Redrock Canyon and the Trona Pinnacles

This was a day trip that could easily be made into a very nice weekend.

You can easily make this into a weekend by taking the road west towards Kernville and spending some time in the Sequoia national forest, or by continuing on route 178 into Death Valley.

We started our adventure by driving up to Redrock Canyon Sate Park, the yellow bubble on the map above. Redrock is about 20 miles outside of the small town of Mojave. Route 14 cuts right through the park, so you can't miss it. Redrock Canyon tells it's fascinating life at the junction of three California geologic provinces: The Sierra Nevada, Basin and Range, and Mojave block These tales include the intriguing story of a moving volcano, and one of layering and erosion that has lasted up to 100,000 years.



As one would expect, the rocks at Redrock are red. The red you see is the sandstone that makes up the cliffs. This sandstone is composed mostly of volcanic material from that now long gone volcano. Iron in the rock has enabled it to rust, turning this red color.

This is in the first turn out for Redrock, which is a right hand turn before the left hand turn into the visitor center and camping area. Take this turn off and go explore. There is a trail head here if you'd like to go beyond the cliffs.


Why are they shaped the way they are? Red rock Canyon is one of the few places where the rocks can preform a delicate balancing act of cliff erosion. The cliffs do this by being soft enough to erode vertically, but strong enough to be able to hold their shape at this steep angle. Zion is another location where this balance can be viewed.

As you can see from the photo, there are "pleats" in the cliff. These are the gullies where the water glows, eroding the cliff back in this manner. The spaces between pleats will get wider and wider through eroding, until the pleats themselves are weathered away. This is the way this area erodes, slowly reducing itself one rain storm at a time.

Now what about that moving volcano? 10 million years ago there was a volcano where Red rock canyon now sits. This volcano erupted more than once, spewing dark basalt, gray pyroclastic glows (avalanches and superheated ash and volcanic debris), and snow white ash. This volcano happened to sit on the Garlock Fault. After 10 million years of creeping along at .25 inches a year, this volcano is now long gone, somewhere off to the east. But signs of its existence are easy to see.

Here is a clear indicator of two different volcanic events. The white rock on the bottom is white volcanic ash. The black rock on top, which is slowly eroding and covering the white rock, is a basalt flow.


This is yet another volcanic rock known as tuff-breccia. This is what a pyroclastic flow solidified as. "Tuff" is the name given to this kind or rock because it is very hard. And a breccia is a rock with angular pieces of other rocks embedded into it. Pieces of basalt, and other volcanic rocks can be found in this one.

You can spend a good amount of time at Red rock if you can take the high desert heat. There is also camping here, if you'd like to stay the night. We opted to keep going up 14, to the 178 to see the lunar landscape of the Tronna Pinnacles.

You will see the turn off for the Pinnacles. This is a right turn onto a washboard road, which you will follow for almost 8 miles. Cars can do this drive! But you can do it about three times as fast in a high clearance vehicle.

Along the way you will drive past this abandoned train. You will see these things all over the secluded high desert. Rumor has it that these contain hazardous waste. After laws like CERCLA (Compressive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act) were formed to prevent free dumping of hazardous waste, dumping became very expensive. Instead of paying the fees, some companies tried to hide their dumping. The story goes that these trains are one of the ways companies used to hide their waste. The government figured it out and later added a "Cradle to Grave" amendment, where waste is tracked from when it is created to when it is dumped. So do not worry, no one is doing this any more. But it still makes you think about these trains. Are they really hazardous? If not, why are they left here to decay in the desert?

I don't think there is any harm driving past them, though.




These trains, and your car, are at the bottom of the dry lake bed of the long gone Searles lake. As you get closer to your destination, this is what you will see:


Upon closer inspection:


There are 500 of these towers spanning 14 miles, many of them are up to 140 feet high! But what are they?

These towers are the same things that you find at Mono Lake, just without the water. These towers used to be 600 feet under water, but now lay exposed for you to explore. These towers formed with calcium rich water from underground springs seeped into very alkaline lake water. The calcium and carbon formed a chemical reaction and formed this hard rock known as tufa.


a close up of the rock shows that it has a striking resemblance and feel to stucco. One of my friends said it looked like his popcorn ceiling.

