Desert Survivors Fall EventsBack on the Desert Trail

Black Rock Mountains

The quarterly journal of Desert Survivors Experience, Share, Protect Spring 2007, 26, 1 Survivorthe

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Cover: View of the Carrizo Plain National Monument; see page 14. Photograph by Craig Deutsche.

Benton Bash IIDesert Survivors 2nd Annual End-Of-Summer Party and Annual Meeting,Thursday, September 20 to Sunday, Sep-tember 23, 2007, Benton Hot Springs

As summer camping draws to a close andcooler autumn winds shoo us down off thehigh peaks, we slump a little in anticipationof the cold short winter days ahead. Wepull musty sweaters and old umbrellas fromthe depths of our closets and sadly watchas our calenders plump up with meetingsand must-dos. Grimly we pack up the rip-stops, S.P.F.s and Tevas. But before thekayak is stored, the carabiners are sorted,and the fleece is de-loused, squeeze in onemore great summer trip and say goodbyeto Summer Camping 07 with a bang.

Desert Survivors has rented the entire Ben-ton Hot Springs Resort from Noon 9/20to Noon 9/23. Members and guests areinvited to reserve camping space. It will bea fun event for all!

Cost: $35 per adult (children 12 and underare free). Members are encouraged to

bring non-member guests($35 each); if interested,guests can become membersof DS at the party. Weexpect around one hundredattendees, so sign up early!.

Location: Benton HotSprings is located on StateRoute 120, southeast ofMono Lake, 42 rollickingmiles east of U.S. Route 395.(Be aware that YosemiteNational Park charges $20per car to get over TiogaPass on Route 120; you maybuy an annual pass from the ParkService for $50.)

Activities: There will be many activitiesscheduled throughout the three days,including: hikes (long and short), visits tohistorical sites (both indigenous and not),star and moon gazing, geology and planthikes, an art demonstration, campfire sing-alongs, yoga, a desert hat fashion show, abook exchange, kids games and lots more.Feel free to add an activity to our roster.End each event with a glorious soak in oneof the nine tubs of natural hot water fromthe springs. Relax as you watch the latesummer sun reflecting off the 14,000-footspine of the White Mountains, sentinels ofthe sky above Owens Valley, gateway to theGreat Basin. All tubs are clothing-optional,but please consult with the parents at #1Family Camp.

Food: Three pot luck meals are planned:Breakfast on Friday (8:00-9:30 a.m.), Din-ner on Friday (6:30 p.m.), and Dinner onSaturday (6:30 p.m.). Plus a Happy Houron Thursday at 5:00 p.m.

Miscellaneous Information: Pleasantweather is expected: 70s-80s F. in the day,40s or low 50s F. at night, but it could becolder and stormy. The Desert SurvivorsAnnual Membership meeting will be heldon Sunday at 9:00 a.m.

To Sign Up: Please send a $35 checkpayable to Desert Survivors for each adultparticipant. Send to Steve Tabor, Attn.Benton Event, PO Box 20991, Oakland,CA 94620-0991. Include your name,phone, home address, and how many (andwho) will be attending. Include your e-mailaddress if you have one. A packet with all

the details will be sent to you via postalmail. Please note that Bed and Breakfastlodging is available at Benton Hot Springsfor those who desire not to camp. Call theResort Office at (760) 933-2507 or (760)933-2287 for information and reservations.

Desert SurvivorsAnnual Meeting AtBenton

The Desert Survivors Annual Member-ship meeting will be held on Sunday, Sep-tember 23, 2007 at 9:00 a.m. As last year,it will be on the morning of the last dayof our gathering at Benton Hot Springs.See the accompanying article for details.

The Annual Meeting is the one time eachyear that Survivor members gather to electDirectors and make (possible) changes tothe groups bylaws. The Annual Meetingalso serves as a review of what the grouphas been doing the year before and as aforum for what can and should be donein the future. Its an excellent opportunityto volunteer and get involved in the orga-nizations educational and political efforts.All members are invited.

Members will receive a packet of informa-tion before the meeting. Set aside theBenton weekend for both fun and work asDesert Survivors faces 2008.

Desert Conference

Desert Survivors Presents A ConferenceOn Current Desert PreservationIssues, Saturday, November 3, 2007, 10a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Social Hall in theRecreation Center at Live Oak Park, 1301Shattuck Avenue (cross-street Berryman),Berkeley, CA.

