Cascade Canyon

4 Sept 2018. During my week-long trip to Wyoming last summer, I actually spent more time in Grand Teton National Park than Yellowstone. Prior to visiting, I had heard many positive things about Grant Teton, Yellowstone’s companion to the south. It is smaller, and less crowded than the more iconic park, but certainly had its share of visitors over Labor Day weekend.

Glaciers on the Teton Range.

The Park encompasses a small granitic mountain range with high vertical relief, and is part of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The short range runs from south to north and is adjacent to a wide flat valley situated to the east. The dramatic vertical difference between the valley (which lies at about 7000 ft) and the higher of the Teton peaks (which rise to about 14,000 ft) owes it origin to north-south fault activity. Repeated occurrences of large earthquakes led to the uplift of a large block of granite that became the Teton Range.

Deep valleys among the mountains offer some beautiful scenery and opportunity for exploration. Glacial activity has played at least some role in carving out this topography, and there are some small glaciers that are still visible on the eastern side of the range. Glaciers have also presumably contributed to the presence of many of the lakes at the base of the higher mountains. A range of small to large lakes occur at a modest elevation above the valley floor, their water corralled by sills of rock that I assume were pushed out by glacial activity when glaciers were much larger than they are today.

Just south of Grand Teton, there is a deep east-west running valley named Cascade Canyon. Starting near String Lake one morning in early September, MWS and I ventured into the canyon for a 17-20 mile hike that is probably the longest day hike I have ever done.

To ascend up into the canyon there is some elevation gain from String Lake, but once the valley begins to narrow the hike is relatively flat for several miles. The trail on the canyon floor runs along an alpine creek that fans out in some areas, supporting small alpine meadows of Carex sedges or other wetland plants. On the north side of the valley the vegetation becomes more sparse, grading into fields of granitic scree that then slope up even more abruptly into steep granitic walls.

The head of Cascade Canyon near Solitude Lake.

Cascade Canyon is not unlike Yosemite Valley in some days, though the latter has a wider flat valley and more impressive waterfalls. But both present an impressive geologic backdrop to wild nature. After several miles the trail bifurcated to the southwest and northwest and we continued in the latter direction into the head of the canyon. Gaining some additional elevation, trees became sparser and the intense afternoon sun had more of a presence. In the open areas there were more flowers including patches of pink Penstemom blooms. Finally the trail reached 9000 ft to take us to the eastern side of Solitude Lake.

Solitude Lake, Grand Teton National Park.

We returned back through Cascade Canyon because time didn’t really permit the additional climb up into Paintbrush Canyon which would have made a wonderful loop hike. I think I very briefly spotted a fox on our return in the canyon, and an osprey perched on a tall dead tree on the last stretch of our hike back to the trailhead.

Yellowstone's hydrothermals

I haven’t posted on this blog for a year (!) and I have a number of trips to get caught up on, starting with a fun week in Wyoming at Yellowstone and Grand Tetons during late summer of last year.

Hydrothermal feature called "The Fisher"
at the edge of Yellowstone Lake. 

Yellowstone is the oldest national park in the world and I’m sure visitors arrive in this northwest corner of Wyoming for many reasons. For me, the hydrothermal features were the most exciting part of my first visit to this iconic park last summer.

The park’s hydrothermal features owe their existence to a geologic hotspot that lies under Yellowstone. Like the hotspots under the Hawaiian Islands, Iceland, and other locations across the planet, geologic hotspots are places where hot magma rises closer to the Earth’s surface than elsewhere. The volcanic intrusions into the crust heat groundwater that then rises to the land surface in a variety of forms.

