Backside of the Guadalupes (and Hackberry Lake)

This weekend it was time to head west, toward Carlsbad, New Mexico and the Guadalupe Mountains.  I've been going down to Big Bend lately, about four hours south of Midland.  Carlsbad-on-the-Pecos is only 2.5 hours west of Midland, and the Guadalupes are just beyond.  A bit closer.  And almost two hours closer than high-mountain Cloudcroft, NM.

My original plan was to drive out Saturday morning and drive the Guadalupe Scenic Drive, or NM 137.  This paved road traverses the Guadalupe Mountains west of Carlsbad and leads to Dog Canyon in Guadalupe National Park, which is of course in Texas.  On Friday night I got a text message from a dirt-biking friend and former colleague from ConocoPhillips.  We arranged to ride on Saturday afternoon at Hackberry Lake OHV area, which is ~50,000 acres of BLM land in New Mexico about 25 miles NE of Carlsbad. 

I've never put my motorcycle in the back of my new truck.  I ran to Lowe's to get a board to use as a ramp, andI found they have Werner aluminum ramps for $99, which is cheaper than anything I could find on Amazon.com.  Amazon is not always the bomb...  Loaded up, drove out about 2.5 hours to Hackberry.  It's free, and there is a little camping/picnic area with nice shelters and picnic tables.  Almost completely deserted on a nice spring Saturday.  We rode for about four hours.  The trails are pretty sandy, and we rode a lot of two-track.  There is potash mining and oil drilling activity in the area, and we actually stumbled upon a well staked by my new employer.  Many of the roads we drove were oilfield roads, many surfaced in gravel.  The trails we did find were sandy.  One fun trail led down a hill into a wash, then following the twisty wash.  After a short break we went out again, south this time, past a marshy lake area.  The sand was worse down in this area and I was having trouble riding, keeping up speed.  And I thought I had sand all figured out after riding at Kermit Dunes!  Like I said in previous posts, sand is okay if you don't need to stay on a defined trail.  Finally I lost control and did a mild crash into some vegetation.  Pokeys in my arm, back, and a big scratch on my neck.  I realized I was nearly exhausted.  

Overall, Hackberry was so-so.  There are some dunes areas and a rockier hill that we didn't get onto.  I think the key is to find the varying terrain.  It's a big place; I will be back.  Some of the most fun was riding my friend's bike, which is a Honda 2-stroke MX bike.  Standover was 2-3 inches higher than my "little" 230F (which I used to think was huge).  Perfect height.  Great power and "pop" above a certain RPM.  It reminded me of my MX-5 -- the torque really kicks in above a certain RPM.  It also reminded me of my Yamaha in size.  My Honda 230F doesn't have that pop, but once again reminded me that's it's fast enough to maim or kill, and it's fast enough for me.  I need to improve as a rider before I can wring everything out of that bike.  Sorry, no pictures from Hackberry Lake... like skiing, it's hard to ride and take photos.  The first thing to fatigue on me was my clutch hand/arm! 

Sabkha and I continued west toward Carlsbad as the sun set.  We found NM 137 north of Carlsbad and headed SW into the Guadalupes.  No we did not stop at Lucy's Mexican Restaurant.  Lots of ranchland, gradually going up... then low, scrubby juniper-type forest.  The sun dropped and we pulled off onto a side road out of sight of 137 and got ready to camp.  Take out the bike, unload the bed.... kind of a pain, but the truck bed is my (night-night, sleepy-sleepy) bed.  This was night #3 in the back of the truck.  The bed is nominally 5' long, but I can jjjjust fit diagonally.  Actually I can't, so I have to sleep with the tailgate down.  It was really windy and gusty, so tough to sleep.  But it was gorgeous... the stars were bright and clear, and I could easily see the glowing cloud of the Milky Way.  A relaxing and nice evening.  Made Ramen with canned chicken chunks -- yum!  Sabkha helped me eat it.

Next morning the sun rose and lit up my truck bed.  Got up and made some breakfast and anti-headache, caffeine-addiction imported-from-England-by-Debi Tetley tea.  That was the last of my water.  Why do I always forget water?  Luckily we found a water source just up the road.  Another mile or two brought us to the turn off for the Sitting Bull Falls trailhead.  Followed by another mile or so of quite high-clearance road, and two closed gates (ahhhh! annoying!) brought us to the trailhead, where I spent about 20 minutes getting ready to hike.