Speakers will include environmentalactivists from the Center for BiologicalDiversity, California Wilderness Coalition,the Desert Protective Council, U.S. Geo-logical Survey and the Sierra Club DesertCommittee.

Presentation topics will include presentand pending legislation on desert protec-tion, impact of global warming ondeserts, animal grazing and land manage-ment, impact of international border andimmigration enforcement on US deserts,off-road vehicles impact on desert soils,air, plants, animals and people, SurpriseCanyon protection, Carrizo Plain protec-tion, and legislative issues. Several othertopics will be added upon confirmation ofthe speakers. Lunch will be provided.

For more information, please contact:Elena Gogoleva via telephone at(415) 307-8324.

Judy

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Montgomery Peak from Benton Hot Springs

Contribute to TThheeSSuurrvviivvoorrThis is thelast time Im goingto ask you!Deadline for the Fall issue is September23, 2007. Submissions (with maximumword length) may include letters-to-the-edi-tor (200), feature articles (4000), tripreports (2000), desert conservation issues,articles on desert natural history, bookreviews, backpacking/camping recipes,member announcements and original art.All submissions which relate to the missionof Desert Survivors will be considered forpublication. All text must be submittedelectronically. Please send text longer thana paragraph as an attached file. Formatscurrently accepted (in order of preference)are: Word (.doc), WordPerfect (.wpd), RichText Format (.rtf) and text (.txt). Pleaseinclude your full name, city and state ofresidence and phone number with the sub-mission. For photographs, please identifythe people and locations shown. Digitalphotos need to be approximately 1600 pix-els resolution to be printed the full widthof a page (8.5 inches). Please do not sub-mit digital photos with only 640x480 pixelsresolution as they are impossible to printwith adequate size.

Mission Statement forDesert SurvivorsDesert Survivors is a nonprofit organiza-tion dedicated to desert conservation andexploration. Our members enjoy hiking inand learning about Americas desert lands,and seek to protect those areas for futuregenerations.

Sign up for DesertSurvivor E-MailNotices and On-LineForumDesert Survivors has two e-mail lists formembers, DSEM (DS Electronic Mail )Notices and DSOL (DS On Line) interac-tive Forum. DSEM Notices allows mem-bers to receive most regular mailings fromthe Board of Directors by e-mail ratherthan paper. Trip schedules, party and meet-ing announcements, alerts everythingexcept renewal notices and The Sur v i vorarrive in your inbox, often days beforeother members receive theirs in the mail.You receive 100% of the text contents ofthe regular mailings (and nothing else).Desert Survivors protects the e-mailaddresses of its members fully, never lend-ing, selling or giving them away to others.

DSOL is our interactive Forum,which allows members who sign upto broadcast e-mail to everyone elsesigned up for DSOL Forum.Recent topics included floods, desertwildflowers, road conditions, and DSservice trips. Be careful, though, tonot inadvertently send personal e-mail to everyone on DSOL Forum.

Desert Survivor members may sub-scribe to either DSEM Notices orDSOL Forum by e-mailing tor-toise, desert-survivors.org. For thesubject use subscribe regular mail-ings for DSEM Notices, andsubscribe listserv for DSOLForum. Dont include the quotationmarks and do include in the body ofthe message your name and addressso that we can verify your member-ship. Unfortunately, we dont yethave a completely automated system,and Tortoise can be a little slow, so itmight take several days.

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How to Reach Us(Elections for all offices will be held

September 23, 2007)

EditorPaul Brickett

(408) 279-3129

Membership InformationSteve Tabor

(510) 769-1706

Desert Survivor Websitewww.desert-survivors.org

Board of Directors

PresidentSteve Tabor

ActivitiesBob Lyon

CommunicationsPaul Brickett

ManagingLoretta Bauer

SecretaryDeborah Schreiber

VolunteerLynne Buckner

At Large Directors:

Jannet Schraer

Judy Kendall

Patrick Dunn

Dan Seneres

Nick Jedenoff

General CounselAlan Siraco

The Sur v i vor is printed byMy Printer, Berkeley, CA,

www.emyprinter.com.Hike at Benton Bash I (see previous page)

Judy

Ken

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[See website for curent information]

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The Survivor Spring 2007

Desert SurvivorsGoes To The GreenFestival

Join us in celebrating the desert and itsgreen treasures by coming by andschmoozing with all those watery greenfolks who have no clue how to find thedessert in the desert. Festival is November9, 10 and 11, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday andSaturday, and 11 to 6 Sunday. The locationis the Concourse Exhibition Center, Booth#365, in the Eco-Travel Section, 635 8thStreet (at Brannan), San Francisco, CA94103. See the Green Festival website atwww.greenfestivals.com for details. Partici-pate in desert education, activism, fun, andsocializing. Wear your DS T-shirt or buy anew hottie DS T-shirt (now in womensstyles) and cap.