One geologic signature of hotspots that I find fascinating is the volcanic traces they leave over the surface of the Earth over geologic time. As the tectonic plates comprising the crust move over the mantle (in the case of Yellowstone it is movement of the North American Plate), the hotspot remains relatively fixed below the moving plates and a “trail” of volcanic activity develops at the land surface over millions of years. This phenomenon is very easily observed with the island chain of Hawaii that formed as the Pacific Plate has gradually moved to the northwest over the Hawaiian hotspot. The trail of evidence is the string of Hawaiian Islands and Emperor seamounts across the north Pacific. In the case of Yellowstone, the history of volcanic activity in that region over the last 15 million years or so can be seen as a series of surface volcanic features that stretches from northwest Wyomingto southeast Oregon.

The Yellowstone caldera and hydrothermal features inside the national park boundaries. Base map from NPS.

Yellowstone has experienced volcanic eruptions a few times over the last several million years, but today volcanic activity in the park is just manifest as earthquakes and numerous hydrothermal features. Four types of hydrothermal phenomena are present in the park. Each is fueled by heat from below the surface, but all involve water at different temperatures and in different quantities. Mud pots consist of little basins of heated mud of different consistencies at the ground surface. The mud inside the pot is formed when acids dissolve rocks. As steam rises through the mud, it gurgles or bubbles at the ground surface. In Yellowstone, I was able to view mud pots at the Artist’s mud pots area southeast of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Four types of hydrothermal features at Yellowstone. By CNJ, after NPS display.

Mud plots.

Steam vents, or fumaroles, are a second type of hydrothermal feature. They release super heated water vapor through sub-surface vents. Fumaroles can be small, just quietly releasing a steady stream of steam.

A fumarole near the Artists' Paintpots.

Castle Geyser erupting.

Geysers have subsurface reservoirs that fill with heated water which is periodically ejected violently through an opening in the ground. Geysers can erupt with predictable periodicity or can have irregular timing. Yellowstone has the greatest concentration of geysers anywhere in the world. They are diverse in terms of eruption height and periodicity.

Old Faithful is among the class of regularly-erupting geysers, though it is not the tallest geyser in Yellowstone. It erupts approximately every 70 minutes, and I saw several eruptions during the few days we were in the park. For me, a more impressive geyser was Castle Geyser which only erupts about every 12 hours, but for an impressive 20-30 minutes at a time. I was fortunate to catch one of its episodes. Both Old Faithful and Castle Geyser are in the Upper Geyser Basin where there are a wide variety of interesting hydrothermal features.

Hot springs are the final type of hydrothermal feature. At hot springs, heated water forms pools at the ground surface. They can be rather quiescent or quite active like the Beach Spring which periodically alternates between calm conditions and a vigorous flush of bubbles that rise to the surface of the pool that lasts for a minute or two. 

Examples of hot springs in Biscuit Basin. Shell Spring (left) and Mustard Spring (right).

Hot springs are often lined with precipitated minerals and microbial assemblages, lending them a variety of colors. Blue hues are due to the reflection of other colors of light from the pool. Yellow colors are due to precipitated sulfur compounds. Photosynthetic cyanobacteria and other algae may lend green colors to the water. Bacterial mats at the edges of pools may be white, black, or reddish in color.

Many of the more attractive hot spring pools have two or three colors, but the chromatic display at Yellowstone is most brilliant at Grand Prismatic Spring. This spring is so large it looks like a small lake. Lying across a large flat muddy treeless expanse, steam billows from the superheated spring. When the steam clears, the Grand Prismatic has a beautiful spectrum of blue, green, yellow, and orange.

Grand Prismatic Spring as seen from a trail on the west side of the lake (left) and from up close (right).

Boardwalks facilitate an up-close view of the Grand Prismatic Spring from the east side at ground level, but a short trail that climbs a nearby hillside also leads to a view from above. Since we were backcountry camping for two nights in a forest just a short distance from Grand Prismatic Spring, we viewed it on several occasions and from different angles. In the cool mornings, the brilliant colors of the pool were generally obscured by a large cloud of steam perpetually rising from the spring. However, later in the day as air temperatures warmed, there was less steam to block the rainbow of colors.