No signs of anyone around.  Off we went down the trail, which was more like a road for the first one mile.  It was "paved" with outcrops of smooth limestone, which would've made a very bumpy road.  At one-point-oh miles we crossed a fenceline and began heading down into a canyon.  The scenery was nice, although I prefer the Arizona-style intrusive-rock scenery.  Something about flat-lying limestone just doesn't do it for me, although this canyon did surprise me...

Sabkha poses on the way down the trail

The trail seemed very mountain-lion prone, and of course I'd left my knife in the truck.  It was still very windy, in big gusts, which is a bit unsettling -- and we'd seen no one.  Finally we found some water in the canyon along with lots of vegetation.  Sabkha got a good drink and a bit of a wallow.

Another mile or so and we came to a point with a view of the Sitting Bull Falls picnic area.  Nice!  We were actually at the top of the falls, but couldn't really see them.  So we headed down to the land of parking lots, picnic tables, sippy cups, and park rangers.

Sitting Bull Falls Recreation Area.  $5 entry.  Ha ha, I fooled them! I avoided the $5 fee with a simple six-mile hike!  SCORE!

Pools below Sitting Bull Falls (SBF)

SBF, tufa, vegetation

The falls were cool-looking.  High and hard to photograph.  As the base were mazes of little channels and deep blue pools of water.  People pushed strollers around and dropped trash and empty water bottles all over.  All around is tufa, the calcareous deposited rock.  Just like the stuff you find in caves.  On the sides of the waterfall you could see the "deserted" falls areas where the water isn't currently flowing.  I like how you can almost see faces in the rock.  Like Easter Island-ish faces.  Tiki-like.  Do you see them?

SBF pool

Clear and deep and blue

The area was beautiful, cool, and calming.  I wanted to stay for hours.  But I had 3.5 miles to hike back to the truck, all uphill.  And I'm impatient and I like to keep moving.  So we headed back up the steep, rock trail.  We passed some people just up from the parking area.  You can't climb around on the falls:

Ok, I get the top two.  I get the lower left.  But the lower right?  No families standing together?  I think they just needed a fourth picture to complete the sign.  Sheesh, interns...

Flowering yucca observed on way up

Everywhere we saw flowers.  Not blanketing the landscape, but hidden here and there.  This flowering yucca was creepy and cool.  

About two miles up the trail, Sabkha slowed down.  She looked tired and was panting despite it being a cool, breezy day.  She dropped behind me (rare), and I looked back to see her suddenly veer back down the trail, like a drunken person.  She stumbled around, with a crazy look in her eyes, and suddenly was frothing at the mouth.  One of her "new type" seizures.  She then turned around and walked up the trail, mouth still foaming, eyes still wild, and I managed to snap on her leash before she dropped onto a prickly pear or something.  The entire episode lasted only 10-15 seconds.  We took it easy the rest of the way to the car, where I gave her a valium to "calm [her] brain activity".

I checked work email (all looked good on my wells) and we drove into the little community of Queen, NM.  This used to be a ghost town and is now being repopulated, more by the retiree crowd than the hippy-desert crowd like in Terlingua.  I saw a roadside sign for Sunday lunch and stopped in at Kit's Mountain Store.  I didn't have any cash, but the owners offered to take a check in the mail and I had a yummy and filling smoked-meatloaf lunch, topped off with chocolate cake.  About three times more than I normally eat at lunch!  Chas, owner, sat and talked with me while I ate.  He had a career as a potash miner and showed me a chunk of potash.  When he heard I'd just bought 20 acres in the Big Bend, he walked me around his property and showed me his water tank and pump setup. Useful info for planning my system.

Continued down 137 with Dog Canyon, TX as my goal.  This is some deserted and faraway territory.  Dropped down into a valley and followed south along a ridge off to my east:

Dog Canyon corrals

Sabkha was enjoying a post-hike, post-Valium nap, so I snapped a few photos and looked around.  No dogs allowed on the trails in Guad NP anyway.  Back we went on 137.  I briefly entertained heading down a dirt road toward Dell City, but decided to go back on 137.  Once back on top of the mesa, we took a Chas-recommended detour down a forest road.  At first it was no problem, but eventually we found a washed-out canyon with some "serious" high-clearance 4x4 (not pictured).  I didn't want to drive any really rough stuff due to having a dirt bike in the bed.  It wasn't anything really bad, but the Subaru never would've made it.

