Funeral Mtns. Pictographs

For the last twelve thousand years, people have been living in and around Death Valley. There have been four anthropologically distinct eras– the Death Valley I, II, III, and IV peoples have left behind evidence of their inhabitance. Throughout the region, pottery, stone points, beads, burial sites, trails, and rock art dot the landscape, and with enough searching, you can find the most precious and delicate remains of all.

Exploring the West Side

The west side of Death Valley is ripe with opportunity. Only a half dozen roads penetrate this immense wild-land, and this difficulty of access makes for unspoiled silence, pristine areas, and opportunities for discovering new things where little documentation exists. The area is laced with ancient game and native trails, and while in some areas they are clear and easy to follow, other times they seem to dead-end or cliff out on a side slope. 

Panorama from atop the alluvial fan above Johnson Canyon's wash.

It was this crisp winter day, one of the shortest of the year, that we set out in search of that which few have seen. Very little has been written about this part of the park just north of Johnson Canyon, where a large blob of rhyolite tuff has emerged in the alluvial fans and created a wonderland of rock seemingly straight out of the labyrinth of myth. 

The "Blue Monarch" Mine

This is a copper mine that had been worked by one miner, Homer Struck, for over thirty years between 1969 and 1999. Before then, its history is not really known well, and what remains of its camp is sparse and largely uninteresting. On the other hand, the road gradually changes in color as the main mine is approached; it gradually becomes bluer and bluer as the tailings spill down the gulch. For centuries, explorers searched for the city of gold; this is the road of copper.

This mine followed a vein of quartz about six feet wide and about 100 feet long, extracting most of this vein to leave behind a tall, narrow slot braced by timber. Some of the logs are native piñon timber, others are newer lumber, clean cut. The vein itself is a mineralogical treasure trove, graced with paint-strokes of chrysocolla, malachite, limonite, quartz, jasper, and hematite, and many more I can't identify! These minerals were all deposited by rising superheated water that rose along a fault or crack in the rock and left behind these streaks and pockets of brilliant color.

The Golden Gate Stamp Mill

High up in the Sierras above Walker Valley, outside Bridgeport, is a dilapidated old stamp mill. It is the last stamp mill managed by the Bishop BLM office, and is a remarkable site because of its scale. Only ten stamps were ever used here, and ten remain, but they are the largest stamps I have ever seen, and the beams that are used to build the mill are colossal old growth wood, 11x22 inches. Each stamp (it's said) weighs 900 pounds, and is at least ten inches in diameter.

The mill was destroyed by avalanches numerous times over the last hundred years, and this structure was built around 1900. It has suffered significant structural damage, and stabilization work took place over three months in 2005 in hopes of keeping it standing through more heavy Sierra winters. Not much else remains besides the mill, cookhouse, and bunkhouse. The arial tramway's remains lay close by, but the mine openings are nearly inaccessible without great tenacity, as they sit 2300 feet above on the mountainside. There were three tunnels, totaling a couple thousand feet of workings. The outbuildings were destroyed in the fatal avalanches in 1911, and everything was rebuilt a few hundred feet away below a lesser slope.

Lava Beds National Monument

Lava Beds National Monument is in the far northeast corner of California, just miles away from the border with Oregon. Boundless plains of grasslands, basalt boulder fields, volcanoes, and the densest concentration of lava tubes in North America (over 700 caves) make this a special place. Beyond the mystic beauty that surrounds this place is a bloody and ancient history. The Modoc Wars that finally displaced the ancient Modoc tribes placed an eventual total of 930 US soldiers against 53 Modoc warriors led by Captian Jack, Kintpuash. Eventually 73 lives were lost, including General Canby and Captain Jack and his four accomplices were captured and hanged at Fort Klamath. Remaining Modoc were moved as prisoners of war to land in what is now Oklahoma. More about the Modoc War can be read about here, Wikipedia, and at the park website for Lava Beds NM.