Want to help out? We need DS membersto staff the booth (about 5 per shift) andtalk to folks about protecting our desert

wilds from off-road vehicles, toxic wastesand exotic water-sappers, and joining ourfantastically diverse, talented, thrilling, andbeautiful (ok, handsome) group of deserthikers and backpackers. Please call JudyKendall at (510) 612-1124 to sign up forone or two half-day shifts (before or after 3p.m.), or to help with the Thursday nightset-up (approximately 6 to 10 p.m.) Helpus take advantage of this national eventand put the desert on the map at theGreen Festival. Desert Survivors needs theexposure, and environmentalists need toknow that our brown desert land deserveshelp. Call now!

CCaallll FFoorr AArrttiissttssInsp i r ed by the Deser t Art Show Spon-sored by Desert Survivors

Darrell Hunger, a long-time Desert Sur-vivors member and San Francisco Bay Areaartist, will be putting together a series ofart shows in the Fall of 2007. The venuesand times are not yet finalized, but we

anticipate two, three or four shows lastingone or two months each in Bay Area loca-tions: cafes, libraries, REI, or communityart centers. Some work may appear on theDS website with announcements of open-ings, etc. Exhibits will include a framedinformation board with the Desert Sur-vivors Statement, how to become a mem-ber of Desert Survivors, artist statements,and, if the work is for sale, contact infor-mation.

The show will include original paintings,prints, photography, collage, sculpture thatcan be hung, and short written pieces. Allworks should be desert-inspired. A$5.00 per piece fee will be collected foreach piece chosen to defray handling costs.If you are interested in showing some ofyour work, contact Darrell Hunger at (510)649-1923, and send four or five images toDarrell Hunger in jpg format, along witha brief artist statement.

Help make the Desert Survivors 2007 ArtShow a success!

Letter

Sempra Ends Black Rock CoalPlant Project

July 27, 2007

You may have seen these two noticesof the final withdrawal of SemprasGranite Fox Power Plant applicationsto the BLM and the Nevada PublicUtilities Commission, but in case youdid not, they represent the formal end-ing of the coal power plant project inGerlach Nevada by Sempra. In early2006 Sempraannounced that itwould not build theplant, but would tryto sell the project toanother power devel-oper. With thesewithdrawals, Sempraappears to have aban-doned their attemptto sell the project.

David Rumsey,Gerlach, NV

Artists conception of proposed power plant in Black Rock Desert, NV

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5The Survivor Spring 2007

Desert Survivors at2007 Whole EarthFestivalBy Chuck McGinn, Davis, CA

Following up on an idea for recruitingnew members, Desert Survivorsapplied to the annual Davis WholeEarth Festival for an education booth. Thefestival celebrates alternative energy, envi-ronment, sustainability and health. It hasbeen doing so for the last 30 years that thiswriter has attended, and finally, the countryis catching up. There is a big focus on zerowaste with all refuse from the festival beingsorted for recycling or composting.

The festival is traditionally held on Moth-ers Day weekend and the weather this yearwas the very best of mild spring weatherthat Davis has to offer. The faire startedabout noon on Friday. Vehicles are strictlylimited on the core campus and the festivaldays are no exception. After waiting offcampus for about an hour, I was given theOK to drive up to the central quad andunload. Between my first and second tripsto the truck, Fern Goodman and JackOttosen werefound relaxing inthe camp chairsready to work thecrowd. We set upthe new DesertSurvivors tentcanopy and hungup the desertposter boards thatwere made byDan Seneres andopened for busi-ness. Shortly aftersetting up wewere joined byBob Flett andRick Juricich whohelped staff thebooth through theafternoon.

On Saturday,Steve Tabor wasthere for nearlythe whole day andfielded manyquestions fromthe visitors. MikeLaing and his wife

Corrine helped in the afternoon and wehad a return visit from Jack Ottosen. Wehad a lot of traffic from people with gener-al interest in the desert as well as frommany children and young people interestedin the box of desert artifacts that was pro-vided by Steve. The big draws were thebleached skulls of desert sheep and coyotealong with interesting minerals and fossilsand, yes, sand.

