The San Juan Mountains were clearly on fire. We could see and smell the forest fire 5o miles across the San Luis Valley. Ann and I abandoned our plan to camp at the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Instead, we turned east and spent the night in the Culebra range.

The setting sun illuminated the Spanish Peaks. The Ute tribe calls them “Wahatoya,” -  “breasts of the world.” They are an impressive pair of mountains.
The sunset light filtered through forest fire smoke. The peaks are “stocks”, intrusions of magma that flowed and cooled underground. Large intrusions are called “batholiths.” Batholiths form the Pike’s Peak range and the Sierra Nevadas. Smaller intrusions or arms of a batholiths are called “stocks.” The Spanish Peaks stocks became prominent as they resisted the erosion that removed at least a vertical mile of surrounding rock.

 

The Spanish Peaks are known for their dikes. One dike is clearly visible here 20 miles away. Over 500 dikes radiate from the peaks and extend as far as 17 miles.

Some dikes are even named locally.

Next morning, we drove to a trail head for the western peak. There was no time to climb but a viewpoint was an easy mile up the trail. Walking that mile, I noticed 2 things that puzzled me:
1. The trail underfoot was river-rounded stones. Did the Forest Service surface the trail? No, the river pebbles were off the trail as well. The trail is on a ridge. Rivers avoid traveling on ridges. What’s going on?

2.  The peak is a stock, an igneous body, so why does it have such obvious horizontal strata?

Horizontal structures are apparent.

Maybe I could find out.

A month later Russell, our oldest son, met me at Blue Lake Campground. The campsite is at 10,000’. Sleeping high is a popular method to make climbing easier. Your body acclimates as you sleep and boosts your red blood cells overnight. This can make a huge difference with your abilities the next day.

There was some daylight left. We took the pickup on a jeep road to the shoulder of Trinchera Peak. Past tree line, big marmots with bushy tails glared at us. Their alarm shrieks demonstrated why they are called “whistle pigs.”

We crossed the trinchera (trench) of  Trinchera Peak. This valley under the peak is a cirque carved by a vanished glacier.

The ridge of Trinchera Peak is formed with layers of sandstone set on end.

The road ends on a shoulder, at 12,674’. The land falls away into the Rio Grande rift to the west.

To the east, the West Spanish Peak stood in the afternoon light.

The Taco truck did well  although its longer-than-a-jeep wheelbase required some tight backing on some switchback turns.

The plan was to leave camp in the dark and be on the trail at first light. This would get us off the peaks before afternoon storms.

It rained. We remained in camp, in our beds, in the rain, even as daylight came.

Mid morning, the sky suddenly cleared. We left.

Being super strong and fit, Russell offered to carry most of the supplies.
It would have been rude to refuse.

Now I could examine the mysteries.

Here is what I found:
1. The round river pebbles are weathered from a conglomerate of river deposits.

The soft, sandy matrix easily releases the hard round stones.

2. When the stock fractured the country rock and filled radiating dikes with magma, it also separated horizontal beds of sandstone and filled those horizontal cracks with sheets called sills. There are many sills as well as dikes. North Spanish Peak is like a many-layered cake with magma frosting between layers of sandstone. The visible layer structure is made of both sedimentary and igneous rock but it’s horizontal structure is an artifact of the sandstone bedding.

At the peak, this same material has been heated between layers of magma and is harder, perhaps quartzite. (Sandstone can be changed by heat, pressure and time to become quartzite. The difference between the two rock types is that the harder quartzite will break through its quartz grains but sandstone breaks around them.)

We left a beautiful forest of Bristlecone Pines behind at tree line and proceeded up the slope of West Spanish Peak among wildflowers and broken rocks.

I stopped often to pick up rocks and poke about. Russell was commendably and obviously patient. He likes to run up 14ers. I like to look and examine things.  Clouds were forming.

Broken off pieces of native rock carried in the flow of magma are called xenoliths (stranger rocks). The splitting and expanding into dikes and sills created many xenoliths. The dike and sill materials  on the peak are rich with them.

Very pretty rocks.

Clouds accumulated, the clear blue sky was gone. There was still a thousand vertical feet to go.
We glanced up more often.  The West Spanish Peak had a cloud cap.