On a lighter note, the geology of the area is rather interesting. The park is on the fringes of the basin and range province, part of the Great Basin Desert, and at the southern end of the active Cascade Arc. It lies on the slope of the Medicine Lake Volcano, the largest (by volume) of the cascade volcanoes. Mt. Shasta is the most voluminous of the big cones, but lavas from Medicine Lake are estimated to fill at least 140 cubic miles. It is a large basaltic shield volcano with numerous cinder cones and basalt floes along its slopes, perfect conditions for lava tubes. Beneath the recent Cascade volcanism is the southern extent of some of the Columbia River Basalt Flows, namely Steens Mountain Basalt and Painted Mountain Basalt flows.

Petroglyph Point, Lava Beds NM

Tule Lake was a large lake on the border of California and Oregon that mostly dried up in the last

Some of the best carvings

 few hundred years and now contains much bird refuge and agricultural land. It once contained a handful of islands and peninsulas, former tuff rings and small volcanic vents, and one island in particular became a hotbed for Modoc spiritual activity. They would paddle out to this island in their cedar dugout canoes and carve on the soft rock their symbols and musings. As the lake level dropped, more lake standlines were cut into the island, and more petroglyphs were carved. The former island called Petroglyph Point was handed over to the NPS some time ago, and now, in an effort to curb the vandalism that so often plagues rock art sites, a large chainlink and barbed wire fence has been erected around the site. As you view these pictures, imagine that the rock is surrounded by meter deep water and swaying reeds, with windswept plains mantling the far distance and waterfowl crowding the sky. Imagine the carvings are fresh, crisp, and exactly as they were so many centuries ago. 

Cave Rock Spring

Looking out to the Bullfrog Hills, camp at left, from the cave.

The eastern part of Death Valley National Park is an empty triangle jutting into the state of Nevada, and it is lovely for many reasons, but perhaps most of all for its isolation. Most of the roads in this Nevada Triangle are seldom travelled more than a few times a year, and wherever you go, your tire tracks are likely to be among the first in quite some time, even on busy weekends. If you camp out here, the closest people are likely to be in the ghost town of Rhyolite, which has several full time residents.

This spring is a bygone remnant of centuries of occupation by natives and prospectors, but most recently as hosting the workers of the Happy Hooligan Mine nearby. I didn't do any exploration of this mine on this trip, it was just too windy to persuade us to do an in-depth exploration, but that just leaves a reason to return. This corner of the park is so rarely visited that during this week of prolific flower blooms and incredible greenery throughout the region the road was in places completely overgrown with fresh sprouts, and at times we had to get out and find the road alignment out of the greenery. We set up camp after momentarily getting lost in the maze of roads below and found a naturally windproof cave in the cliff nearby and saw it as an opportunity to get out of said extreme winds for a while. We brought the stove and our chairs and enjoyed the solace and solitude of a peaceful evening surrounded by the fire-blackened cave walls used by centuries of people before us. 

Death Valley Petroglyphs: "Spectre Wash"

Spirit Bighorn

Once again out in the remote wild lands that compose most of Western Death Valley, we stumbled upon a site I have found little documentation on. Interestingly, it currently has no vandalism anywhere, though equally interesting was the lack of lithic scatter at the site, or flecks from point making by the natives.

The rock here is a porous basalt/andesite, and the petroglyphs here were very deep, and many were also clearly very very old. Many of them were completely varnished over, detectable only by standing at the right angle with the sun glare exposing the divots where the glyph is. 

Panels here were largely Coso in style, with a few bighorns and a few anthropomorphic people in the mix as well. More recent glyphs are probably from the Timbisha Shoshone, a few hundred to over a thousand years, while the oldest are likely at least 8,000 years old.

Death Valley Petroglyphs: "Lithos Canyon"

One of many large panels in the canyon.

