Trabuco Canyon to Los Piños Peak

 I continue to rave about the wonderful jewel of California the Santa Ana Mountains are, and Trabuco canyon continues to remain a center of beauty and exploration for many of the range's visitors. On this visit, I made a long slog from the end of the road all the way up to the crest of the mountains at Los Piños Peak, the fourth highest in the area. It was a drizzly December day, and with a late start, we set out for 10.7 miles with about 2800 feet of elevation gain.

The weather was drizzly and windy, the clouds brushing the tops of the peaks and enveloping us at the top. Small amounts of hail and rain were a stark contrast to the heat we had endured last time on Los Piños peak. Instead of a sweeping view across California, I was treated with a mystic, almost forbidding dome of cloud shrouding the view from me. It was surreal.

The Devil's Postpile National Monument

The Devil's Postpile

It's one of California's most unique landmarks: the towering columns of columnar basalt looming high over the valley floor is a postcard image for California and the National Park system. Devil's Postpile is a national monument in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains and is a hotspot for tourism between May and November. But enough introduction now, and on to the really interesting part: the geology!

Return to Marble Canyon

The famous crossroads sign at Marble Canyon

My most recent trip was mostly return visits, and since I've written on the exploration of Marble Canyon before, I figured I could now write the Informing part of it. This part of the Cottonwoods, including Marble and Cottonwood Canyons, is almost entirely end-paleozoic era limestones and marbles between 350 and 290 million years old. A lot of the rock along the canyon includes black balls and lumps of a microcrystalline chert. These result from colonies of algae that have fossilized and stand out prominently against the grey limestone.

Obsidian Dome

The road to the top of the dome

Mammoth Mountain is as renowned for being part of a volcano as it is for its skiing. The Long Valley Caldera, a colossal volcano in the eastern Sierra Nevada region, is an area of extreme volcanism. Volcanoes have been erupting here since long before its last climactic eruption 750,000 years ago, and the last eruptions are as young as a few hundred years. This final eruption erupted approximately 600 cubic kilometers of material and resulted in the subsidence of the crust between 2 and 3 kilometers to create the current caldera. This particular feature, Obsidian Done, is related to the volcanics here but is from a different system: the Mono-Inyo crater chain. 

Fossil Falls

Fossil Falls with the Sierra Nevada backdrop.

Ancient Owens Valley had a bustling population center here, at Fossil Falls. Fossil Falls is a series of cascades along the ancient Owens river, when it was fed by a series of melting glaciers from the Sierras and by a much larger Owens Lake. At this point along the river, a series of basaltic lava flows impounded the valley between 400 and 10 thousand years ago. During the most recent period of glacial Owens River, the waterfall poured over the lava flows and slowly eroded upstream, and an increase in eruptions from nearby Red Hill may have spurred pothole formations in the upper falls. These potholes, formed when rocks or sand get caught in a hole and spin around in a vortex that gradually bores a hole in the rock, are what Fossil Falls are best known for today. Some of them form chimneys over twenty feet deep that open up at the bottom, and many interconnect. The upper falls today is a convoluted maze of these potholes. When the river flowed here, the noise would have been cacophonous and the mist blinding.

The Entirety of Multnomah Creek

The tourist view of Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls is one of the largest tourist attractions in Oregon, and probably the most popular stop in the Columbia Gorge. It is the tallest waterfall in Oregon at 635 total feet over three drops, but contrary to popular belief, it is neither the fourth tallest ephemeral nor the second tallest year-round falls in the US.  The trail to the top is the most popular in the state, and is one of the most beautiful sights to see in the Pacific Northwest. The creek, Multnomah Creek, starts from underground springs high on the slopes of Larch Mountain (4,061 feet) and descends rapidly over just about six and a half miles to the shore of the Columbia River. Mt. Hood National Forest trail No. 441 parallels the creek from top to bottom and winds through stands of old-growth Douglas Fir forest for 6.8 miles. We hiked it one way, from Larch Mountain to the river shore.

The Inyo Mine

Inyo Mine around 1938 during the rebooted operations.

The famed Inyo Gold Mine is one of the most popular mine attractions within Death Valley National Park, and also is rather historically significant; being one of the first discoveries in this part of the Funeral Mountains, and also the mine that proved the most successful out of all mines in the Echo-Lee mine district. It had been a promising claim since its location in 1905, but the railroad reaching Rhyolite made it economically productive, and production soon shifted into high gear. Unfortunately, the Panic of 1907 harmed the mining inuctry too hard, and the company faced bankruptcy by the end of the summer, and slowed production to a crawl, ending by the end of the year. 

In 1938, the company had started up again, and installed a large ball mill on the property which was processing 25 tons of ore per day, with eight men employed in production. Among the mill equipment were two concentrating tables, a massive jaw crusher, and a the large ball mill. Water had to be hauled in, and the high costs overran the high grade ore, and the Inyo died for a second time. The final debut of mining activity was a smelter constructed high above the mill site, owned by a Thompson and Wright, ended in the wrong with a crippling debt and no ore to speak of. Reports stated that the furnace had been fired no more than once.

The Echo-Lee district is famed with failure, and none of the many mines in the area amounted to half of the booms in the Panamint Valley or the nearby Keane Wonder district. The area was bounded by large strikes, and although the Inyo never emerged as a contender for a rail spur, it remains as a sentinel of the past, its wooden remains standing patiently against the roaring of the desert wind and the test of time.