Recent scouring of this wash took out the road in many places.

Nice feeling place, pines, breezy, cozy canyon.  Just limestone but still a good place.

Back to Midland, about three hours.  A close place.  Lots of forest roads where one can ride motorcycles or ATVs.  Probably lots of 4x4.  And lots of trails.  Only limestone, but that's ok.  Lots of pretty country to explore.  Not high enough to be really comfortable in summer, but good for nine months of the year.  We'll be back!

Tahoka Lake

The inaugural Llano Estacado Master Naturalist class trip was to Tahoka Lake.  Tahoka lake is a 1x2 mile salina just NE of the small town of Tahoka, Texas.  Tahoka is near the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado.  From Tahoka, the next town to the east on US 380 is Post, Texas, which I visited about 3 years ago on a long weekend trip with geologists from ConocoPhillips.

Tahoka is about 100 miles north of Midland.  The drive is mostly flat, through oil fields and cotton fields.  Here, north of Midland, there is a lot of center-pivot watering.  They get more rainfall up here, and the Ogallala aquifer is better developed.  On the way, we passed a water field where Midland gets about half of its municipal water.  The biggest surprise on the way was a small lake that US 87 takes a path right through/over.  It was full of water, even after ~6 months with no rainfall (at least in Midland).  This was a good sign for water in Tahoka Lake.

The group was quite large.  The trip was the first one, the budding master nats were all excited to get out and explore.  Also, the lake is on private land (now a non-profit trust).

Tahoka Lake

My first view of the lake was a shocker.  It is quite large.  I'm not used to seeing features with this much relief on the Llano.  From rim to lake the maximum relief is around 100'.  The lake is fairly flat-bottomed, and was probably less than 10' deep when we visited.  Of course with more rains, it fills up.  There is no surface outlet.  So how was the lake formed?  The lakebed rests on Triassic-age mudstones.  Around the edges are some exposures of Cretaceous-age carbonate rocks.  The rest of the rim is made up of Ogallala clastic rocks, capped by calieche caprock.  This stratigraphy should now be very familiar to regular readers of this blog: it is the basic stratigraphy of the exposed rocks of the Llano Estacado.  So why is this lake here?  It lines up with postulated faults visible on aerial photographs.  Many of the drainages in the Llano, and playas/salinas on the Llano, also tend to line up with these semi-linear fault features.  I'm sure I'll post more on this subject in the future.  How is material moved from the lake off the Llano?  The underlying Triassic beds are probably near impermeable.  That makes me think some of the movement must be through the Ogallala beds.  Gravel and sands are not very soluble in groundwater or surface water.  Carbonate rocks are quite soluble, however.  This adds up to make me think that Tahoka Lake is the site of a large remnant piece of Cretaceous limestone, sitting atop the Triassic and spared erosion by the rivers of Ogallala times.  This hypothesis is further supported by the outcropping of some Cretaceous carbonates along the edge of the lake.

To start off, our leader Burr gave a lecture on the area.  Two co-leader geologists/hydrologists also chimed in.  One interesting idea I picked up was the suggestion that the carbonate that forms the caprock was delivered via the air in the form of dust.  I'd always heard it was leached from below by groundwater being drawn toward the surface by evaporation.  I wonder if oxygen isotopes could help tell that story.  

A pretty good crowd for a Saturday

Evil sunflowers

After our lecture the group broke up and wandered down the hill toward some bluffs in the distance.  I was amazed how most people walked single-file, right behind the person in front of them.  These were budding master naturalists, but were acting more like lemmings.  Of course, many intrepid souls struck off on their own.  Also, it does make sense to stick around Burr for some of the walk, as he is always dispensing information in the form of entertaining yarns.  

The southern Llano had a wet summer, causing mass numbers of sunflowers to spring up and grow.  Now dead, these sunflower corpses are tall, pokey and scratchy -- and will probably stand for another year or two.  No rains yet this year, so our wildflower crop is looking to be poor. 

Ephedra

I didn't know what Ephedra looked like.  I guess that is the point of these field trips.  Now I know.  There are several varieties, and now I see it everywhere I go on the Llano.

Juniper hillside

Up on the hillside is an area with juniper trees.  The definitely have them at Big Spring, too, but I guess this is a little isolate population here.  

Juniper

The small bluff was capped by calieche caprock, 6-8' thick in places.  Below the caprock were a number of small shelters and "caves".  All around were animal bones, honeycomb, scat, and lichens.