Our last of several visits to Grand Prismatic also held an unusual surprise. While we were out on the farthest boardwalk near the edge of the spring, a bison crossed over the boardwalk behind us and into the mudflat to the east of the spring. It seemed unfazed by either the runoff from the spring (which I presume was rather warm), or the eager tourists eyeing the huge animal. In no rush, it seemed unsure of where to go next. We left before learning of the resolution of that event. Curiously I had earlier seen some animal prints in the soil close to the spring, and this surprise visit confirmed that bison do wander quite close to the hydrothermal features from time to time. 

Several examples of smaller springs in Upper Geyser Basin.

The Sapphire Pool in Biscuit Basin.

Scott Creek

There are fantastic low morning tides in the northeastern Pacific this week and I came out to the central California coast very early this morning to survey marine algae at a few sites. Up today was Scott Creek, a location in northern Santa Cruz County that I have visited since my undergraduate days. Scott Creek itself is a small creek that flows under Highway 1 and empties into a sandy beach. To the north of the sandy beach are extensive intertidal sandstone benches with an abundance of sessile invertebrates and algae.

Scott Creek is often very windy, but was less so early this morning. There was a moderate swell and overcast skies that turned into drizzle as the morning progressed. The tidepools revealed nothing of great surprise to me today, but the tide was exceptional and exposed extensive low intertidal beds of the surfgrass Phyllospadix torreyi. Kelps and red seaweeds were in abundance. Bull kelps (Nereocystis luetkeana), one of my favorite seaweeds, were rather common, occurring as scattered individuals or in clusters of more plants. The sporophytes of this species ranged considerably in size, from a very small plant with tiny pneumatocyst and single as-yet-unbifurcated blade, to plants of several meters length with thick stipes and large pneumatocysts.

A sampling of some photos from today:

Bull kelps: larger sporophytes.

Smaller bull kelp sporophytes.

Laminaria sinclairii, another common kelp at Scott Creek. This species grows as
aggregates of stipes and thin blades, typically in intertidal areas scoured by sand.

Callophyllis, an attractive genus of smaller red seaweeds that grow in the low intertidal.

Osmundea (Rhodophyta).

Bryopsis. I found a few of individuals of this small green
seaweed in a tide pool in the mid intertidal. 

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon is the smallest of Utah’s five national parks, and the last I have been able to visit. It also appears to be the youngest geologically of the parks, at least at the level of its world-famous amphitheater.

Panorama of the Bryce Canyon amphitheater.

Bryce sits at the top of the sedimentary rock strata of southern Utah that is known as the “Grand Staircase”, a series of geologic steps stretching geographically from southern Utah to the Grand Canyon that expose hundreds of millions of years of geologic history. The grand staircase formed by tilting of the ground and erosion of these sedimentary layers. The beauty of the area in part is due to the different colors of the sedimentary layers.

Stratigraphic layers of the Grand Staircase in northern Arizona and southern Utah. Lower image by
National Park Service, public domain.

The amphitheater carved into the eastern side of Bryce Canyon was the impetus for the creation of the park nearly 100 years ago. It is a stunning collection of sandstone spires known as hoodoos. These reddish rocks are relatively young (of Cenozoic age) and are part of the Claron Formation, one of the youngest layers of rock in the park.

The hoodoos are packed tightly together in an arena just below a plateau at the park’s entrance. Their formation is fascinating and complicated, involving steps of crisscrossed ground fractures and differential erosion. Hoodoos are a type of geologic spire, unique because they vary in width from top to bottom due to different rates of erosion of the rock. At Bryce the hoodoos are mostly reddish in color (that indicates oxidized iron in the rock), but there are lovely bands of whitish rock too that decorate the amphitheater.

Hoodoos in the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater.

The other white that decorated the area in early May was snow – which was falling due to precipitation moving through Utah that week and the high elevation of the park. Snow fell on and off the afternoon I arrived at Bryce, sometimes in large flakes. The tops of hoodoos and other surfaces around the amphitheatre were left with a thin dusting of white that added vibrancy to the red rocks.

