Midnight Sun

A favorite short hike of 1.9 miles with 384 feet of elevation gain on the south side of Palm Springs. Lynn Acosta was visiting for a few days with Izzy and Rosie and this is one of those must-see attractions for visitors to the area. It is a hike with several limitations (no dogs, high entrance fee) but offers a relatively easy hike with great scenery and geology and of course the falls at the loop turn around, especially with high volume, late spring/early summer runoff in Tahquitz Creek. The day was surprisingly temperate for this time of year with a light breeze, which was great because there is scant shade along the trail until you get to the falls.

The geology here is dominated by the easterly dipping Palm Springs Complex metamorphic rocks as you enter the canyon from the visitor center. These are a series of metamorphic rocks (generally a gneiss) of somewhat uncertain age but generally agreed to have formed from 600 to 250 mya from sedimentary rocks deposited in an offshore environment. We know that they are older than the Peninsular Range Batholith which was emplaced in two episodes: the western side from 140 to 104 mya, and the eastern side from 105 to 80 mya. In the Palm Springs area this portion of the mountain range is known as the San Jacinto mountains. These are west of Palm Springs and are generally made up of a granodiorite and quartz diorite core. Therefore, similar to the Joshua Tree geology, the big glob of magma goo that formed the batholith intruded into the metamorphic rocks far beneath the surface, hung out there for a significant amount of time and eventually were uplifted, eroded, and uplifted some more.

The San Jacinto mountains, as we see them, were formed relatively recently with uplift along three faults forming a triangle. The triangle extends on the north side (South Pass Fault) located south of I-10, the east side (Palm Canyon Fault) which is the mountain front seen from the Coachella Valley and the west side (San Jacinto Fault) that is west of the highlands near Idyllwild, Ca. Mount San Jacinto tops out at 10, 813 feet above sea level with over 10,300 +/- feet of relief in the seven miles from the peak to the floor of the Coachella Valley forming one of the greatest mountain front scarps in the world.

From the pictures, you can see at the entrance to the Tahquitz Canyon, the Palm Canyon Complex formation which is a deep reddish brown due to desert varnish. Here is the result of my foray into AI internet searches. Desert varnish is an orangish yellow to black coating found on exposed rock surfaces in arid environments. It is composed of clay minerals, oxides and hydroxides of manganese and/or iron, as well as other particles such as sand grains and trace elements. It is formed by bacteria that oxidize manganese and iron and cement them onto the rock. The color of the varnish depends on the relative amounts of manganese and iron in it. Desert varnish can take thousands of years to form and can be eroded by acidic conditions, lichens, or human vandalism. Back to the trail. From the pictures you can see that the falls flow over the granodiorite that forms the core of the San Jacinto Mountains.

I am writing about this adventure today with a profound sense of loss but hoping that the therapy of putting the story of this adventure together helps me turn my sense of loss to one of joy in having been part of his life. One of my greatest friends who I have known for at least 37 years passed away last night suddenly in his sleep. He was an individual who craved, embraced, and practiced the adventure lifestyle. This adventure is an homage to Jeff, dedicated to his quest for adventures and his adventurous outlook on life.

I had thought that the May Joshua Tree trip would be the last one until the summer oven had passed. However, due to a lot of unusual circumstances; lower than normal June temperatures; Joni being involved with providing support to our former employer (Northgate); the availability of Kiara to join in the adventure and I suppose just wanting to get out and move about, Kiara and I made what I am pretty sure was the last pre-summer trip to Joshua Tree. It was a simple plan. A forty-five-minute drive to the park in Kiara’s small but powerful (with a massive trunk) Honda; a hike on the Wall Street Mill – Wonderland trail, overnight car camping at Ryan Campground and a shorter hike on day 2 along the Skull Rock Nature Trail with a subsequent picnic lunch and park exit at the Cottonwood gate on the south side of the park near I-10.

I procured a campground reservation at Ryan Campground Site 07. Joshua Tree was already operating on a summer schedule so there were areas that were closed including the entrance kiosk which was unmanned on arrival. We made a short stop at our campsite and set up our tents (to stake out our spot). The pictures include shots of the campground and Kiara created a video of the trip on her Facebook page that has some camping views.