Sunday, I think, was the best day. Peopleoften like to do a quick scan of the festivalon Saturday and then come back on Sun-day to focus on what caught their interest.I had planned to close down shortly afternoon but more people came in for extend-ed conversation and I ended up staying onuntil about 3 p.m.. In the morning I hadhelp with the booth from Jim Moroney.

During the three days we passed out about75 brochures on Desert Survivors, tripschedules and desert camping trips. Over-all, we had about forty volunteer hours inthe booth. I have yet to hear whether thereare any new members from our efforts so Icant yet say if the effort was an effectivemembership tool. I do know it was suc-

cessful from the standpoint of raisingawareness and introducing people to theidea that the deserts are places of beautyand that they can be a travel destinationrather than an area to hurry through.

The original idea of the booth was to bringin a few of the environmentally consciouscollege students at UCD and Im not surethe booth was best put together for that. Ithink the desert treasures were effective inpulling in kids and their parents but Imnot sure that is going to produce manyimmediate new members. For the amountof effort spent staffing a booth for theweekend, I think we should contemplatewhat it is that interests younger people.

One idea that strikes me is that there is nocommon transportation. This came fromcomments from several visitors to thebooth who didnt have cars. I think that isan obstacle to a lot of students. What ifwe rented a commuter van and workedwith a college group to deliver people to atrip site? Well, Im open to suggestionsfrom all our members in advertising andmarketing. But it was fun and I would cer-tainly hope that we do it again next year.

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Fern Goodman and Jack Ottosen at the DS booth ready to great visitors on Friday

Anza-BorregoCarcampDecember 29, 2006 -January 2, 2007

By Patrick Dunn, Elko, NV

Desert Survivor carcamps in South-ern California or Death Valley during winter monthshave become my welcome escape from Elkos northernNevada winter cold. So I was happy for the chance to exploreAnza-Borrego State Park for the first time, on a New Years trip.The group, led by Lucy DuPertuis, met Friday morning (Decem-ber 29), at the Anza Borrego State Park Visitor Center. Theweather looked promising: sunny and mild. After our ritual meet-ing, we reconvened beyond the campground at the nearby Bor-rego Palm Canyon trailhead. The eight of us headed up the sur-prisingly crowded, popular, tourist-friendly trail.

On the very first section of the trail, two bighorn sheep eweswandered by in easy camera range-they appeared unafraid, evi-dently used to entertaining tourists. We worked our way up to anoasis of native California Palms at a small waterfall and pool,which most tourist hikers stop to admire and rest at beforeturning back. This palm oasis, a typical feature of Anza-Borregocanyon hikes, featured a particularly thick stand of palms amidstlarge rocks. We had to clamber over the rocks as this was the off-trail route to the canyon beyond the tourist trail.

Farther up the deserted upper canyon we appreciated the brokenbeauty of each successive palm oasis. A significantflood a few years ago had piled many brokentrunks and fronds, boulders and other debrisagainst each stand of trees. Even worse, many ofthe palms showed scorched trunks from vandalssetting fires-very disheartening. Unenlightenedfolks apparently get an idiotic thrill from settingalight the trees thick skirting of dead palm fronds.We saw this sad sight of burned-but not dead-treesat other palm oases throughout our trip.

The canyon offers a seven-mile tricky scramble toits top, which we didnt have nearly the time toattempt before darkness fell at five p.m.. Instead,we had lunch and turned around. After descend-ing as far as the tourist-infested first palm grove,we took an alternate trail back, which allowed dra-matic views of the floods boulder-strewing devas-tation of Borrego Palm Canyon.

We camped in the campground and enjoyed eachothers company around the luxury of picnictables. Joanna, a survivor of Lucys Mecca Hills

Christmas trip, joined us later thatevening. Many of us took advantage ofthe campgrounds shower facilities, nor-mally so scarce on DS trips.

The next morning we hiked the well-con-structed California Riding and HikingTrail, which begins a few miles west ofBorrego Springs. I enjoyed the desertsurroundings and increasingly impressiveviews of the valley below, but soonlagged behind with two others who pre-ferred a more leisurely pace. Aroundnoon, our little split-off group met Joan-na coming back down the trail. She

showed us a flapping boot sole, which had impeded walking somuch she had to turn around.