These towers are as old as 100,000 years old, and as young as 32,000 years old. Because of their age, they are rugged and weathered, surrounded by the sand of their own erosion.





and a lovely black and white photo my boyfriend took for scale


Trona is great for hiking around, looking at everything, but also offers great trails to offroad, as well as some pretty primitive camping. There is a restroom but no water! The town of Trona is a few miles away for any goods you need.


What you do now is up to you. Continue on to Death Valley, go over to 395 and up to the Eastern Sierra, go back down 178 to Sequoia. Or, if this is your last stop, then go home. I hope you enjoyed your trip!

for more photos please visit www.pbase.com/arengh/redrock

Eastern Sierra

This was a three day trip I took with a class in October. We left Friday morning and came back Sunday evening. October was a little cold for this trip (as you will see) I recommend you go in summer.

Day 1:

we left OC at 5 am, and drove up to 395. We stopped at a place called fossil falls. Geology time: It is hard to date this, but this event is probably pretty young, maybe 20,000 years ago, a very large basalt lava flow covered miles in the Owen's river valley. The river was blocked, temperarily forming a lake. The lake over flowed the basalt dam and made a waterfall, that cut through the lava, smoothing and polishing the basalt, and forming some pretty amazing pot holes where rocks got stuck in votexs.

So here are the stock photos:


After that we went there we drove towards the ancient bristlecone forest in the White Inyo Mountains, past Lone Pine. More amazing stuff I didn’t get pictures of. But I found a fossil of the head of a trilobite, which was pretty cool. We made camp here. IMO, I would continue on 395 instead of taking this turn off, and stay the night in the Mammoth Lakes area. If you are a camper there is a lot of BML land to camp on, as well as real camp sites in places such as Mono Lake. For hotels, you can stay in Mammoth Lakes or Lee Vining.

Day 2:

We left from camp at 8am. We drove up to Convict Lake, where we hiked to Mildred Lake: 4 miles and 2,000 feet (up) away. You should be able to find Convict Lake on a map. If not, it is near Lee Vining and the Hot Springs. You should see a turn off. It will be on the left.

This hike is well worth the 8 hours it will take you. But it is NOT an easy hike. For you backpackers, there are actually two more lakes on the string of lakes. Many people backpack up and stay at one of the higher elevation lakes. I'd love to do this, but lugging all that stuff up 4,000 feet. Oi.

Geology time: Convict Lake is what is called a Tarn, this is a lake that forms where a glacier used to be, when the terminal moraine (the junk that the glacier carries down and dumps at the front of it) blocked the water, forming a permanent lake. We hiked up the lateral moraine (the junk left at the sides of the glacier) up to another glacier lake in a whole other valley. If you pay attention to land marks in the pictures, you can see how far we went.

Convict Lake





Alright, starting to go up:


More geology: the line of black is what we call a dyke this was basalt that was injected into the limestone (white rock) and then was metomophosized into what my professor called (I think) Greenstone. Which is gorgeous. I brought a piece back with me. I want to go up there with a dump truck and do my house in it. Both of these rocks are older than the Sierra Nevada granite, and this is one of the few places where you can see them. They are 300 million years old.


Alright, back to going up


Remember the mountain with the snow in the way back


Looking back, see that white ridge on the right hand side? That’s where the dyke is:


Color change due to uplift from faulting, the white is on top of the red above this picture:


This is a good place to stop for lunch, and contemplate how you will cross the river. The bridge was destroyed in an earthquake back in the late 80s. I highly suggest you continue on your hike, you will see why as you keep scrolling. As a side note, this made crossing the Virgin River look easy:


Looking back again, as before, see the ridge where the dyke is:


Sweet folded rocks:


Geology break: how did this happen? Well, the stripes are layers that were layed down successively. Then, they were pressed together under compression and folded, much like an accordian does. What you are left with is amazing.


Alright, remember that mountain? Welcome to Lake Mildred.





I’m sure it was cold:


One more look back from where we crossed the river:


As I said, you can keep going after Lake Mildred. If you want to do this either leave very early, or bring gear for camping. It took us about 6 hours to get to this lake, and the next lake isn't very close. Now, we were going at the pace of a lot of non-hikers. If you are used to high elevation hiking, you could probably do this much faster.