The Pink Cliffs with a light layer of spring snow.

That night I camped at the southern end of the park at about 8500 ft elevation. I drove to Rainbow Point (9115 ft), and then descended a few hundred feet over a mile and a half along an easy trail to a backpacking campsite at Yovimpa Pass. There was little doubt it was going to be a cold night, but I stayed dry during the hike and doubled up on clothes overnight, keeping me reasonably warm. About midnight I could hear the patter of snow on the tent, and I awoke to an inch or so of snow on the tent and forest floor in the morning.

Snow on my tent and borrowed bear canister in the morning.

Small waterfall and hoodoos at the northern
end of the park.

At such a high elevation, Bryce was well forested, mainly with pines near the amphitheater, and mixed conifer species at higher elevations, including firs. Rainbow Point also had a conifer species I have wanted to see for quite some time: the Bristlecone Pine! These ancient craggy botanical sentinels occurred in a population at the windy edge of the point. The Bristlecone Pine deserves its own post, so I’ll defer writing about it more for now.

Bryce was crowded and touristy (near the roads), but well worth a visit! My backcountry experience stood in contrast to the easily accessible areas of the park – there was not a soul in sight for my overnight trip to Yovimpa Pass – and I think a future backcountry trip through Bryce would be well worth it!

Reference

Morris TH, Ritter SM, Laycock DP. 2012. Geology Unfolded. An Illustrated Guide to the Geology of Utah’s National Parks. BYU Press.

Canyon de Chelly

Sculpted sandstone at Canyon de Chelly
National Monument, Arizona.

Canyon de Chelly, a moderate-sized national monument in the northeast corner of Arizona, was not one of my planned destinations through the Southwest this spring, but it made sense to stop given my route from New Mexico to southern Utah. It was a brief stop, but a treat!

The monument is within the Navajo Nation, a large Native American reservation that stretches from the Grand Canyon to the Four Corners region. The Tribe and the Park Service have joint management responsibility for the monument, and that specific arrangement is manifest in some of the not-so-ordinary arrangements for an NPS site (more on that in a bit).

The monument is accessible from the small town of Chinle on US route 191 and this is essentially where the canyon begins. It deepens to the east, branching into several canyons. There are north and south rim drives but I only had time to observe the canyon from the south rim and make a few stops before heading to southern Utah.

Maps of Canyon de Chelly National Monument. At left: Map of Canyon de Chelly's location in northeast Arizona in the Four Corners region by Shannon1, cropped and arrow added to original map, CC BY-SA 4.0 license. At right: General map of the monument by the National Park Service, public domain.

At the end of the south rim road is a viewpoint of Spider Rock, a picturesque pair of red rock spires that tower hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. At the lookout point there are some wonderful panoramas of the winding canyon and vegetation growing below.

Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

At only one location in the monument are visitors allowed to walk unguided into the canyon, and that is the short trail to White House. The trail begins on the mesa and then descends pretty steeply into the canyon. Several plots of land are visible on the canyon floor – these farmed areas are privately owned by members of the Navajo Nation.

Once one has descended several hundred feet into the canyon, it is only a short distance more to the White House, which are ancient ruins set in the base of a towering rock cliff. The ruins are similar to those found at Mesa Verde and Bandelier and were constructed centuries before the Navajo people entered the area. In fact, the Canyon has apparently been inhabited by humans for some 5000 years.

Two views of the White House at Canyon de Chelly. The upper level has original remains of Ancient Puebloan dwellings while the structures on the canyon floor below have apparently been restored recently.

Near the White House, several Navajo artisans had set up tables on the dusty canyon floor and were selling jewelry and pottery. This vending was apparently one of the unique arrangements between the Park Service and the Tribe. The other is that guided tours throughout other areas of the canyon are offered by Navajo Nation members. I spoke with one artisan for a bit and purchased a small seed pot from her which was engraved with her name on the bottom and “CDC”, the abbreviation for the monument. She resided in Chinle but her family owned a plot of land in the canyon.    