Our little group continued quite a bit further up the trail, thoughwe never caught up with the others. (They lunched at the top,about 2,300 vertical feet from the trailhead, where they claimedthe best views were.) Wanting to conserve energy for the rest ofthe trip, we agreed on a more reasonable turnaround point. Backat the cars, we discovered a note from Joanna saying shed headedhome because of her boot problem. We would miss her spunkypresence and famed camp cooking. Several more participantsdecided to bow out after that days hike, including the two womenId hiked with most of the day. Now only five remained for thetrips continuation in the parks southern area.

A couple of hours winding drive past confusing crossroadsbrought us to Mountain Palm Springs primitive campground,our home for the next three nights, with just enough light left toset up camp. Primitive meant only a cement-block outhouse,around which a gaggle of RVs clustered, and no shower facilities.We camped further up-canyon by the wash which led to the palmgroves.

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Elaine Schwimmer, Tanya Tschesnok and Craig Deidrick ford the creek inBorrego Palm Canyon

Bighorn ewe near Borrego Palm CanyonCampground

We took two hikes on Sunday, NewYears Eve, which offered us the samesunny, mild weather we enjoyedthroughout the trip. The first hike wasan easy jaunt up canyon from the camp,past several (alas, also vandalized) palmoases, to a larger stand at a spring.From there we scrambled up a rockyside trail to the rim of a little valley fea-turing widely-scattered Torotes, or Ele-phant Trees. The grayish Torote trunks,which store water, look swollen like thelegs of elephants. Few grow north ofBaja California. Some trees had beentagged, evidently for botanical study.Depending on their aspect, some treesswelled more with moisture then others,and only some were about to bud.

Descending back to the palm oasis atthe spring, we spied a young couple sit-ting yogi-style in the center of the clear-ing, apparently deep in a meditative(and, so it smelled, herbal) trance. Notwishing to disturb them, we skirted thegrove and ascended the slope on the other side, past many barrelcacti, all bowing to the south, none yet ready to bloom. The nextcanyon over, by which we returned to our camp, had yet morepalm oases. Despite the vandalism by fire of most, a few retainedtheir beautiful protective skirting of dead fronds.

After lunching back at camp, one of the group, Tanya, suddenlydecided to hot-foot it back to the Bay Area, where she hoped toreach a New Years Eve party before midnight. The remainingfinal four, Lucy, Tom, Peter, and I, then piled into a single vehi-cle and drove a short way north to Agua Caliente Park, which has acampground, store, indoor hot pool, andan intriguing 2 mile loop hike trail.

Our attempt to find Moonlit Canyon,which branches off from the loop trail,proved challenging because of twists andturns, rocky washes, and blocked paths,one of which was actually marked with astreet-type Do Not Enter sign becauseof an impassable rock wall about twohundred feet up the trail. After reachingdead ends up several more little sidecanyons, we found a faint use trail whichled over a ridge to Moonlit Canyon.Clambering my way over boulder afterboulder up this wide, rocky canyon, I feltplayed out and began lagging behind theothers, who wanted to hike up to a viewpoint and return via the same route. Isoon headed back down MoonlitCanyon, planning to stop at the junctionof the use-trail wed taken to access thiscanyon.

Somehow I missed the use-trail and kept heading downhill, expect-ing still to find it with no problem. I did see a place which lookedlike it might be the junction with the use-trail, but I didnt recog-nize the spot for sure because Id not been attentive enough to mysurroundings on my way up. So I kept going straight down Moon-lit Canyon and soon came to an impassable drop-off. (This, itturned out, was the sheer rock wall where the short canyon beyondthe Do Not Enter sign had so abruptly ended!) I then realizedId missed the use-trail, which was the path back. I had no optionbut to head back up Moonlit Canyon, to either locate the use-trail Ihad missed or meet up with the others.

I began to worry that the others mighthave already headed off on the use-trailby the time I got to where it turned off.How would they know where I was?Sensing the real possibility that I couldbe in serious trouble, I felt the begin-nings of panic. I did my best to quellthis feeling and to focus on my one, bestoption: to follow the canyon back upuntil I met my fellow hikers. Sureenough, after a few anxious minutes ofdetermined, focused walking, I was muchrelieved to see the others clamberingdown the canyon. And they seemedrelieved to see me.

Once back on the parks loop trail, wefollowed it back to the campgroundthrough a narrow, unexpectedly woody,swamp-like area. Then at last we got toindulge in the parks hot pool.

