Shasta

After some limited planning and even more limited training, the Rock Star and I made our way up to Mt Shasta (at 14179 ft) to give a lesser-traveled route a summit attempt. We decided to give the Hotlum-Bolum ridge a try, although up until Friday morning, we were still tossing around other route ideas, like Hotlum-Wintun ridge, West Face... even Avalanche Gulch etc... 

rental boots vs my boots. no contest.

Looking at my beloved boots we thought that the sole peeling away from the toe might elicit some leakage, and I went to the Fifth Season to rent a pair of plastics before we got started.

We marked our way beyond the treeline with a GPS (after having been warned that getting back to the trail is one of the most challenging parts of this route), took an unnecessary detour up a big rock scramble to make our way up to camp among the moraines at 9500 ft only to find that a little longer pursuit up a snowslope to our right would have gotten us up there with significantly less fatigue (oops). In the end, since we didn't cross the Bergschrund (known henceforth as a "BFC" for "big fucking crevasse"), we figured this more challenging ascent still gave us credit for having done a "moderately technical" route...

It was remarkably hot considering how far north we were and at such an elevation. 

camp among the moraines at 9500 ft

Our camp was gorgeous and comfortable with spectacular views of the peak - but by the time we got there I was seriously regretting the boot rental as my feet were extremely unhappy. The next day we got going around 4am, which was probably about 3 hours too late for the conditions. We saw a handful of headlamps shining up the ramp before we headed up ourselves, and they must have gotten started hours earlier. 

sunrise hitting the summit, we're partway through the moraines and heading up to the next snow slope

By 10 am, 2 major things happened that prevented us from getting to summit:

1. my rental boots were trying to amputate my feet, I felt like a giant whiner but each step was just agonizing, and 
   
2. the sun was warming up the snow so fast that the ice our crampons were happily clamping into until then suddenly gave way into slush and we were "postholing" our way up in knee-deep mush. 

the Rock Star returning from his apex near the Bergschrund

We tried to press on to the Bergshrund at least, I caved at 11700 ft and the Rock Star made it to 12000 ft - then we admitted defeat but committed to give it a go next year - perhaps a little earlier in the season. And with a broken in pair of new boots for myself. Better safe then dead I always say!

my view back down the slope beyond my crampon, it's steeper than it looks - our camp is near the end of the "tongue of moraines" - the flattish looking stuff for those who don't know what I'm saying...

help me find...

Canada flag/maple leaf knee socks. Seriously, why do these not exist online??? I have found USA, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, the UK... but no Canada. This is wrong! If you find said Canadian knee/over the knee socks, I'm a size 10 foot - and thus a size large sock. Please and thank you.

Tasting the Terroir - sneak peak!

After much research, both of the reading kind AND the drinking kind, I almost have a finalized list of committed vineyards to feature in my class this fall. All are estate single varietals, and all are truly unique from each other. This is looking like a fabulous line-up and I'm so excited!!!

If you're in the area, go and check these wineries out - tell them I sent you! They are really working with my limited budget, and I wouldn't be using any of them if I didn't think their wine was great. Of course, what really makes a wine "great", is that you love it!

The For Sures (as in, I actually have the wine in my possession)

Pretty-Smith

Penman Springs

Cinnabar

Caparone

The Almost Certain (as in, I have a price worked out, but no wine in my possession yet)

Clautiere

The Anticipated and Greatly Hopeful (as in, things look good, but nothing "set in stone" yet)

Adelaida

top 2 least helpful things...

The Great SW USA Adventure

After much fund-raising and heinous heinous planning, I embarked on leading a group of students and my sister on a 10 day camping excursion from Bakersfield to Carlsbad Caverns and back. With the exception of one flat tire, we literally had no problems at all - some sketchy weather at times, but all in all, the mission in its entirety was accomplished with success.

Below are highlight photos from each day, the rest of them can be found here.


Day 1: Death Valley - the scenery was spectacular, and I've been yearning to see the fabled moving rocks up close in person for years, so this was for sure the highlight for me. Way too cool!


Day 2: Zion (and some rain) - the checkerboard mesa was pretty spectacular, although I can't seem to forget the extreme craving for pancakes after we saw oodles and oodles of stacked up crossbedded sandstone...


Day 3: In the rain we saw Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon National Parks, but having been to both before, and always coming away with the feeling that photos just don't do the grandeur justice, I have to say that the fake cops lining every small Utah and Arizona town were truly the highlight of that day. I suppose the purpose of the dummy cops is defeated when 9 people are poking in the windows of all the cop cars pointing and laughing and taking photos...


Day 4: From the Glen Canyon Dam to Sunset Crater to Montezuma's Castle & Well, and ending at Meteor Crater - the highlight of this long day for me must have been laughing at the photos of two students: one wearing a crooked tree as a mustache, and the other wearing a "junior ranger" vest in a gift shop - though they were hysterical, I'm showing you the craziness that is Montezuma's Castle.


Day 5: The spectacular Petrified Forest (and Painted Desert), followed up by Roswell and the Bottomless Lakes in New Mexico. Some of the petrified trees were impressively large...


