Salton Trough Oct 14-16

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.

Wonderland of Rocks Sept 24

Another month almost without any escape, I left Riverside predawn to spend a few hours working on my Wonderland of Rocks Floor Is Lava Project before the heat of the day set in. I thought I would try to tick off some of the forbidding terrain north of Rattlesnake Canyon. I started hiking at Indian Cove's Rattlesnake Canyon trailhead before 8am. Recent thunderstorms meant the washes were moist, making better travel. Along the way I found a surprising number of pools and even more surprising number of small red-spotted toads hopping out of the way of my footfalls. On familiar terrain, I made it to the Rattlesnake Canyon talus cave in just over a half hour. This would be the last major wash crossing I would have to tackle on my traverse. Fortunately there were ample boulders strewn along the floor and in about 10 minutes I was able to find a route scrambling across to the north side of the wash. The game was afoot.

I scrambled steeply a few hundred feet up slabs and worked my way northwestward as best I could. In no time at all I felt the remoteness surround me. The humidity won over the early hour, resulting in drenching sweat. Puffy white clouds already began to form. The terrain was much less cooperative than I hoped and I soon came to realize that this area might be the hardest section to crack. I struggled to sidle around a sandy wash and when I finally gained the saddle I realized there was more sand. After only about 75 minutes in lava-mode I broke the route to beeline out, still requiring another 70 minutes by path of least resistance to regain my car. In the end I hiked a little over 4 miles in 3 hours. I was way too tired and my marathon through-trip felt a little further away than before. I would probably need to find a completely different route further west. The ultimate goal feels far away. Hopefully I can try to make some more progress over the winter months. It was nice enough to spend a few hours locked in deep wilderness.

Eaton Canyon Sept 11

My last visit to Eaton Canyon was way back in January 2016. This would be late season in the middle of an epic drought but we held out minor hope that the remnants of Hurricane Kay passing through the day before would boost flows slightly. It did not. What it did do was ensure that we were absolutely drenched in sweat on the hike up due to the extreme humidity despite our 7:40am start to our hike. The hike up to Henninger Flats was straightforward enough; apparently we just missed seeing some bears. Once we branched off onto the Telephone Trail we had to be rather careful with all of the poison oak infringing on the trail. I enjoyed the moments of downcanyon views out into the LA Basin and the patches of crunchy fall leaves covering the trail. 

At the creek I was disappointed to find it barely flowing. In hindsight we would have been fine without wetsuits but we all put them on since we had them. At our suit-up spot I found a cute ensatina salamander enjoying the moisture from the previous day's dampening.

The creek flow was very low and went dry completely in many places. There would be no jumps, slides, or swims and the deepest wade was just past my waist. It certainly was not the waterpark I hoped for (and looking at my 2016 pictures proves the contrast) but we were all happy to be outside and it was new to the others.

We worked our way through downclimbs that would have been slides and some dry waterfall rappels. The rappel into the short gorge section definitely lost some of its appeal without water splashing and a deep pool below. We stopped at one point for a snack but for the most part made steady progress. Some of the banded gneiss we saw was particularly beautiful, better than I remembered.

The second to last fall was nice as always except this time had a swirl of water-seeking bees to rappel through which was not a high point for any of us. I opted to take off my wetsuit at the bottom of the falls, a decision I was happy with later. Here a group of two behind us almost caught up. I forgot how long the slog was between the last two rappels.

The last falls (Eaton Falls) had its usual fanfare with about thirty people dipping toes in a meager muddy pool at the base of the trickling falls. None of us made any embarrassing moves and I think all of us got rounds of applause on reaching the bottom. The hike out was fine. We were back to the car around 3pm. Thanks to the others for a reason to get outside.

Blackhawk Landslide Aug 28

We used a few hours coming back from a weekend escape to stop by for a quick look at Blackhawk Landslide, one of the more famous examples of a rock avalanche deposit in the world. Somehow in all my time in southern California I had not got around to this out-of-the-way corner of the desert so finally visiting felt like a pilgrimage of sorts. I was hoping to use the opportunity to take a few drone photos and to compare some of the rock textures in the distal part of the landslide deposit to those in the source area.

