This field trip has been years in the making as I planned the rough outline of this three day field trip way back in 2018 as a field trip that all new graduate students could take at the start of the school year to build a cohort and gain common knowledge about this region that hits on so many of our department's research interests. That effort led by myself and other early career faculty faltered due to general faculty enthusiasm. Fast forward into the pandemic years and there was an opportunity to apply for funding to trial this field trip as a department-wide endeavor. I planned extensively and got fairly mild interest and then had to cancel a little over 24 hours in advance in May because of covid concerns. I rescheduled for October and this time got even less graduate student interest, ultimately taking more undergraduates. About half those that expressed interest dropped for various reasons and in the end all these efforts resulted in a trip for 14 people. So that's my cynical backstory. Fairly par for the course with my efforts in my department: a well intentioned mostly waste of time.
Anyway the trip was good and the participants had a great time. We started with an icebreaker exercise straddling the San Andreas Fault and then drove up Painted Canyon to see its textbook folds, faults, unconformities, and 1.7 billion year old basement. We had lunch near the shores of the Salton Sea and discussed its interesting history and unfortunate present as we walked over the beach of not sand but barnacles and fish bones. We then stopped to see some of the art installations at Bombay Beach, a new stop for me. We found the mud volcanoes to be mostly dry, then stopped at Obsidian Buttes for shiny obsidian and frothy pumice. We settled into the research station at Borrego Springs, which we were fortunate to have all to ourselves. A few of us drove out to check out some of the iron sculptures sprinkled around the desert before dinner. After dinner many checked out some planets with the telescope. Tomorrow's forecast was for unseasonably cool weather and strong chances of afternoon thunderstorms.
We started Day 2 with a visit to The Slot, which the students seemed to enjoy. Then we went up Split Mountain Gorge, enjoying the classic geology outcrops as the cool skies darkened. We drove through the badlands for Sandstone Canyon, which I thought would be a great lunch spot. We made it a little up the canyon when quite abruptly it started to rain, hard. In no time at all we turned around and started driving down the canyon. The rain picked up to full thunderstorm as waterfalls poured in from the canyon walls. Thankfully the wash floor was sandy not muddy and so we actually had increased traction driving through the muddy water that formerly was our road. It really was quite an unusual phenomenon we were witnessing. We would drive down the flooded wash fast enough that we outpaced the flood pulse such that we would reach the flash flood front and drive a dry wash for a couple minutes, only to have the next tributary reflood the trunk wash. We then would drive out this flow until we reached its front. This continued for over a half a dozen times. The floodwaters seemed to be getting more mature as the catchment area increased and so at one point where there was a nice high and wide terrace I decided we should stop and see how it played out. We had lunch and marveled at the waters and rain and thunder. The waters surged up and then dropped below what they were when we started and so we decided to continue on down the wash. Only a mile or so further the waters sunk into the wash and we saw no more. The flood was certainly the highlight of the trip for all of us. Afterward we got a tour of the state park's paleontology museum. We were all a bit wound up from the flood so the museum pace was hard to adjust to.
Day three we stopped at some of the other iron sculptures then headed for the Pumpkin Patch. This area was VERY muddy and so we bailed (wisely) after a very short distance. The crisp post-rain air meant that we could easily see the Martinez Mountain landslide and Lake Cahuilla lakeshores very well at a distance of several miles, saving us another detour. This gave us plenty of time at Thousand Palms for a hike and a nice picnic in the shade of the palm grove. Our last stop was the Palm Springs Tramway. Thankfully I reserved ahead of time and so we only had to wait about a half hour to get on the gondola, the perfect amount of time for students to wander around in the giftshop and check out the grounds. The students thoroughly enjoyed the tram ride and the views at the top.
All in all it seemed to leave a favorable impression on the students that chose to attend. Many thanks to Heather for helping with logistics, especially food.
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