She had the larger of the tents and I had my little one-man tent that I last used sometime around 2000-2002 on a kayak camping trip to Santa Cruz Island. I was not sure how sleeping on the ground would work out for me. However, thanks to technology, I had a great ground pad that made it all possible.

Our Wall Street Mill and Wonderland Wash Loop hike ended up being 3.0-mile loop as we had to start from the Barker Dam parking lot. The hike to the mill was relatively easy although the trail was poorly marked and there were a lot of side trails to choose from. The phone GPS kept us on (or close to on) the trail. The mill was built by Bill Keys (see previous post) in the late 1800’s. It is a gold ore crushing mill that had two stamp mills and some outbuildings including a bunk house and of course out house. There had been a marker at the start of the trail placed by Bill Keys in 1943 after his release from San Quinten with the inscription “Here is where Worth Bagley bit the dust at the hand of W. F. Keys, May 11, 1943”.Of course, it had to be removed for preservation after being vandalized by despicable morons and is now memorialized by a national park marker.

The second part of the hike that wound through Wonderland Wash was a bit more challenging. The trail (or proposed trail) from the Mill to the actual Wash traverses a large, lower relief area of the Monzogranite of Indian Cove. This is a popular bouldering and rock-climbing area where there really was no specific trail but a lot of rock scrambling. The area has a little more moisture and soil available so there was a significant cactus bloom. I, of course, had an up close and personal encounter with at least one cactus as I hopped off a boulder a little clumsily (Kiara was much more fluid in her movements – youth) leaving numerous splines in my left leg. We eventually made it to the wash which was a very enjoyable, relatively flat, and wide trail, past the Wonderland Ranch ruins (pink building in photos) and back to the Barker Dam parking area.

We returned to our campsite, set out the chairs, grabbed the cooler and feed bag and had a very nice picnic lunch of normal goodies. I was tired from our hike and Kiara had been up to 2:00 AM the night before yukking it up with Joni so a quick nap after or late lunch seemed to be in order. A sunset dinner of pre-cooked lasagna warmed on the old Coleman emergency earthquake grill finished out the day. A very comfortable night in our nylon casitas, coffee/tea, egg bites and sausage for breakfast started day 2 of the adventure.

After breaking down camp we headed out to the entrance for a short cell coverage fix and then up to Keys Vista which provides a great view of the Coachella Valley. From there to the Skull Rock Trail which is a 1.7-mile loop that includes several national park markers describing the flora, fauna, and geology. The trail winds its way through the Monzogranite of White Tank, some very young stream outwash and some very young fan material. Of course, the star of the trip was the slightly alien looking Skull Rock that you can see in the pictures. On the trail back to the parking area, we stopped in a nice shady spot and Kiara took the opportunity to sketch a Yucca plant. So nice that all the girls did not inherit my lack of any known artistic talent!!

After Skull Rock we searched out a picnic spot. Kiara found a shady spot in the rocks on the road south toward the I-10 entrance and she whipped up some bagel, pastrami, and cheese sandwiches. A quick stop at the Cholla Cactus Garden wrapped up our JT5 trip.

I promised a little more geology of the park in the last blog so here goes. A lot of folks have trouble visualizing geologic time since we think more in terms of human lifetimes. For those of you who remember the big round classroom clocks in school that gained significant importance about 5-minutes before the school bell rang, consider that one full trip of the little hand around that clock is 12 hours. If we condense the 4.6 +/- billion years of geologic time scale into a 12 -hour clock here are some ideas of how long-ago things happened. In today’s geology installment we are going to be looking at rock formations in Joshua Tree NP that formed in the Proterozoic Period in the Precambrian Era which started about 2.3 billion years ago and ended about 541 million years ago. Thinking about our clock analogy, the Proterozoic started right after recess at around 10:57 AM and lasted until just after bedtime at about 9:10 PM. For comparison, the dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago or around 11:39 PM deep into the Tonight Show. Humans did not show up until about 200,000 years ago or at about 1 to 2 seconds before midnight … the Times Square ball just hit the bottom.

The oldest rock outcrops in Joshua Tree are predominantly gneiss (Pinto Gneiss formation) and the Quartzite of Pinto Mountain. These are metamorphic rocks that formed in the Proterozoic. Keep in mind that metamorphic rocks have protolith rock associated with them (i.e. they were something else before they became metamorphic rocks).