The cloud grew to shadow us. No thunder yet.

We stopped. The cloud above tumbled and grew as we looked.

We agreed to turn back. I thought that we were wise and felt smug about maintaining a proper margin of safety, turning back with plenty of time.

I was wrong.  There was no margin. Before getting to treeline, fireworks started. Lightning snapped and crashed above and below us. We hiked fast downhill and even ran across open meadows getting back to the car. It was scary but fun.

We’ll be back in September when the air is frosty dry and the aspens are yellow.

 

admin :: Aug.13.2012 :: Colorado, Geology, Rio Grande Rift, Uncategorized :: Comments Off

Two lines of young volcanoes cross New Mexico. They intersect at  Santa Fe.  The first of these lines (or lineaments) runs north-south along the Rio Grande Valley.

The second is the Jemez Lineament which runs from the middle of the Arizona-New Mexico border to the Northeast corner of the state.

The far northeasterly volcanic areas are the Ocate and the Raton-Clayton fields.

The historic Santa Fe Trail crosses both fields. The trail’s landmarks are volcanic peaks. Now, a century after abandonment, the trail can still be found as subtle ruts and swales on the prairie.

Much of the Ocate field is large flows of basalt. The flows form the resistant mesa tops that step the prairie from one level to another.

 

Antelope near Ocate stand in a swale of the Santa Fe Trail.

 

The trail’s McNee’s Crossing is at the far northeastern corner of New Mexico, near Texas and Oklahoma.

The swale of the trail is just a little greener than the surrounding short grass prairie.

Capulin Peak is a young and symmetrical pyroclastic (cinder) cone in the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field.

It is a pretty volcano and has been a National Monument since 1916.

The road to the lip of Capulin’s summit crater was built in 1925. It’s doubtful it could be built today.  America’s attitude toward nature has changed to a preservationist bias. The spiral road to the crater does scar the peak but allows the average tourist to access a truly marvelous place.

 

Capulin is the Spanish for “choke cherry.” The crater holds many bushes.

 

The park service maintains a paved trail around the crater’s rim. The trail is very well done with great sensitivity to the walking experience.

 

Over 100 volcanoes can be seen from Capulin’s peak.

 

Some cinder cones like Horseshoe Crater are young and smooth.

 

Older cinder cones show the wrinkles of erosion.

 

Sierra Grande is a shield volcano to the east of Capulin.

 

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admin :: Jun.03.2012 :: Geology, National Park Monument, New Mexico, New Mexico Landscape Photography, Rio Grande Rift, Uncategorized, Volcano :: Comments Off

Santa Fe Studio Views

Backlit Snow Squall

 

Sunset after snowstorm

 

Breakfast Rainbow: It was well below freezing. Light powder was falling at sunrise, but rainbows require liquid water drops. I can’t explain it.

 

A sun pillar is a rare weather phenomenon. Flat ice crystals in the air align horizontally to reflect above and below the setting sun.

 

Melting icicles

 

admin :: Feb.16.2012 :: Uncategorized :: Comments Off

 

Wyoming: Wet Mountains, Dry Plains

Absaroka Range Aspens

 

Lodgepole forest recovering from fire, Lewis River, Yellowstone

 

Water boils year-round in Yellowstone.

 

The rolling hills have what snow dry grass can grab from the wind.

 

Buffalo are returning.

 

 

 

admin :: Feb.16.2012 :: Uncategorized :: Comments Off

It is snowing outside; hard to see the rocks.

Alaska, Kenai Peninsula

Family in Anchorage rented a house near Homer. We drove there, counting moose, through the Chugach Mountains, along the south shore of Cook Inlet.

Right Mountain

 

Cook Inlet tides are extreme

 

The Aleutian Islands arc 2500 miles across the North Pacific to come ashore in America as the Alaskan Peninsula. The north shore of Cook Inlet is a wall of volcanoes.

Illiamna and Cook Inlet

 

Kachemak Bay

Ann and Perry with Augustine Volcano in the distance

 

The house has a splendid view of Homer and Kachemak Bay with the Augustine volcano 70 miles to the west.

 

Augustine moves in and out of view.

 

100 miles of ocean and Augustine still clears the horizon.

 

Homer Spit has lots of  tourists and eagles.