The landslide broke free of the bowl-shaped region on the north side of Blackhawk Mountain at about 6600' of elevation, traveled down the varied terrain in its path at the northern rangefront of the San Bernardino Mountains, and then continued several miles further across the more gradual grade of the alluvial fan. The Blackhawk Landslide was inhibited from spreading further east to to the presence of an older, very similar landslide deposit impounding it. It flowed over outcrops of metamorphic rocks exposed in its path, despite being composed of dry rock. After what must have been only a few exciting minutes about 20,000 years ago, the landslide came to rest far into the desert. It's wall-like toe made it a distance of 6 miles away from the headscarp, dropping to a high desert elevation of 3100'. Most landslides are physically limited to traveling laterally about as far as they fall vertically (in this case that would be only 3500 feet), but rock avalanches have special, still largely unknown physics that allows them to have extremely long runouts. Ripple-like flow textures are still preserved on the distal surface of the 6 mi2 landslide deposit. It is really a spectacular and fascinating deposit. While these rock avalanche events are exceptionally rare globally, deposits indicate that similar events happened multiple times in the past from the same massif of marble.

The toe of the landslide is right off the highway and I have to say the landslide is underwhelming at ground level here, just a low 100 ft rounded ridge arcing away from the highway. At 400 ft height above ground my drone was a little better able to capture the scale, but still a higher view and lower light would have better illustrated the surface features.

Next we drove onto the deposit itself and checked out the outcrops in the walls of a wash partially excavating the deposit. The rock textures were more uniform than I was expecting, but I could still pick up the tell-tale textures of jigsaw breccia, monolithic flow bands, and occasional megaclasts. Interestingly the top few feet of the deposit were cemented like concrete with carbonate precipitate.

Next we drove around to the Mitsubishi Cement Corporation and headed up the rough 4WD road towards the landslide source. The road soon turned steep, narrow, and outward sloping, a little more hair-raising than I hoped. We made it to the far side of Monarch Flat (undoubtedly a feature of yet another landslide deposit) and parked after the next steep section looked even worse. I managed to convince Heather to go on foot and so we strolled up the road about 1.5 miles. The day was hot and sweaty but the occasional cloud cover and mountain-sourced air helped a lot, particularly as we gained elevation. At last we made it to the sloping clearing on the west flank of the Blackhawk Mountain scarp that was the glider launch. It was neat to finally be here and hard not to fantasize about swooping around the headscarp bowl and gliding over the landslide far out into the desert (interestingly my wing's glide ratio is very comparable to the fall-to-run ratio of the Blackhawk Landslide). Here too the scale and vastness of the landslide made it hard to appreciate, especially as the dappled shadows from scattered clouds obscured the furthest reaches of the deposit. I flew the drone again over some of the outcrops comprising the headwall area, which were more varied in texture than I was expecting and flew it up high for a photosphere (below). The drone misbehaved and completely lost connection, something that has never happened to me before, but did manage to return to home where I could fish it out of the sky.

We returned back down the ball-bearing covered road back to the car, out without incident, and then drove the back way through Big Bear. Thanks for Heather being willing to satisfy my curiosity for a couple hours. I hope to return someday with my wing!

 

Santa Cruz Island July 12-14

I had not been out to Santa Cruz Island since grad school when we were very fortunate to have a professor arrange a very memorable overnight trip to Christi Ranch on the seldom-visited Nature Conservancy side of the island. I remember the excitement of driving the old military-style jeeps through the island's interior, the incredibly diverse and super interesting geology, and surfing on the lonesome Christi Beach. This would be a two-night trip camping at Scorpion Ranch on the NPS quarter of the island. We would rent a two-person kayak and bring two packrafts to explore some of the neighboring coast. I knew the famous Painted Cave would be too far to visit but my guidebook author friend was kind enough to send me the draft second edition of the sea caves of Santa Cruz Island so that I could mark off some of the caves closer to Scorpion. We drove to Ventura the night before the trip, plunging into misty clouds as we crossed the Santa Monicas; my brain was thinking summertime heat and I packed fairly lightly for the summertime fog that can linger in this area and especially on the offshore Channel Islands. 