So here you go — the seas came in and the seas went out.  This description is extracted and modified from a great little book; Joshua Tree – The Complete Guide by James Kaiser. Way back in the deep dark past, when there may or may not have been even much of a primordial ooze, there were land masses on the earth. If we are to believe the “experts” the earth was probably significantly more dynamic back then between things hitting it, the moon being blasted off at some point earlier and also having an extra billion or so years to experience uplift and erosion. As eroded sediments washed off ancient continents into the ocean, thick sediment layers accumulated in the waters offshore. Over time, the bottom layers were compressed and formed sedimentary rock (think Grand Canyon not the inner gorge). Then, around one billion years ago, Earth’s continents collided to form a single supercontinent called Rodinia (the super continent before its more famous younger relative, Pangea). As the continents collided and smashed into one another, they crumpled (a geologic term for sure) along their edges to form vast mountain chains. Some of the previously formed offshore sedimentary rocks were caught up in these collisions, which generated extreme heat and pressure. Over thousands of years, this heat and pressure metamorphosized the sedimentary rock into gneiss (pronounced “nice”). Gneiss is characterized by obvious banding/layering of darker and lighter minerals in the rock. There are other metamorphic rocks of the same age in the park including quartzite and dolomite.

Then, around 800 million years ago—200 million years after the formation of Rodinia—Rodinia broke apart. North America drifted toward the equator, and Joshua Tree’s gneiss and other metamorphic rocks most likely became part of an offshore continental shelf covered with ocean that was largely lifeless.  For the next 250 million years, the Joshua Tree region lay underwater. Then chapter 3 of the Joshua Tree geologic history that we can discern began around 335 million years ago, Earth’s continents came together again and formed another supercontinent called Pangaea. The Joshua Tree region lay just off the northwest coast of Pangaea, and additional offshore sediments accumulated on top of it. When Pangaea broke up about 200+/-  million years ago (just before the dinosaur franchise appeared and as the Atlantic Ocean began to form), the North American Plate drifted west and collided with a vast (I love a good superlative) tectonic plate called the Pacific Plate, which underlies much of the present-day Pacific Ocean. The collision eventually pushed the Joshua Tree region up above water. It also generated intense heat and pressure that exposed the previously formed gneiss to a new round of metamorphism. The takeaway here is that the already tortured ancient gneiss and quartzite were subject to a second metamorphism; Joshua Tree NP rose from the deep bowels of the earth and then through the magic of erosion, faulting, and mountain building, we ended up with what we see today…. More on the glossed over Pangea geologic history in the next installment. The photo below shows the location of the outcrops in JTNP that are Proterozoic in age.

The colored areas within the park boundary on the map below show the distribution of Proterozoic rock outcrops throughout the park. There is a little license in this interpretation as it includes a few much younger areas that include Proterozoic rocks…. More on that in tectonics next trip.

A trip to Joshua Tree National Park while the temperatures are still in a range that allows hiking without being a camel or carrying several gallons of water with us. We did a short 1.1-mile loop hike to Barker Dam near Hidden Valley to break in some new hiking shoes for Frank and give Joni time to recoup from her allergy/cold attack. Between us we have over 100 photos of that short hike. The rocks were alive with cactus flowers and blooming shrubs. After a great hike we had our usual lunch picnic in the rocks. After lunch we drove back to the trailhead of the Wall Street Mill to reconnoiter and continued along the Queen Valley Road to the east until the wash boarding got to be too much for the small but powerful CMAX. I always come away from Joshua Tree refreshed and relaxed but more aware of the fragile existence that we are so lucky to participate in.

Quick history of Joshua Tree NP. It became a national monument in 1936 and a national park in 1994. Barker Dam was constructed initially in 1900 as a storage source of water for cattle in the vicinity of Joshua Tree NP. In 1910 William Keys acquired the property and continued development in this area.