 

The Grewingk Glacier and Halibut Cove

 

Poot Peak and China Poot Bay

 

When we returned to Anchorage, 3 of the 4 large volcanoes began to vent.

Augustine Steaming

 

Illiamna Steaming

 

Redoubt Steaming

 

admin :: Jan.29.2012 :: Alaska, Geology, gyser, National Park Monument, New Mexico, New Mexico Landscape Photography, Rio Grande Rift, Utah, Volcano, Wyoming :: 1 Comment »

I finally went. Yosemite is landscape photography’s most iconic location. From Ansel Adams to Carlton Watkins and tens of thousands of second-rate reflections it has been photographed-to-death. I’ve never wanted to join in; so much so that the idea of going repelled me for years. Perhaps it was the fear of being overwhelmed by all the pictures in my brain or just not wanting to add to the huge amount of derivative dreck. Perhaps I outgrew being threatened or no longer felt I had anything to lose? I decided to go. I would just see what I could see. I was nervous.

Driving west from Santa Fe, across Arizona, up the dry eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range brought me through Death Valley National Park. Not many people visit Death Valley at summer solstice. I stood alone in the hot wind at Zabriskie Point. Millions of photographs have been made there of  this view from this place. I made a few. They were not special.

Big Pine California had a cheap motel. The next morning I drove toward Yosemite in the dark. The road entered a steep glacial valley as the sun rose behind me. Climbing to Tioga Pass and the park entrance, the extreme change of elevation was surprising.

Olmsted Point gave me my first view into Yosemite Valley. Half Dome was in the distance. The style of a tunnel’s stonework seemed familiar. It resembled New York City’s Central Park. I realized that Olmsted Point was named for Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect. I began to see that Yosemite is more “parky” than many other national parks. The roads are consciously designed to dramatically present views. I was surprised at how small the valley is. I was surprised at the city-like crowds. I was surprised to see Sequoia trees. I was surprised to find no place to get lunch. I recognized spots where famous photographs were made. It was exciting.

Bridalveil Fall descends from a glacial “hanging” valley. The snow pack in the high country was melting fast. Rivers were high and the wind was strong. Part of Bridalveil was being blown vertically back up the fall. The glowing water contorted in the wind like a dancing ghost. It was beautiful. I watched for a long time and then left the crowd in the valley to join the crowd on the road to Glacier View. Two hours of stop-and-go and a short walk brought me to Glacier View. It was late afternoon. I hadn’t eaten. There was a snack bar so I eagerly stood in line. While sitting on a rock eating junk food I noticed strange, rainbow-colored, iridescent lizards around me. Even if I hadn’t been so hungry those lizards would have been vaguely psychedelic. I have never seen anything like them. (I was relieved that the colors appear in the photographs.) They may be Fence Lizards or Blotch-Sided Lizards or something else. Either species has great variations and nothing in a book is a good match. I have no idea what they are. (They did speak English.)

The distant waterfalls roared across the valley. The sun was at the precise angle to produce a full rainbow in the mist at Nevada Fall.

The prime rainbow is visible in water droplets in a circle 42 degrees off axis from the sun. I have been accused of Photoshopping this picture and making the rainbow. (Yes, I could. No, I didn’t.) Both the sun and the photographer moved a bit. The rainbow vanished.

Granite often exhibits spheroidal weathering making great balls of stone.

By 2 AM I was in San Francisco.

I believe I made three of my own pictures. At least, I made three that I have never seen before.

 

Instead of returning to Yosemite I drove south around the sierras to Joshua Tree National Monument.

The noon sun was hot and crisp. My mood was good as I walked through the rounded monzonite granite boulders. A Joshua tree cast a surreal shadow on a boulder. I raised my camera to consider a picture.

Through the viewfinder I saw a little squirrel. She wasn’t there before.
I lowered the camera.
No squirrel.

I raised the camera.

There she was again looking at me.

I lowered the camera.

No squirrel.

I raised the camera and quickly yanked it away. Just rock, no squirrel. She was gone forever, never to be seen again.