Pretty lichen

Lichen close-up

Deserted honeycomb on the underside of the caprock

Wandering MatNats

Insect home on caprock

Thorns

Inundated Salt Cedar

?

Edge of Tahoka Lake

Detail of cactus with some type of infection

MatNats along the shore

Tahoka Lake

Lichen

The bluish lichen on this rock grew on the more siliceous area and not on the surrounding limestone.  I'm guessing this is due to chemical weathering of the limestone, not due to nutrients.

Is this lichen on the tree?

Tahoka Lake.  An interesting and beautiful place.  And you can go visit.

Soda Lake

Saturday morning, I went on my second Master Naturalist trip with the folks from Sibley Nature Center.  This week's trip was a short one, just a dozen or so miles south of Midland to an SWD (Salt Water Disposal) facility.  We all parked there and headed out into the cold, windy morning.  Cold out here is about 45 F, by the way.

Some of the crew.

Our mission today, just like last week at Tahoka Lake, was to poke around.  We looked for plants and animals.  If we didn't know what something was, we asked Burr.  We also got some more geology lectures.  Always good review for me.

The salt lake we visited was all dried up.  The last of the water went around Christmastime.  The surface we walked on was a little damp (atmosphere-derived), with powdery silt underneath.  Burr et al. referred to this material as loess, indicating deposition via wind action.  It was powdery and fluffy in a strange way.  Everyone left distinct footprints.  Riding along with me was a cross-country cyclist, Jaden, who was staying at my house for a day.  He was wearing the 5-toed shoes that make prints like bare feet.

Walking across the fluffy silt.

Soda lake bottom

What made the sediment fluffy?  The photo above provides some clues.  The snake-looking tubes are areas where the sediment was actually pushed together.  This appears to be due to frost heaving.  To the left you can see the more typical dessication mud cracks.

Salt Cedar

One of the first plants we found was the much-maligned Salt Cedar.  This was imported as an ornamental plant and has taken over many drainages in the desert southwest.  Apparently it chokes the waterways and is generally undesirable.  Chemical eradication has been attempted on the lower Pecos in Texas, with much success (so said Burr).  In other areas, including the Big Bend, a type of beetle that feeds on Salt Cedar leaves has been released.  This is expected to control the Salt Cedar population, but apparently is also affecting similar local species.

Salt Grass.

This salt grass apparently occurs on several continents, in similar alkali environments.  How did it spread?  Why didn't other species (like Salt Cedar) spread too?

Loess bluffs

Along the downwind side of the lake are 10-15' high loess bluffs.  In some areas these have been carved by native peoples to make shelters.  In this photo, you can see several types of plant life common in the area.  The green bush in the center is creosote.  Crush the little leaves and you get the smell of rain in the desert.  I wonder what chemical that is.  Atop the bluff are some mesquite bushes.  The short, stubby-looking bushes are varieties of ephedra, aka popotillo or "Mormon tea".

The class spent an hour or so walking along the base of the loess cliffs, where there were many interesting animal holes, droppings, insects, etc.  Several members of the class got very excited when they found some mediocre (in the grand scheme) gypsum crystals.  Gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate) forms as an evaporate mineral in this lake bed, and anywhere where water is allowed to pool and then evaporate.

I found a few critters in this area, including a lizard.  I don't know what type of lizard it is, except skittish.  I got this photo by holding my camera out in front of me and pointing it back at the cliff face where the lizard was hiding from me.  

This "Robber fly" might not be a remarkable find, but on this day at Soda Lake you couldn't be picky.  There weren't many critters out and about:

Robber fly

I continue to practice my macro photography, but depth of field on this one is poor, even at f22.  I think I need to investigate a better macro setup.  My mom takes amazing close-up photos with a slightly older Canon point-and-shoot.  Visit her blog, Plants Amaze Me, to see some of her work.

A spider hole.  

Gopher mounds.

An eroded, badlands-like area. 

Purple prickly pear.  The purple color usually indicates water stress -- a lack of water.

And you thought the Llano Estacado was a featureless wasteland!  Put your nose to the ground and you will see so much.  Bugs and plants, bones, skulls, mummified worms and grasshoppers, bug holes, scat, roots, lichen, moss, cow patties, rocks, caliche, loess, mudcracks, frost heave, dead trees, crystals!