Perched in a remote canyon in the high deserts above Death Valley National Park is a stunning remnant of peoples who were here long before us. This is one of the most impressive petroglyph sites I have visited; with the quiet, dark canyon walls backed by the towering granite mountains behind. Entire herds of pecked-in bighorn sheep of the Coso style, and endless anthropomorphs (human-like) and abstract designs, punctuated by spirals and sunbursts. The petroglyphs are peppered with signs of much later life; miner and rancher graffiti also appears in this canyon, and most of it is quite old, though overshadowed by the tremendous age and complexity of these ancient drawings whose meaning will probably never be known for certain.

Hot Springs Canyon

3rd falls

A popular campground, a dry climate, huge springs, and a rarely visited canyon. Hot Springs Canyon is a unique canyon in this part of the Santa Ana mountains. Deep, twisting narrows harboring a nearly year-round stream with a rich riparian habitat that is paralleled only to the north at Harding Canyon, and to the south beyond the Santa Margarita River, but is unique in the Ortega Corridor. I've been here several times, and every time I find it more amazing. There are four waterfalls before a large impassable fall down about 20 feet into a deep pool that would require rock climbing to bypass, each one a demonstration of the beauty of water. Once I was even here when the depths of the summer drowned this idyllic location and followed a muddy trough until the first deep pool and turned back due to the heat. Not even this horrific dryness took away from the amazing island of verdancy this canyon boasts. These pictures are from three trips; one on December 24, one in January, and one in August.

Shrubbery

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.

The Old Dominion Mine, Santa Ana Mtns.

Looking up the large tailings pile

The rolling crest of the Santa Anas parts often to reveal sweeping views of the Inland Empire, and in the distance, the crenellated  summit of San Jacinto, and the gray tops of Mt. Baldy and San Gorgonio peak above the haze. The dense green chaparral carpet blankets the hillsides, and making all but the most tenacious efforts of walking off the road unsuccessful. Peaking west down Long Canyon, the observer can imagine building this road, through unstable rock and dense undergrowth. At this pass, the Old Dominion Saddle, a commanding view of the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and Lake Elsinore to the South serves as a backdrop to a little-known mining operation that lasted for about fifty years during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Garibaldi Mine

The Garibaldi mine can be considered the first major mine in the Wild Rose District. Its earliest deposits were discovered as early as 1874 by Italians Joe and Zeff Nossano, Joe Lanji, and Charles Andrietta. Probably the first Italians in the region, they located eight rich outcrops of silver ore. The Inyo Independent newspaper reported:

Among them is the 'Garibaldi' mine, a very large lode, showing on the surface hundreds of tons of rich ore. An average sample of the ores of this mine, assayed by J. L. Porter, of Cerro Gordo, yielded $238.18 per ton in silver.

This was an impressive silver deposit if the reports were accurate, but little work was done on the claims for  some time. Some of the lodes were assayed up to $1800 per ton. Interestingly, the eastern portion of these deposits was worked by E.M. Bentley, from the Christmas Gift Mine in Nemo Canyon for some time.

Even though little work had been done, interest began to develop and they were heralded as the most promising in the county, and before long a San Francisco company purchased all eight of the Nossano Brothers' claims for a whopping $70,000 dollars in 1875. The San Francisco investors incorporated as the Garibaldi Mining Co, and by April of the next year a 100-foot incline shaft had been sunk along the top of the vein, employing several men to cut tunnels and drifts to tap the ledge. The Superintendent, Irwin, unfortunately decided the ledge had petered out after reaching ore selling for $600 per ton, possibly due to an error in sinking the shaft and digging away from the ore. The mine lay abandoned for some time after this misfortune.

Bahia de Las Animas, Baja

Mangroves in Las Animas Bay

I am not a stranger to epic spring adventures, but this year was something different. Nine days; 130 people; one beach; eight yellowtail tuna. The most elaborate and exquisite camping trip I have ever embarked on took place on a quiet beach that was so remote it was faster to ride a boat to than it was to drive. So, let me tell you a story.