Here’s what I think happened: Yersinia (my name for the little pest) was using the eyes on the top of her skull to just barely spy over the edge of the rock and watch me. When my eyes disappeared behind the camera she thought I could not see her and popped up for a full look. The squirrel understands that eyes see!
*It is also possible that there is some kind of “Quantum Squirrel” effect where the squirrel was neither there nor not there until recorded. Schrödinger had a cat, we can have a squirrel.

 

Yersinia was gone. No trace. Just me, boulders and a Corvus Corax sailing overhead.
He turned my way. Twice he dived and shot between me and a granite wall flying so fast wind roared off his wings.

Ravens don’t normally do that.
He was flying for me.
Showing off.
Or maybe looking at my hat.

admin :: Sep.14.2011 :: California, Geology, National Park Monument, New Mexico, Uncategorized :: Comments Off

Red Hill is a pyroclastic cone in southwestern New Mexico. Red Hill also gives its name to a nearby ghost town.

We visited in April driving south from Santa Fe, down the Rio Grande Valley then west at Socorro, past Pie Town and Datil. The high desert skies were a flawless blue in the mornings with only thin afternoon clouds. This meant sharp blue shadows and a warm spring sun. By late afternoon a restaurant/motel looked good from the road. The restaurant was dirty. Bad food took an hour to arrive. While we waited for our meals, we watched a grove of trees across the highway collect vultures.

By the time we were able to leave, dozens of turkey vultures had assembled. Vultures like to roost in communities and individuals often return to the same branch each night. I approached on foot. They eyeballed me from the heights. I kept a distance and photographed as the light faded.

After the restaurant, the attached motel was unattractive. We found another just over the Arizona line.

In the morning we missed Red Hill. The red hill can be seen from the highway but the extinct town is nearly invisible. Google Earth showed what looked like a maar to the south. We turned off the highway.  The pinion and juniper scrub became smooth hills with sparse dry grass. There were no fences and therefore it was easy to drive off-road on a trace. It was marvelous. The ground was rough but the larger landscape was soft and flowing, broken occasionally by small ridges.

The first depression we encountered could have been a small maar but I wasn’t sure. It was more rounded than any maar I had seen. Maar volcanoes are caused by magma vaporizing a water table. The resulting steam explosion clears the overburden of rock like a champagne cork. The explosion leaves jagged edges. This landscape looked liquid-smooth as if raindrops on a giant pond had frozen. Mounting a rise to the South, there was the maar I had seen in the aerial photographs! It too was softly rounded.

There were wonderful, wave-like contours. The ridge on the right promised a higher view. I found a drivable route to the ridge top.

From the ridge top I could see the two maar volcanoes with parallel trenches running Northeast/Southwest.

I photographed a turkey vulture miles away  in front of the smaller maar. Vultures are such excellent “glider pilots” that they almost never have to flap a wing.

I photographed with large and small cameras. Even at this distance, a panorama is needed to take it all in.

The Sun blinked dark. The vulture had cast his shadow on me. I suspect that vultures do this to “poke” us. Perhaps he saw me looking down at him and came to let me know that he was looking down at me. A year ago, two companions and I were sequentially “shadow wiped” by a turkey vulture while walking on a peak near Santa Fe. We saw 2 vultures circling below us. The birds rose and flew over us. I thought it was intentional then, now I am sure of it.

The ridge was surrounded by miles of rough lava and ash. A smooth brown cobble at my feet was different. I think that it is a sandstone xenolith (Ancient Greek: “foreign rock”). Sometimes  material from underlying rock formations is carried upwards during an eruption and becomes incorporated into the lava as a xenolith.

I had feather-footed the pickup up the ridge in 4-wheel drive. It was difficult picking a route through broken lava, small cliffs and fissures trying not to disturb the soil. Getting down involved retracing the route exactly to avoid any drops or rough patches. There was only an occasional shine where the dry grass was compressed from a passing wheel to help.

I was relieved to have found the right route back down and glad to not have marked this beautiful landscape with any tire ruts. Truly the perfect vehicle here would be a horse.

admin :: Aug.13.2011 :: Geology, New Mexico, New Mexico Landscape Photography, Volcano :: Comments Off

When the Rocky Mountains were just getting their start, when there was an ocean between the western and eastern parts of what is now North America, there were dinosaurs. The dinosaurs left their bones and footprints on the land. A small percentage of bones were covered and still remain in the earth where they fossilized, were buried further and hoisted and submerged as mountains rose and fell. Sometimes fossils are revealed by erosion. They may last at the surface for a few days or decades or centuries until they too are worn away.