After that, we went to Hot Creek, but the hot springs were closed, fittingly enough, for geologic reasons. I suggest you drive over there to see if it is open. The dip would have been great after hiking all day. The area became active in June this year. The heat increased, more gasses started to escape, and a gyser started up. So much for that hot bath. So we went to camp at an Obsidian dome. Where it got really cold.

This was the weather for the closest town, and we were up in the mountains around it, so it was even colder. Bottles of water froze. Someone spilt coffee on the table in the morning… that froze too. This is why I suggest summer. Bring a good sleeping bag and pad if you go up in fall.


The next morning we hiked up the Obsidian dome.

Geology time: this was a small eruption from the whole Long Valley Caldara volcanic area. Pulses of explosive rhyolite (what granite is when formed above ground) and oozing obsidian (volcanic glass) and pumice( same as obsidian but with more gas in it, so instead of being glassy it is light and puffy. If the obsidian is the Guinness, the pumice is the head). As I said, this was a small explosion, considering the “big one” 760,000 years ago caused a crater 20 miles long and 10 miles wide.

The dome was mined, which gives you a very nice road to walk up. The rocks are pretty cool as well. If you aren't a rock person, you can skip this. If you aren't a BML land camper, you probably will skip this.



Another small crater, this didn’t cause the dome:


Oh so strong! This is pumice







Here is a good example of the pulses. The pink is rhyolite, the black is obsidian, in some places they are only centimeters apart, in others, feet.




Sunrise:


After we left camp and the dome we drove to Mono Lake.

Politics time: In 1941 (I think) LA started to drain Mono Lake as part of the LA Aqueduct system. The water level went down drastically, and at some point, a land bridge was formed from the shore to an island in the middle. Now on this island is where the California Gull lays its eggs. Coyotes were able to walk across to the island and eat the eggs, taking out 80% of the eggs. So LA was forced to stop taking the water, and they started to refill the lake. They are putting it back to 1963 levels. Sad thing is, a lot of the tufa towers will get covered.  What’s tufa? Looks like we're due for some....

Geology time: within Mono Lake are tufa towers. These towers are formed when water filled with calcium, seeps through the bottom of the lake bed into water filled with carbonate (like soda). The two combine to form calcium carbonate, or limestone. The calcium filled water comes through in linear fissures in the bottom of the lake bed, fault related (I think). The salinity of the lake is greater then that of the sea, and it is very acidic, why LA wanted this water is beyond me, they could have gone down to Santa Monica and got it for a lot cheaper.

Okay, tufa time:














Everyone should see Mono Lake before they die. Get there quick before the towers are gone below the surface of the water. But don't feel too bad they are going, they were created under water, and that is where they belong.

After the lake, we did a quick stop close to Hot Creek where there is a geothermal plant. Basically, they drill holes and inject water down onto (or near) the magma chamber. The water is then super heated, turned into steam, which runs turbines and makes electricity. Renewable resource ftw! And that was geology time. So we went to see how hot it was.

This was about 18 inches into the ground

That’s about 178 degrees to those who are celsius impaired. We found as hot as 185 degrees. If you don't have these instruments, it doesn't make much sense to stop here. But I included this for warning. DON"T camp in geothermal areas! I know, they are inticing with their warm earth and clear grounds. But many a camper have fallen asleep on these grounds never to wake up again. Poisionous gasses aren't fun.

Instead of stopping at the plant, I suggest you go look at the crators up near Mammoth Lake. Those are a lot of fun.

After this, go home. I hope you enjoyed your weekend!

Zion, Bryce and Valley of Fire

All in a weekend? From So Cal? Well, sort of. This trip took three full days and nights. Zion is an 8 hour drive from So Cal, making it hard to drive there for a weekend (won't stop us from tring this Memorial Day weekend) however, it is not impossible to fly there. More photos from this trip can be found on my boyfriend's website: www.pbase.com/arengh

We flew into Vegas Thursday night, the closest airport to Zion, but still 3 hours away. After renting a car, we started the drive. We didn't get to Springdale, the town outside of Zion, until about midnight. We stayed at the Best Western, a very nice standard hotel in town. There are also a lot of more charming options in the town, but they are hard to find online.