Back at camp, we celebrated New Years

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Bow Willow Canyon, ocotillo and cholla

On the California Riding and Hiking Trail, overlooking the town of Borrego Springs

Eve around my handy folding camp tableby sharing a nice dinner and after somecheap champagne great stories about ourworst jobs and stimulating discussions ofour favorite literature. As a bright moonrose, we noticed several bright-eyed kitfoxes circling us. Wanting to share ourrevelry with his furry kin, Peter set outsome champagne in his green plastic din-ner bowl for the skulking creatures. Thenext morning, Peter checked his bowl tosee if the kit foxes had imbibed the cham-pagne. The bowl was gone!

It was another good day, sunny but neitherhot nor windy. We drove to nearby BowWillow Canyon to begin a loop hike. Ifound the primitive, iconic desert topogra-phy and vegetation on this days hike quitecaptivating. Cactus, ocotillo, large rocksand boulders abounded, and good usetrails led through much of it. From BowWillow Canyon we followed a wash andtraversed over a broad ridge and downanother wash into wide Rock HouseCanyon, a few miles up which we lunchedat the Rock House. More of a line shackfor cattle rustlers, the house was builtmostly of rocks into the side of a hill. Iwas content in this rustic setting, casuallyobserving an ant working hard to get aload of food out of my lunch bag.

A short but steep climb over a low pass led back to Bow WillowCanyon. I started to lag behind once again in this canyon, but thistime I was not concerned. We were going downhill on a flat, widesandy wash full of smoke and palo verde trees on an obvious routeback to the trailhead with no confusing junction choices. Whengetting lost is not an issue, walking through the desert by yourself,engulfed in silence and solitude, is a very therapeutic and enjoyableexercise.

Back at camp in the waning day-light I took a muscle-stretchingpre-dinner stroll up a closed roadto a previously allowed but nowforbidden camping area, which Iwas curious to explore. Thisarea had a better view and wasmore secluded than where we hadto camp, and there was no appar-ent reason to prohibit its use.But some park official had obvi-ously decided to close it. On myway down from the forbiddencamp I came upon a large bur-row-belonging to kit foxes, per-haps? Near the burrow I spiedsomething conspicuous: a greenplastic bowl!

Could it be? I took the bowl back tocamp, but kept it out of sight until theappropriate moment. When, over dinner,the subject of the thieving kit foxes cameup, I asked Peter to describe the lost bowl.Green plastic, he said. Did it look likethis? I asked, pulling the bowl fromunder my jacket with a flourish. It did.We all had a good laugh over the complet-ed exchange with the local wildlife. Thatevening only one kit fox joined us; like theprevious nights visitors, it darted about innear-constant motion, at a wary distanceas it developed another thieving strategy.Lucy desperately wanted to photograph it,but after she dug out her camera and fig-ured out how to work the flash, the foxvanished.

For the fifth and final day, we carpooledsouth to look for slot canyons in the Car-rizo Badlands, a maze of mudhills andcanyons which extend for miles across theparks broad central valley. After a fewfalse leads, we found a decent slot withsome tight squeezes which topped out at agreat view point. Quite different from theprevious days hikes, this one was not toostrenuous and a lot of fun.

After breaking camp the next morning Isaid good-bye and headed home. I hadtaxed myself enough, and a day and a half

of driving awaited me, so I elected not to join the others for a hikein Blair Valley. They wanted to hike up a steep trail to the lone-some remains of a home where Marshal South and his wife hadtried to live like natives and raise their family for many years in the1930s.

Though I felt rushed at times (I maintain that hurrying through thedesert does not increase the enjoyment of it), I was very glad Istayed nearly the whole trip. I loved the region, we had great

weather and no major injuries,and I came away with somethingentirely unexpected from a desertadventure -a renewed enthusiasmfor great world literature. Thankslargely to Peter, I am now part ofa reading challenge at the librarywhere I work: sometime duringthe year, we will read The Broth-ers Karamozov. Ive alreadywarmed up with Crime and Pun-ishment.

So, here are my lessons from thistrip: dont wander off; kit foxesare thieves; and reading the clas-sics can actually be fun!