Day 6: A morning at Carlsbad Caverns, the by the Permian Reef Trail (Texas) and onwards to camp at Rockhound State Park (obvious choice for a geology group). My highlight is the unlabeled cave formation of such obvious nature...


Day 7: A lengthy but scenic drive through the Sonoran Desert (yes, I realize that most of the trip was actually in the Sonoran Desert - but this day went through the actual National Monument) - while the highlight was likely the "Desert Dance Party" at the camp at the Petroglyph Site, this Chuckwalla I saw was pretty freaking cool.


Day 8: An excursion to the Salton Sea (as stinky as promised) brought us full circle back to California, and while we camped at Palm Canyon in Borrego Springs (Anza-Borrego State Park), which was beautiful and delightful and comfortable, the highlight has to be a dead fish on a stick. GROSS!


Day 9: Joshua Tree National Park - I FINALLY made it inside the park boundaries - and the spheroidal weathering of the monzogranite is really what makes this place stand out. Especially with butt- and whale-shaped rocks...


Day 10: Departure for home via my old faithful: the grand Mojave Desert. After over a year of threatening to do so, the Creech finally went for a swim in one of the brine trenches. We all nearly died of laughter.

spotted!

A smart car in Kern County!!!
(I like the setting of this photo: credit cops...)

reading for rock nerds

I just got back from a lengthy drive to see Bird Nerd graduate and show off the fruits of two years of hard creative labour. If you have the time, you should definitely check out his work. If you have the money, you should definitely help an artist out!!!

Anyway, in the 11 hours that I spent driving this weekend (ugh) I made some serious headway in my most recent audio-book purchase: A Crack in the Edge of the World (Simon Winchester). While I'm only somewhere like halfway through (needed music breaks to rest my weary brain) I was amazed by all the connections between the book, the weekend, and all the other science works of non-fiction non-textbook that I've read over the recent years. I also realized that I MUST MUST MUST read a freaking novel for crying out loud.

I thought I'd drum up a list of "must-reads" for the geologically inquiring mind based on what I've read and loved:

• The Map that Changed the World (Simon Winchester)
• Cadillac Desert (Marc Reisner)
• Water Follies (Robert Glennon)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
• Annals of the Former World (John McPhee) - this is really 5 books in one...
• The Man who Found Time (Jack Repcheck)
• The Control of Nature (John McPhee)
• The Dragon Seekers (Christopher McGowan)

I'm sure there are more - this is just what I could think of off the top of my head coming down the freeway.

Meanwhile, the really weird thing is this: At Bird Nerd's graduation 2 honourary degrees were awarded, one of which was to artist Ed Ruscha - who was discussed in A Crack at the Edge of the World for some reason, in conjunction with UC Davis geologist Eldridge Moores, the star of Assembling California (part of Annals of the Former World), which is the book that I used to teach Geology of California this past semester. Oh, and there was a quake of magnitude large enough to care in So Cal today. Freaky.

Kiki's new friend

I accidentally adopted a kitten last weekend. He purrs constantly. I mean constantly. I mean, Kiki purrs constantly and seems quiet by comparison to the kitten. They are friends already - routines involve the kitten following Kiki everywhere he goes, or circling Kiki at close enough range that Kiki licks him on his way around.

In a shoebox lid... the sound effect that goes here is: purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Name is not confirmed yet - due to the X shaped mark on his head, I was thinking X-men (Logan) - but... not great. Other not great names that have been considered are: Agamemnon, Goliath, White Kitty, X Head, Kumi...

But considering that he gets in everything (trash - at least this is the sewing machine trash - but he's been in others, believe me) - the name Loki (Norse God of trouble making) is gaining a lead in the name race (although I mainly call him White Kitty or Kitten)

Caught on my computer's "photo booth" proof that they're hanging out and snuggling...

Only ignorant people wash their driveways with water hoses to get the dirt off of them when they live in a desert... Did you hear that Kern County???

This year I was the MESA faculty adviser, and was asked to do a "green" educational outreach project with some students. The students naturally selected were those of the newly founded Geology Club, and the project (appropriate for people who are unaware that they are living in a desert) was on water conservation.
We teamed up with some folks over in Digital Arts who helped make our information look pretty and appealing (ie, the poster above, which was simply a photo I took in Yosemite until Will transformed it). The culmination of our hard work was a week of display booth on campus - complete with water taste test - during what I called "Earth Week" (the week during which Earth Day falls).


You can check out our outreach efforts (Odyssey: The Journey of Water) at our website. In fact, please do check it out... it's not outreach without people seeing it!!! As a grand finale we viewed the documentary Flow, which was enraging, and either pushed me to rapidly pursue a PhD and get employed by the UN or to rapidly get a yurt in the mountains and run away from this world... I'm not exactly sure which. But if you haven't seen Flow yet, get on it. And read Water Follies too while you're at it. And Bottlemania. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

last school field trip of the semester...

Parkfield (pop.18) and Montana de Oro are not new to my field trip assortment, but this year I put them together and teamed up with my Rock Buddy and his class to make the excursion. On the day out I was annoyed by not being able to photograph the bend in the bridge well enough to see the right-lateral motion on the San Andreas Fault. Then, when I looked at my photos, I found this one and proved myself wrong...