Fresh off a scandal that Keyes participated in with Death Valley Scotty he moved south from the Death Valley area to Joshua Tree area and befriended Jim McHaney, a local cattle rustler and man of dubious moral character. Jim passed away after living a relatively long and questionable life and Keys took over his property. He worked the property both as a cattle rancher and a miner building the Wall Street Mill and enlarging Barker Dam. In his mining activities, there was a dispute over the Wall Street Mill and in typical Florida or Texas fashion he shot, killed, and in atypical fashion, was convicted of manslaughter of Worth Bagley in 1943. After 10 years at San Quinten, he was paroled and a few years later Trump issued a pardon (oops Freudian slip). What happened is that through the efforts of Erle Stanley Gardner, Keys was pardoned. He passed away in 1964. Keys Ranch is a guided tour area in Joshua Tree that we have yet to get to visit. It is on the list.

The trail works its way through the Monzonite of Indian Cove, a Cretaceous (100+ million years ago (mya)) formation. For non-geologists, a monzonite is an igneous intrusive rock (formed underground from hot-gooey magma). It is very similar to granite although generally finer grained. All granites and granite like rocks are at least second-generation rocks with the source rock being basalts (an above ground, or ocean floor rock generally from volcanic type of activity). If you are a believer in plate tectonics (and who isn’t?), granite like rocks were formed during subduction of continental plates. Essentially one big chunk of the earths crust jams under a second plate and is driven downward in a journey to the center of the earth. It never makes it to the center of the earth as it turns into the goo. The monzonites in Joshua Tree formed as plutons (big chunks of upward migrating, solidifying goo) making mountains. The plutons are estimated to have formed about 20 to 40 miles deep. The stresses in the subsurface, probably from the collision of the plates, created the joints within the pluton (that may or may not have been fully solidified) that give large portions Joshua Tree its characteristic outcrops.

There finally, I have answered a question that Dr. Rudy Epis posed on a test about 47 years ago or so on why is a granite a granite? This answer is probably better than … on the third day there was dry land. Next trip, I will add more, information on the drifting and the seas came in the seas went out history of the area of Joshua Tree.

We spent the next several days at Casa de Pat where she had decided to adopt a new rescue cat. While I was not particularly popular with the cat, Joni and Pat slowly worked their way onto the kitties good list. After suggesting that he might bite off my face or scratch out my eyes, he finally came over and sniffed my hand but that was the extent of our relationship.

We spent most of the morning catching up on laundry and just hanging out as did Joy and Larry. They were settled in the Bernalillo KOA about 15 minutes north of Pats house. Eventually, we got everything together and made a trip to Old Town Albuquerque after a lunch stop at Tako Ten. We headed downtown for some shopping, sightseeing, a stop at the favorite winery and at the favorite home accessory store. Joni got chili infused wine, and we picked out a new wall runner, metal wall art for the bunk room and a metal roadrunner for the outside wall. A great dinner at Pats and always great sunset from her location brought the day to a close.

We had been looking for a hike to get us out and get a bit of exercise. There are literally hundreds of hikes in the vicinity of the Sandia Mountains. Unfortunately, most of them start at 5200+ ft and climb 3000 ft up. My old and only partially functional lungs are not the best at that elevation. Last time we hiked at those elevations, Joy and Larry were commenting on my beautiful blue lips. Pat recommended a City of Albuquerque Open Space Park just about 1-mile south of her place called Elena Gallegos Park. What a gem! The city did a great job with the park and trails for a reasonable price ($1 admission for the car with 4 people). We chose the Pino Trail Loop, a 2.5-mile loop with 305 feet of elevation gain and a maximum elevation of 6760 ft. It climbs the alluvial fan to the rock fans at the base of the Sandia Mountains. At this time of the year, there is a flowing spring/stream at the trail top that flows down slope and is crossed at both the high and low point of the trail. The pictures below are of our hike on the Pino Trail Loop.

The geologic formations that are found in the Sandia mountains are literally older than most dirt. The granites that you see as the majority of the mountains are estimated to be at least 1.4 billion years old and there are older formations both north and south of the main range. At the top of the mountains are conspicuous layered sediments that are about 320 million years old. A quick calculation shows that there is about 1-billion years of rocks missing from that geologic sequence. The Sandia Mountains landscape as we see it today is relatively young (5-10 million years old) and is an east tilted fault block on the eastern edge of the Rio Grande Rift. They mountains are steeper on the west side with a shallower east dipping surface on the east with approximately 35,000 feet of uplift along the eastern margin of the Albuquerque Basin. The geology and tectonics of the whole area are incredibly interesting, perhaps contributing to the seemingly large number of retired geoscientists in the area.