Dinosaur footprints are visible today at a number of sites around the world. One site is along the Purgatoire River in Picket Wire Canyon in southeastern Colorado. That site is part of the Comanche National Grasslands. There are individual prints there as well as trails of footsteps called trackways.  You can observe how, apparently, Brontosauruses ambled along a beach side by side 150 million years ago. The beach has hardened and compressed under younger sediments and has become the Morrison Formation. The sun warming those giant lizards on the beach very long ago is the same sun that now falls on humans standing and walking on the soft rock of the Morrison Formation.

Ann was researching the Pike and San Isabel National Forests when she learned of the Picket Wire Canyon dinosaur tracks. She was amazed that you could see actual dinosaur tracks and made reservations for the special trip 5 months in advance. When she told me about it I agreed. I was eager to step in the footprints of a dinosaur.  At Picket Wire you can measure your stride against an individual of what was the dominant life form on earth. I’ve touched dinosaur bones, held gastroliths (stones polished in a dinosaur’s gut) and coprolites (fossilized dung.) but walking the same ground, that would be a real connection. I wonder, what did they smell like? How did they sound? Did they low like cattle? Roar? Hiss like lizards? Sing like birds? Can we ever know?

The tour group was told to meet at the Forest Service office in La Junta Colorado at 8 AM with a high clearance 4wd vehicle and our lunches. We were shown a silly video in an office and then told to form a line of vehicles behind a government truck. When this was announced one other person (a rancher) and I eased out of the room and rapidly walked to our vehicles. I imagine he too realized that the dusty roads we were about to travel would be far more tolerable at the front of the caravan than the rear. The roads were dusty. I was positioned first behind the government truck but hung back about 100 yards. The rancher’s truck was visible behind us but the other travelers were invisible in the cloud. Later at the canyon, other drivers, now wise to where the good seats were, crowded to get behind the lead truck but the high-speed travel was over.

Spanish speakers called the river “El Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio” (The river of souls lost in purgatory.)  French speakers shortened and translated it to “Purgatoire” (Anglicised to “POOR-ga-twahr”, then “Picket Wahr”–Picket Wire). As a result, the Purgatoire River flows through Picket Wire Canyon. Language erodes much faster than rocks.

Allosaurs were similar to the famous T. Rex; huge, two-legged, carnivorous monsters.

The previous winter was dry and the river was low. We were able to step across the Purgatoire on boulders without wetting our soles. The Apatosaurus tracks are revealed on a wide rock ledge south of the river. (What was a “Brontosaurus” is now called an “Apatosaurus.”) In the thin shade of a juniper we ate Ann’s garlic-lime chicken. Across the river were Allosaur footprints. Allosaurs were theropod dinosaurs. Modern birds are thought to be living descendants of the theropods. Both birds and theropods have furculas (wishbones). Above us on the rim rock of Dakota Sandstone, a Turkey Vulture spread its wings and gracefully leaned off the ledge. The bird was lofted without flapping. That vulture was the closest thing we saw to a living theropod.  (The Garlic-Lime Chicken was delicious but quite dead.) I wonder, what creature in another 150 million years might contemplate  a human trackway while noshing on a lunch of our descendants. Evolution surely has not stopped with us.

admin :: Jun.20.2011 :: Colorado, Fossils, Geology, National Park Monument :: 2 Comments »

Mount Taylor is a stratovolcano across the Rio Grande Rift Valley from Santa Fe. I noticed the upside-down mountain while packing the car. A camera was at hand.

In the photograph upper portions of Mount Taylor are obscured by a mirror image of lower parts. This type of mirage is called “looming.” The summit appears as a bump over the flat top of the mirrored image. The texture of the slopes helps define the inverted reflection. Since the mountain rises from a 7,000′ plateau and the summit is at 11,300, I can guess that about 1,000′ of the mountainside is reflected. Mount Taylor is 100 miles (528,000′) away so the angle of reflection here is +/- 0.1 degrees. If the mountain was not there, the mirage would have been invisible as the sky looks normal on either side where there is only sky to reflect. The mirage vanished in a few minutes.