Some petroglyphs near the White House.

Carlsbad Caverns backcountry

One of the best ways to experience the National Parks is in the backcountry, off the beaten path. There is a time and place for the more curated nature experience, the “park” component of the National Park System, and frankly is the only way of engaging with some of the most iconic geologic features of the parks. At Carlsbad Caverns for example, it seems unlikely one could ever tour the caverns without running into a fair number of people. Similarly, if the grandeur of Yosemite Valley is to be experienced, it usually has to be shared with the crowds that assemble beneath its most iconic features.

Rattlesnake Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, April 2018.

Yet the backcountry of many national parks offers another treasure: solitude. It is a commodity in increasingly short supply in today’s noisy and hyperactive world, and one that seems to be vastly underappreciated given how few park visitors are willing to get off the paved trails and away from the visitor centers.

During my spring trip through the Southwest I was fortunate to backcountry camp at White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, and later on, at Bryce Canyon in southern Utah. The latter two parks offered an opportunity for a night of complete solitude where I was likely the only person out in the wilderness within miles. At Carlsbad Cavers I hiked into Rattlesnake Canyon from a dirt loop road winds through Chihuahuan Desert habitat west of the entrance to the caverns.

Unopened flowers of ocotillo, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, April 2018.

Texas walnut growing in a dry wash.

The region around Rattlesnake Canyon is a collection of rounded mesas dissected by winding canyons, not unlike the topography I remember from the southern part of Mesa Verde National Park. Ocotillo, prickly pear cacti, and shrubs grew throughout the dry slopes. It wasn’t as colorful as the Sonoran Desert vegetation I observed just days before in Saguaro National Park, but the blooming ocotillo added some vibrant color to the desert scrub.

At the bottom of the valleys were water would be more frequently available (no water was to be seen at all during my visit) small trees – Texas walnut (Juglans microcarpa) grew. One of the more interesting plants to catch my attention, growing throughout the park, was “sotol”, an interesting yet forbidding plant that grows in basal rosettes of pointed leaves like some species of Yucca. The long slender leaves bear sharp hooks which are very adept at catching clothes.

Sotol is formally Dasilirion wheeleri, and a member of the Asparagaceae family. Yucca, which it resembles in overall growth form is actually in a different plant family, the Agavaceae. Interestingly sotol has been used to produce both beer-like and distilled alcoholic drinks. Fibers of the plant were also useful to the Ancient Puebloan people of the Chihuahuan Desert.

Sotol, Carlsbad Caverns NP, April 2018.

Barbary sheep near the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This species is non-native
and was introduced into the area from northern Africa.

Carlsbad Caverns

I’ve been in two very spectacular caves before in the western US: Lehman Cave at Great Basin National Park, and Oregon Caves National Monument. Both had ornate features of various shapes such as stalactites and drapery, precipitated inside the caves slowly over countless years. However Carlsbad Caverns, by its palatial size and seemingly endless collection of geological treasures, is in a league of its own. 

The extensive caverns hundreds of feet below the surface are the main attraction of this smaller national park in southern New Mexico. The park rests on the rim of an ancient limestone reef from the Permian Era (251-299 mya) that once encircled a shallow sea in southern New Mexico and northern Texas. (Guadalupe Mountains National Park in northwest Texas is part of this same reef system.) That limestone setting provided the geologic and chemical ingredients for cave formation.

Map of the ancient Permian limestone reef system that includes present day Carlsbad Caverns at left (source) and the natural entrance to the caverns at right.

I took the self-guided tour to view the publicly-accessible caverns, entering at the “natural entrance” and spent over three hours underground, amazed at the size, variety, and sheer number of formations. These formations included stalactites, stalagmites, columns, drapery, and other features, each given different names. 

Stalactites and stalagmites.