Wednesday was a day we had been looking forward to. Joy, Larry, Joni and I headed to Santa Fe to visit our friend Johnny Walker. Johnny is a 92-year-old Scottish geologist with a couple of PhD degrees in geology who confided in me on this trip that he was thinking about cutting back on work. He is one of the last renowned gentlemen field geologists having worked in mining exploration geology all over the world from Africa to Australia. One of the most polite, articulate and entertaining people we know with stories of deepest darkest Africa, aboriginal Australia, United Nations and World Bank assignments, US and British Embassy parties and meetings in the New York corporate boardrooms of some of the largest corporations in the world. I do get a little jealous though when he holds those goodbye hugs with Joni extra-long. I think he is gauging if he has a chance with her if I die before he does. We had another great dinner at Pats and then took Joy and Larry back to the RV so they could get set to head further north into the wind and snow.

Thursday was a travel day. Our flight left later in the day, so it was a very relaxing and slow morning. We worked out the details of the trip east for the 50th high school reunion, packed our bags and headed out. Pat is such a great hostess! We always enjoy our visits at her beautiful, comfortable, relaxed home. An uneventful pair of return flights except for minor delays got us back to Orange County with all of our checked bags by 7:00 PM with Kylie providing shuttle service to the boat.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park is in the bottom 15 least popular national parks. I think the fact that the true beauty and grandeur and yes … geologic oohs and ahhs of the park are only accessible by long hikes and potentially overnight trail camping combined with the thinking that it is just a mountain in west Texas keeps it relatively under populated. However, the proximity of the park to Carlsbad Caverns, it’s obvious expression of contribution to the creation of the caverns and the geologic significance of the world’s largest Permian reef uplifted by faulting over 2-miles made it a must see for us on this trip.

Luckily, there are several shorter trails to give visitors a taste of the flora and fauna, the geology and the diversity of the area. To get some exploration in, we picked a 2.5-mile loop trail called the Smith Spring and Manzanita Spring Loop. It was a perfect hiking day; less than 80 degrees F., light to moderate winds from the east and clear. The trail climbs the bank-ramp complex, past a groundwater fed pond on a well maintained, easy to follow trail. There were flowers and views to enjoy. The springs were at the topographic high of the trail (5,947 ft) and were very scenic and refreshing. We opted to go counterclockwise in the loop so that the wind would provide some push up the steeper and rockier portion of the trail.

Another great hike with Joy and Larry and great snacks afterwards with cold Sol beers. Afterwards a quick stop at the park headquarters which had very good information on the wildlife and the geology. After that, we hit the micro-brewery in Carlsbad, NM pizza and beers and a stop for ice cream before ending the day.

Day 2 in the park was devoted to exploration of the Big Room. The Big Room is the largest cave by volume in the US. It is a little over 8.2 acres in size with a 1.25-mile trail for exploration. At its highest point, the roof is over 275 above the floor.

While it is clear that what is now known as Carlsbad Caverns was known in antiquity by indigenous peoples of the region and early explorers, the eventual development of the area began with a 16-year-old cowboy named Jim White thinking that he saw smoke while mending fences and chasing cows in 1898. The smoke turned out to be bats emerging from the cave. This discovery led him to a lifelong commitment to the cave including exploration, leading tours, mining guano and eventually fighting to preserve the cave as the first chief ranger of the park. He married, had a son and lived a short distance from the natural entrance to the cave in a house provided by the guano mining company with no running water and minimal electricity. He died in 1946. Contrary to what most people surmise that Whites City at the intersection of US Highway 62 and Carlsbad Cavern Highway was named for Jim, it was actually founded and developed by Charlie White an entrepreneur/developer not related to Jim.

We met Larry and Joy and went across the street from where their rolling home was parked to enjoy breakfast at the Cactus Cafe in Whites City. Nice place, good food, friendly waitress…. not open for dinner and not open every day…. From there we were off to the park, down over 750 feet in the elevator and began exploration of the Big Room. The average exploration time is 1.5 hours. We always apply the retirement factor of 2x to the time and spent about 3 hours sauntering along the trail. At every turn it was a Wow Wow Wow exploration. Consequently, the number of pictures was incredible with over 450 pictures between Joni’s iPhone and my camera. This was narrowed down to the 132 photos included in the slide show below. It should be good for 2 glasses of wine or 2 beers or 1 cocktail — sipped. Again, scale is generally missing from these pictures as described previously.