Ann hung a rattling sprig of Hairy Scurf Pea on the car’s mirror. The traveling party included Ann and our two youngest (but grown) children, Perry and Livia, plus two dogs.

Last year we were in Yellowstone on New Years Day. Driving to Jackson Hole on the south side of Yellowstone was hard traveling with the winter weather.

This trip, we drove north along the front range of the Rockies and avoided the interior mountain roads. The weather favored us. There was little snow as we traveled the highways but while in the park using vehicles with tracks and skis, it snowed generously.

Devils Tower was a short side trip. We had never seen it in the winter.

The view away from the tower was interesting too.

The Belle Fourche River erodes the surrounding land as it flows around the tower. Trees on the river bottom trace it’s abandoned meanders.

The benches on the valley’s sides record the levels of the river during earlier times. In this picture two deer can be seen in the river bottom avoiding the winter wind.

We skirted the Bighorn and Bear Tooth mountains in Wyoming and Montana and turned south following the Yellowstone River up into the mountains.

We climbed through Paradise Valley.

Entering Yellowstone Park, we went first to the Lamar Valley to see the winter animals.

Traveling with companions requires compromise from each and all.

I expected to indulge my geological curiosities less, but because of the interests and enthusiasms of the others, I saw new things; wolves, coyotes, foxes, river otters, eagles, ravens, mountain goats, a porcupine and large numbers of bison, deer and elk.We were prepared for colder weather but it did not get much below -20F. The pack boots and shells stayed in the bags. Livia photographed my frost-abused camera.

At the “thermal features” water is constantly moving between gas, liquid and solid. The driving energy is a body of magma near the surface.

In many places the ground is too hot for snow even when the air is well below zero. I gained a new appreciation for the HUGE thermal output. Over millions of acres there are tens or hundreds of thousands of hot springs.

Hot streams feed the Firehole River which never freezes.

Hot springs make holes in the ice and send up steam at Yellowstone Lake.

Only 14,000 years ago a “small” maar type eruption blew out a two-mile wide crater at the lake.

Yellowstone Lake is large but sits in only a part of the supervolcano’s 40 mile-wide caldera.

Energy is constantly released into the air and water.

It has been 640,000 years since the last super-eruption and 70,000 years since the last “regular” eruption and Yellowstone is still boiling hot.

admin :: Jan.29.2011 :: Geology, Mirage, New Mexico, New Mexico Landscape Photography, Rio Grande Rift, Volcano :: Comments Off

Mount Taylor is 100 miles west of Santa Fe. The view below shows Mount Taylor as seen from Santa Fe looking across both the Rio Grande and the Rio Puerco valleys.

Mount Taylor

The Rio Puerco Valley is known for its large assembly of volcanic necks.  Like more famous individual necks such as Shiprock or Devils Tower, these necks are cores of volcanoes that penetrated relatively softer material and erupted on higher surfaces  Those volcanoes and surfaces have now eroded and the harder cores became peaks. A few necks are visible in the photograph above. (The actual prints have hugely more detail.)

Detail showing a neck 76 miles distant

There are few areas on earth where the collection of necks are as dramatic as the Rio Puerco.

We drove toward Cabezon Peak; the best known of the necks. It was a dry, sunny, winter day and the road through the arid Ojito Wilderness area was good.  The truck mounted a rise and we saw Cabazon Peak.

The Spanish dictionary tells us that Cabezón (big head) is also the term for a hole in a garment for the head. So the term also works geologically. The magma head penetrated the fabric of sediments as it rose to erupt as a volcano. The road went past the ghost town of Cabezón (now privately owned) and wound around to the other side., near enough to see columnar fracturing that is common with necks.

Cabezon Peak

It would be fun to do a panorama of the Rio Puerco valley from the summit showing dozens of necks. Although Cabezon Peak is known for recreational climbing, there should be a way to haul cameras up that isn’t too much of an expedition.

Cerro de Guadalupe was nearby, down next to the dry bed of the Rio Puerco.

Cerro de Guadalupe was wearing golden winter pastels cloaked in a perfect blue sky.

 

admin :: Dec.30.2010 :: New Mexico Landscape Photography :: Comments Off