the lenses because I started running marathons.

Two pieces of evidence:
 

A few medals

Four pairs of worn out shoes - about 1040 miles, 10% races

But I did get outside a few times:

Diablo Foothills Regional Park, January 2011

Kehoe Beach, Pt. Reyes, February 2011

Alvord Hot Springs and Steens Mountain, Oregon, July 2011

Alvord Hot Springs, Oregon, July 2011

Wildflowers, Steens Mountain, Oregon, July 2011

Painted Hills, John Day National Monument, Oregon, July 2011

Painted Hills, John Day National Monument, Oregon, July 2011

Crockett Hills Regional Park, November 2011