The ferry ride across the channel was smooth. We redirected our course several times to intercept pods of multiple types of dolphins but still made it to the island by mid-morning. Once unloaded we carried our gear inland 0.5 miles on the valley road, a stretch we would be walking many times over our short trip. Once our campspot was finally vacated a little after 11am we set up, had lunch, and then headed down to the water. After the kids had their fill of snorkeling Scorpion Beach we got in kayak and packrafts and paddled eastward towards Scorpion Rock. The ocean was nice and calm, allowing us to loop in and out of all the sea caves along the way, including at least four throughtrip caves. We stopped at a little beach for a while and then looped around Scorpion Rock before returning. Back at camp we soon realized the miniaturized island foxes were ubiquitous around the campsites. They were awfully cute. After dinner we decided to walk the Cavern Point loop which provided great cliff top views towards Anacapa Island(s) and the coast westward as well. I particularly enjoyed some of the blushing native dudleyas clinging to cliffs.

The second day I had planned a fairly ambitious solo packraft-hiking loop of the eastern side of the island. I was to paddle from Scorpion west 5 miles to Chinese Harbor, hike 5 miles over the island to Smugglers Cove, then paddle an additional 4 miles back to Scorpion. Before I even left the tent though I noted the strong winds and was already doubting whether I would achieve my loop. Despite the early hour the view from the beach told me I'd face strong headwinds and a less than stellar swell but I set off to see what would happen. There was definitely enough of a swell that I was not able to get close to any of the sea caves. I paddled continuously as a moments break meant considerable lost progress as I drifted back towards my origin. The cliffs and coast were neat enough but progress was slow and the topsy turviness was starting to get to me mentally. I pulled into a small covelet at Potato Harbor and stretched my legs. It took me nearly 2 hours to go 3 miles. I spotted a doable scrambling route that would ultimately get me up onto the island's trail system and called it: I had enough of the sea and the subpar conditions.

The little beach was actually rather neat with some interesting Monterey chert cobbles and exploring nearby I spotted some in situ fossils. The harbor was so much calmer than out around the point it was tempting to keeping paddling so I had to remind myself several times of the unpleasantness.

I rolled up the packraft and switched over to hiking mode to climb up some dryfalls. I detoured up the headland near Potato rock first to catch a view up the coast, then worked my way through the surprisingly dense knee-deep vegetation upwards towards the trail. It was only about 0.3 miles and 700 feet of elevation gain but it took me about an hour to find my way upward. On the way I saw some nice clusters of native succulents and some particularly interesting pincushion-like lichen.

Once at the trail I had to decide between turning inland for more hiking or downward back to camp. Everything higher in elevation than my current position was socked into clouds and so I opted to hike back with the idea that perhaps I could go for a run later on when it might be clearer. It was an easy downhill jaunt to the overlook for Potato Harbor, a seemingly very popular hike on the day. After quick photos I continued on down the trail back to the campsite. I caught the others walking back from the beach and hung out for a bit in camp, which was being patrolled by some very cute island foxes.

Not content with my day's adventure cut short, I wanted to go for a run-hike up Scorpion Canyon looping along the Montañon Ridge Trail. With only my camera and phone, I made good pace initially pace the campground, the ascent out of Scorpion Canyon, and along the volcanic slopes looking towards Smugglers Cove and Anacapa Island. As I began to enter the clouds and the terrain became rougher near the ridgeway I found myself stopping for photos constantly and shifted to a hiking gait.

The fast moving wispy clouds swept over the narrow ridge. The stunted vegetation coated in lichens and mosses seemed to suggest this sort of weather was standard and I found it a really intriguing microcosm contrasting to the dry and barren landscape less than a half mile away. The ridge section lasted less than a mile but felt wild and remote along this narrow path dropping away into clouds to both sides.

Once off the ridge the trail veered down grassy slopes of degraded marine terraces that efficiently dropped elevation. I soon regained the section of trail I was on earlier and switched back to a partial run. I was rather hungry and looking forward to dinner at this point. I had a quick look out to sea and the Potato Harbor spur junction- the sea was now something much fiercer!

Back at camp I made dinner and settled in. I didn't get plan A but the 8 mile run-hike took about 2.5 hours and gave me a chance to see some more of this surprisingly varied island. The next morning we packed up camp and moved our gear down to the shore for the later 4pm boat pickup. We chose to spend most of the middle of the day kayaking a little further eastward from Scorpion, stopping at a small beachlet busy with sea urchins and garibaldi and snorkeled until we were content.

The boat ride back was without incident other than some more dolphin detours. Though some of the adventure was cut short it was very nice to have an escape from the heat and see some unique southern California coastline. Thanks to Heather for masterminding the trip and making it happen.