Later on that day, right before we headed home, sea lions were spotted just off the coast! I was pretty excited, but there's just not enough zoom on this camera to capture them clearly. They are the shiny things on the rock. The shiny things in the water are seaweed type stuff.

desert scenes, abundant licking, and a heart shaped xenolith

My annual field trip pilgrimage out to the Mojave came with a lot of the old, but with fresh new eyes... A few faithful ones made it up the dunes and we jumped and didgeridoo-ed our way down until nearing exhaustion, as is required there.

Desert Scenes:

Kelso Dunes

Flowering Cactus Growing out of Vesicular Basalt

Joshua Trees

Bristol Dry Lake: a new terrain adventure for wheeling extensive distances in surprisingly short spans of time... B the Singer was gone in a flash!

Abundant Licking:

J-Spazz and B-Singer are all over this rock salt

The Knee (above) and All American below show them all how it's done

...I didn't even ask (only to take the photo)

And a Heart Shaped Xenolith:

Heart shaped piece of Farallon plate xenolith, composed almost entirely of olivine, likely making it a dunite inclusion. But a HEART-shaped one.

Moro Rock (the one with 1 "r")

View behind Moro Rock, at Castle Rock.

Lunch spot at Moro Rock, looking down into the valley.

Big red snowy trees.

Near Potwisha (where I camped for xmas), gorgeous little stroll by the river - had no idea this was here before!!!

Last week's delayed update was a jaunt with my Faithful Rock Buddy up into Sequoia National Park for a relaxing 4 mile hike in the fresh crisp air, big trees, snow, and that other giant intrusive igneous rock named Moro. (You might remember the other, Morro, from previous posts). Later we also did "research" at various wineries (ok, 7) for my future "wine & geology" class.

Riding the Ridge Route

My "commuter bike" - rather than take my beloved road bike on this journey, I opted for the knobbier tires and the massive saddle bags of my commuter so that I would be able to carry a full fledged picnic along the ridge for us to enjoy. My ipod (which obviously normally resides in the case taped to my bike frame) did not come on this journey!

Due to the locked gate some of you might remember seeing from my previous Ridge Route post, I came up with the concept of biking it. We headed out yesterday and did some 17+ miles on it, way up high in the Transverse Ranges, battling wind the whole time. It amazed me on the Century I rode a few years ago how the wind managed to be a headwind the whole time, even when we switched directions, so I wasn't entirely taken off guard when that happened again yesterday.

Most of the shots I took look the same, so I picked a couple with riders & geology in them. You'll note that these shots tend to be looking up hill. This is largely because it felt like most of the ride was up steep inclines. Of course, every steep incline meant a downhill on the return. The downhills though, on this ancient battered overgrown rubble-filled sand patchy road, were more bone-rattling "try not to die as I veer around yet another steep corner" panic ridden rather than opportunities for my hobby of taking photos while riding a bike.

Here we are at Swede's Cut, which is comparable to Beale's Cut in a sense. This cut, however, was not dug by hand, but rather by steam shovels brought up there by mules. Beale's Cut, which in its glory days reached a staggering 90 feet deep, is out-shone by Swede's Cut, which is to this day, 110 feet deep. Geologically, it's a fabulous example of Plate Tectonics. I mean really. Here we are, up on a high ridge in the Transverse Ranges, ogling some tremendous angled and interbedded sediments: the muddiest of mudstone shale and the biotite-iest of arkose sand. Clearly the edge of a delta? And now here? Brilliant.

For a sense of ridge-ness, this is a view up on the Ridge Route, and waaaaaaaaay down in the distance is the I5, all ugly and trafficy. From up where I took this photo it sounded like bees in the distance.

Roller Derby!

Well, a few of you know that I picked up a new sport a couple of months ago, and yes, that sport is roller derby! And no, for those of you who grew up with me, I did not magically learn how to skate during these last 4 years in Bake-town. The ladies, or Divas I should say, are a great bunch and I'm happy to be on a team again. Although, I must admit that I am not happy to be just about the least talented on the team... lots of work to do!!!

Anyway, this weekend we had our first "bout", against Visalia:

I was not playing (thankfully!) and unfortunately 2 things lead to the less-then-fabulous 2 photos that I have below. 1) batteries died. 2) even if they hadn't, I got so into cheering for my team - I would not have gotten around to taking photos anyway. Our girls did amazing for their first ever bout. We were almost tied at the first half. But then endurance failed and fatigue set in, and we fell behind unrecoverably in the second half.


Here our team is warming up. We're on quad skates, not inlines. This is a terrific opportunity for fun socks (don't worry, I have plenty!). The belts are actually more functional than fashion accessory, the jammers can grab a belt to help them get pulled through the pack and whip themselves around the track. The tights are also functional... darn it. This is a fundamental way to prevent your skin from peeling off onto the floor... which means that I will have to invest in some tights before our next bout on May 9th.

She's "lead jammer" - check out the stars on her "helmet panty" (yes that's what it's called).