Giant Junipers and Blue Agave

On Sunday we hiked down Red Ridge to the "Gold Mine" and back up Oracle Ridge. I've done it before, and it shouldn't have been too tough, but it kicked our butts. Sabkha came back with many a thorn in body and paw. She also got a large gash in her hind leg, and some weird pokes that turned into pustules on her belly. Yuck. After hanging out in the shack and trying my tongue at some fragmented espanol, we took off on the once-a-two-track for Oracle Ridge. The descent down Red Ridge had been about 3,000 feet in 3.5 miles. Steep! At the bottom we found a beautiful babbling brook, doing it's babbling in a bed of brilliant white granodiorite. Nice! Reef of Rock was visible to the west the entire way down Red Ridge. We contemplated taking a few hundred feet of rope and exploring RoR for a week or so... who needs to fly to Tibet to have an adventure? I blabbed about my failed proposal for summer-weekend-mapping in the Catalinas. My perception is that mucho has not been well-mapped. Catalina geology is fascinating, it has received some attention too-- so you (as a geologist) have a place to start. Good or bad? Contaminated ideas? Anyway, I dreamed of mapping the boundaries of the Catalina Granitic Pluton (which makes up most of the Cats NW of Mt Lemmon, i.e., Samaniengo Ridge and Reef of Rock). Edges, and jointing/veining in the middle. 'Tis the season (or the year), since two consecutive forest fires have largely cleared the nothern slopes of the Catalinas of undergrowth. And trees. Once we huffed up to Oracle Ridge, we finally left the intrusives behind. This was weird, because all the way up the two-track we were seeing coarse-grained weird looking intrusives, altered, feldspar rich (of course). Then on Oracle Ride suddenly we're on an east-dipping sequence of Paleozoic rocks- what the heck? The Dickinson map on the 5th floor of the U of A Geo department seems to indicate it's just a contact. Or rather, it doesn't make it clear what type of contact it is. Is the intrusive a mega-sill? I don't think so, but I'd love to find out. Along the ridge (which I've hiked at least twice before), we eventually passed Marble Peak (several caves there, never been) and came upon the Giant Trees. For a mile or so along the ridge, there are (or were) huge trees, spaced fairly evenly every quarter-mile. They don't grow along the slopes (which are not that steep or rocky). Why? It fascinates me. They're all burned up now, but most are still standing. Their fragrance is lovely. ex-Junipers? Also alongside the path are numerous, perfect blue agave. Wonderful, symmetrical plants! The huff back to the car is harder and longer than expected. As an added bonus, we got to hike about 1.5 miles back up the road toward Ski Valley. I knew it, but it was unpleasant nonetheless. Exhaustion. How can an 8.5-mile hike knock me down like that? [Photos of this trip]

Fantastic Superstitions

It was a pleasant drive up to Phoenix (if northwest is "up"), and then a pleasant hike up a gentle alluvial fan to the mouth of the canyon. Everything was green from the recent rains. In the distance, Four Peaks were shrouded in snow. Sabkha frolicked about, sniffing the horse droppings we say here and there. They make me nervous, and my eyes scan the horizon whenever I see the green, hay-ey blobs. The inspiration for adobe, I think. Starting up the canyon we saw some big-house-sized fallen rocks. It is always fun (for a geologist) to look up at the cliffs and try to pick out the point of origin... however, the higher the rock, the faster it tends to weather, and the longer it has been weathering (generally true, not geologic Law). We encountered a group of geriatric hikers who gave us complicated directions about how to get up to Flatiron. "Yeah, I did that back in my day..." sighed one of the old men. We bashed our way upstream through undergrowth and over wet, slick slopes covered with gravel. Eventually we reached a bare-rock chute with a stream sprinkling in from overhead in the form of a waterfall. A young lady overtook us and kept on truckin'. Sabkha decided she preferred to keep moving, and left Erin and I behind as we took a Clif break. Sab kept looking back anxiously, but she was compelled to continue with the Unknown Girl. Finally we go up and traversed a neat rock amphitheater with slanted rocks layers broken off in little 1/2" wide steplets. It wasn't easy to go up, and turned out to be much harder to go down! We stayed right when we saw the "three canyons", and eventually picked up the white spray paint marks. The trail got very steep. Toward the top was a 10-foot "step" that freaked Sabkha out. I had to do a collar grab to get her up. We made our way out onto Flatiron without incident, despite the layer of hard dark ice on the trail, and the 300-foot cliff near at hand. I put Sabkha on leash, not that it would help much if she went after a suicidal chipmunk or Gila monster. The view was nice. We picked out the Santa Catalinas and Rincons, Four Peaks, all of Phoenix (not hard), the Galiuros, and a mystery range that turned out to be none other than the Pinalenos (aka Mt. Graham). We could NOT see Weaver's Needle (although we could clearly see if from Oracle Ridge a few weeks later!!!). The day was already waning, if it can do that, but we pressed on to explore some hoodoo-ed terrain and attempt to find an alternate way down. After discovering a Grand-Canyon-sized, um, canyon in the west side of the Supes, we bailed and rushed down the evil steep canyon. Sabkha had forgotten about The Step, and it was a hassle to get her down. Argh. I had to grad her midsection and try to set her down as she flailed all four legs rapidly, trying to get some claw purchase anywhere, like on my face. Darkness appeared. We donned headlights, but mine didn't do much photon-production-wise. (The Apartment, anyone?) We survived the hike back. It was quite a hump, although I must recommend it for drama, scenery, water, and cool rocks. Oh- it was all volcanic. On a Geologic Excitement Scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (most exciting), most mafic/intermediate volcanic rocks get about a 2 from me. Booo. [see pics here]