There is a restaurant in town that serves brambleberry pancakes. It is adjacent to the local theater (stage not film). I'm fairly certain it is called the brambleberry. DO eat here, and DO try the brambleberry pancakes but DON'T ask what a brambleberry is, because a brambleberry is a brambleberry.

For the campers, there is a camp ground just inside the park. I'll get back to you on how this is after we camp there in a few weeks.

The geologic story of Zion is one as spectacular as the park is now. To sum it up in a sentence from The Encyclopedia of National Parks: “These layers reveal that successive occurrences of vast inland seas, flat lands, tremendous earth upheavals, and the constant forces of erosion have all played a part in forming this region”. Zion started as a great sea. Later, as the area uplifted and died, the region became a vast desert of pink sand dunes, nearly the size of California and 3,000 feet deep! This sand later solitified into the pink Najavo sandstone so prominent in the South West.

But in Zion the region was cut down sharply by the Virgin River. This shaped and created Zion's main Valley and it's nearly 3,000 foot high cliffs. The river is still downcutting, geologists believe that the valley may be cut another 1,000 feet down.

Once inside the park, DO take the bus tour to get your barings. There are a lot of things to see here, and many amazing hikes. My recommendations are as followed:

I debated with making this suggestion, but I did it and it was fine, so I will let you know. Your first day, DO hike The Narrows. But DO check with the backcountry desk to make sure the trail is open and safe before you go. There are occasionally flash floods which can be deadly. But don't let that scare you, it's very rare. Thousands enter every day without problem.

You have two options for The Narrows. If you are a serious hiker, you can do the two day trip entering from the top and walking down. But if you are a serious hiker you know of this already and don't need my help. For the passive hiker, the day trip hiking up river is very enjoyable.

If you decide to do this DO bring proper gear! Have good ankle protection and a walking stick, this will be helpful. DO bring lunch, as this will take all day. And DO put it in a plastic bag, it may get wet.

I suggest this hike on the first day because it has a very low gradient. The lack of elevation change makes it a good way to acclumate to the very high elevation (3,600-8,700 ft), and it is also a very beautiful and memberable hike. Go as far as you'd like and turn around at any time.

If you do this DO bring two pairs of shoes, it will take a while for this pair to dry out.

On the second day, I suggest you take a number of light, short hikes to rest your legs from The Narrows. You can do this while doing the bus tour. Spend some time at the visitor section to learn figure out what you want to see, then get off at the appropriate stops. We did Weeping Rock, the short walk to the vantage point for the Court of the Patriarchs, and all three Emerald Pools. Even with all of these hikes you will STILL have time for others this day. Or, you can just relax in the Virgin River, or take a nice drive through the park to the East or North side.

Court of the Patriarchs

Lower Emerald Pools

View from Weeping Rock

With all three of these done, we still had time to drive out to Bryce to see that. DON'T do this. Zion is far superior to Bryce. We spent about 10 minutes in the park, turned around, and went back to Zion. If you want to see Bryce, go there before you go to Zion so it is not spoiled. However, the drive on the East side of the park is amazing. If you have some extra time, and don't want to see Kolob Canyon, this is another option for you.

Day three, I suggest you do another long hike, such as Angel's Landing. We planned to do this, but instead tried to see Grand Canyon. DON'T try to do this, it is too far to see and get back to Springdale. It is possible to do if you leave early the day you return to the airport, however.

If it is day time on your way to Vagas, DO pull off about 45 minutes before the city to see Valley of Fire. The exit for this is North Moapa Valley Rd. You will see a large firework stand off the freeway. Follow the road to the park.

Valley of Fire is a little known, but amazing little park that is easy to drive around, and also has a lot of hikes. If you are here in summer, like we were, it will be hot, it isn't named Valley of Fire for no reason. Still go, just remember to bring plenty of water.

Valley of Fire is made out of the same Navajo sandstone as Zion and Bryce, however it has weathered very differently due to the lack of water.

Your author in one of the bee hives

Petrogylphs at the park

After this, head back to Vegas, and start your trip back home. I hope you enjoyed your weekend!