The “Big Room” is immense and itself can take well over an hour to view at a leisurely pace. There were several pools underground too and I was particularly drawn to these including one called “Mirror Lake”. Drops of water falling from above kept sending ripples through the pool. Of course naturally all of these features would be hidden to the human eye in complete darkness, but the Park Service carefully uses dim lights throughout the cave system to highlight features.

Features in the Big Room.

The main caverns are apparently only one of over a hundred caves that have been discovered so far in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Discovery and mapping of caves continues. There is more to the park than the caverns themselves – as amazing as they are – and in the next blog post I’ll feature some of what I observed while backpacking into the park’s wilderness.

This large column has been named "Rock of Ages".

Other types of formations in the caverns. At right is a formation termed "popcorn", although this type more reminds me of a coral reef.

Formations reflected in the water at "Mirror Lake".

Another pool with formations. The faint green color is due to algae, which apparently will grow eventually hundreds of feet below ground if a dim light source is available.

An area termed the "Boneyard" by earlier explorers.

A ladder from earlier exploration in the 1920s (left) and a view of Lower Cave from the main caverns (right).

More stalactites.

Perhaps some 800 feet directly below the Visitor's Center there is almost an underground city where there are bathrooms, vendors and this mail drop. Elevators lead to the surface. Though I walked in via the natural entrance gradually descending into the caves, I took an elevator up (here photographed at 250 ft below ground).

Brilliant White Sands

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico.

White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico was stunning and exceeded my expectations. It will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of my trip through the Southwest this spring, made so in large measure because I was able to camp in the backcountry overnight.

The dunes are a brilliant white color due to being composed of gypsum (selenite) sand. They are remarkably cool to the touch, which is counter-intuitive for anyone who has spent time on a sandy beach in the warm sun. Because the sand was so cool and soft I was able to do some hiking in bare feet. The mineral composition of the sand (selenite is a hydrated mineral) and the relatively high water table in the dunes apparently help keep it cool.

The dunes are extensive, covering close to 300 square miles in a valley east of the San Andreas Mountains in southern New Mexico. A US military missile testing range is the Monument’s neighbor on three of its four sides, and sometimes the Monument closes because of missile activity.

Like coastal beach dunes, some of the gypsum dunes at White Sands had a modest cover of vegetation, while others were barren. Plants were more apt to be found in flat interdune areas that may provide longer-term stability from the vagaries of shifting sand. The most attractive flowering plant was sand verbena, with hemispherical clusters of light purple flowers. The only animal life I really saw was two species of beetles, though the Park Service made a point to illustrate that populations of animals (mammals, reptiles) inhabiting the dunes had adapted to become lighter in color than nearby populations which live in habitats with darker substrates.

Some dune vegetation, including a Yucca (or similar species), small trees that may be cottonwoods (Populus), and purple-flowered sand verbena.

 

Dune beetles.

Sunset over the dunes.

White Sands is a photographer’s dream, at least for the style of photography I am interested in. From the macro to landscape scales there were alluring subjects, curves, and shadows all around. I found the most compelling time for photography to be perhaps an hour or two before sunset and an hour or two after sunrise. During this period when the sun was low on the horizon, it cast beautiful shadows over the dunes and seemed to provide an ideal level of contrast. The white sand in the shadows in the early morning often appeared purple to me.

One feature of the dunes that I found particularly attractive was the parallel ripples, typically no more than a few centimeters in height over the dune surface. There are analogous undulations in coastal sand caused by water, and the ripples in the middle of this desert brought to mind the fact that air (wind) is like a fluid, acting to shape the substrate below it by its direction and strength of flow.

White Sands is certainly a park I would visit again, hopefully in the same fashion as this trip: sleeping under the moon and stars in a dunefield of sublime beauty.

Animal tracks.

Different ripple patterns on the surface of the dunes.

Shadows cast at a dune crest.

An interdune area with rougher texture, I suppose composed of selenite crystals.

Looking south over the dune field with the early morning sun casting shadows to the west.

My campsite and hiking barefoot in the dunes.