An early meetup with Joy and Larry and drive up the 7-mile road to the park headquarters to begin our visit. Day 3 was a two-event day with a morning hike and exploration down into the caverns and later in the day, a ranger guided tour into the Kings Palace and an elevator ride out.

The following description of the geology of the caverns is extracted from a USGS description of the park.

The area where Carlsbad Caverns is located today was the coastline of an inland sea 250 million years ago. Due to the warm, shallow, tropical seas, the reef formed from mostly sponges and algae instead of coral, like many reefs today. Landward of the reef redbeds, evaporites, lagoonal mudstones, pisolitic grainstones (calcium carbonite grains that build on each other looking like tiny onions), and back-reef grainstones were deposited during this time period. Today, the reef deposit makes up the Capitan Limestone formation, which is 750 feet thick, and most of the National Park is within this limestone formation. Eventually, by the end of the Permian (approximately 251.9 million years ago marked by the largest mass extinction of life in earth’s history), the sea dried up and the reef became buried by sediment for tens/hundreds of millions of years. Fossils from this time period can be seen within Carlsbad Caverns, including ammonites, crinoids, snails, nautiloids, bivalves, brachiopods, and trilobites. 

Over the past 20 million years local faulting and stresses of the Earth’s crust uplifted the reef sediment by nearly 10,000 feet, creating the Guadalupe Mountains to the south southwest. The sediment eroded, exposing the reef. Within the Guadalupe Mountains there are more than 300 caves, and 119 known caves within Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The Big Room in Carlsbad Caverns is the largest cave chamber in North America, with 8.2 acres of floor area. Additionally, Lechuguilla Cave is the deepest and third-longest cave in the United States.

The caves in Carlsbad Caverns are unusual, as they formed from sulfuric acid instead of carbonic acid. Most caves in the world are formed when water interacts with carbon dioxide and seeps downwards. The location of the Guadalupe Mountains played a key role in the creation of these caves. Carlsbad Caverns National Park is located near the border of New Mexico and Texas, and close to the Permian Basin, which hosts large oil fields. Hydrogen sulfide-rich water rose from the oil reservoirs as late as 12 million years ago and mixed with groundwater to form sulfuric acid. The limestone was dissolved at the water table, and therefore, Carlsbad Caverns was dissolved from below and not from above. Gypsum blocks, a byproduct of sulfuric acid dissolution, can be seen today on the floor of the Big Room of the Carlsbad Caverns.

So, there you have it. More interesting to me was the concept that at some point in time each level of the caverns represented a relatively stable water table. As the caverns were formed, and the uplift of the area continued, there was beyond a significant amount of free-standing water in the caves. All those years when the water dousing guys came around looking for the underground rivers and lakes to drill into for water supply had some bit of rationale. If only there had been a limestone bed in the area!!

The park was not crowded at all during our visit. After going through the visitor center, we hiked down through the natural entrance to the cave and dropped 750 feet on a 1.25 mile relatively steep switchback trail. As we dropped down the temperature dropped to a chilly 56 degrees F, all light was provided by artificial means, and it got very quiet. Lots to see and appreciate.

The second part of the day was a guided tour into the King’s Palace portion of the park with Ranger Rick. This area is only open to ranger guided tours because there are no railings to keep morons from destroying the cave. It is a phenomenal area of the caverns to visit, and Ranger Rick knew his stuff including geology, archeology and history of the area. At one point, he did the obligatory turn off of all the lights for a bit so that we could appreciate what it took to explore the caves back in the late 1800’s.

The photos that accompany this post are primarily from Joni’s iPhone. I found that while my camera gave realistic photos with lighting and color, the iPhone did a far better job of making the caverns wild and crazy features and topography visible. Also, apologies for lack of scale in many of the pictures. The dark doesn’t provide much opportunity for distance comparisons. Moreover, the railings and controls to keep Moron Assholes Generally Americans from ruining the cave features does not allow up close warm and fuzzy approaches to the features.