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Threading the needle, slot canyon (Carrizobadlands)

Native California Palm Leaf

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9The Survivor Spring 2007

January 20-21, 2007

By Craig Deutsche, Los Angeles

It is hard to imagine that a private wildlife preserve can bebigger than all but a very few of the wilderness areas in Cali-fornia, but it is true. The Wind Wolves preserve, located atthe very southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, includes100,000 acres. It is owned and run by the Wildlands Conser-vancy, a non-profit group with a two-fold mission: preserva-tion of a transitional habitat, and education of the publicabout wildlands, their value, and their beauty. While the pre-serve is reasonably well funded, volunteers do a great deal ofthe restoration that occurs on the property, and that is whythis Desert Survivor service trip went there.

Some of our group camped at the preserve Friday evening,the night before the actual project. This requires that eitherthe entrance gate be unlocked, or else visitors must be giventhe combination in advance, as the land is not only preservedbut also protected. Groups are welcomed, but they must makearrangements in advance. The remainder of our group arrived onSaturday morning, and at 9:00 a.m. David Clendenen, director, metthe group and gave the initial instructions. Although previousgroups have removed tamarisk, planted oak trees, or modifiedbarbed wire, the assignment on this occasion was plantingmesquite at the lower elevations below the campsite. This is not atechnical job, but still it is important to have a hole of proper size,to use enough mulch, to bury the seedling roots to the properdepth, and to install the drip irrigation system upon completion.For a year water will be provided, and after that the roots will bedeep enough that the plants can manage on their own. The pur-pose of the planting ultimately was to provide cover and habitatfor birds and small mammals where former grazing had strippedthe ground.

One of the unex-pected pleasures ofworking at this pre-serve is that volun-teers are given abarbeque dinner onSaturday eveningand then taken on atour of the preservethe following morn-ing. Perhaps thehighlight of theevening occurredwhen two of thegroup took a walkup the road in thedark and thenrushed back tocamp with reportsof a spooky gur-gling noise coming

from a bush. Speculations ran to rattlesnakes, mammals, andghosts. Further investigation resolved the question with the dis-covery of a leaky irrigation pipe.

The preserve ranges from an elevation of perhaps 1500 feet up to6000 feet immediately below the Los Padres Forest and Mt. Pinos.On the tour, we encountered at least 50 elk, several deer, severalcoyotes, a golden eagle, and olfactory evidence of skunk, as well assmaller birds and a collection of rodents. One of the treats was avisit to a Chumash rock art site. This is one of the premier sites insouthern California and is only available to groups guided by amember of the preserve staff.

The third weekend of every month (summer excluded by heat) is awork party at the preserve. There is no need to participate as anorganized groupindividuals are welcome, although it is wise tomake advancearrangements bycalling the phonenumber listed ontheir website(www.wildlandscon-servancy.org) forWind Wolves pre-serve.

And the name?When winds blowacross prairie grass-lands, it is said thatwolves are runningout of sight andmoving the grass.These are thewolves for whichthe preserve isnamed.

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Wind Wolves Preserve Service Trip

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10 The Survivor Spring 2007

February 4-9, 2007

By George Grubstake Huxtable,San Mateo, CA

It was 5 years ago that we startedthe Desert Trail at Jacumba, atthe Mexican border. This yearwe would cross into Death ValleyNational Park, arriving at MillerSpring in Greenwater Valley, a dis-tance of 468 miles. We planned tocover the last 85 of those 468 milesby completing the Shadow Mountains, Valjean-Amargosa and Ibex Hills segments of the DesertTrail.

Pete Cactus Campbell, Don Dusty Brownand myself met at Miller Spring in the southernend of Greenwater Valley on Saturday, February3. I was the last to arrive, via Shoshone, pullingin at night. Dusty already had a grill sizzling awaywith teriyaki chicken, roast potatoes and salad which we thorough-ly enjoyed, knowing it would be our last real meal for many days.

We were up the next day, Sunday, before daylight, and began orga-nizing our equipment. It always amazes me how much equipmentdetail is involved in such a simple endeavor as backpacking. Thenas the sun was rising, we left my Jeep and began our caching rou-tine with the two other vehicles. One cache was left at Tecopa inone of our vehicles behind a trailer park and the other buriedabout 10 miles east of Highway 127, along Kingston Road.

We got on the trail about noon on February 4, leaving onfoot from Halloran Summit on Interstate 15, about 18 mileseast of Baker. Of course, the Desert Trail is only a trail in theminds eye, a pencil line drawn on folded topo maps. Howev-er, it is thoroughly documented in a series of well-writtenguidebooks by Steve Tabor covering the Desert Trail of Cali-fornia and Nevada. They are what bring the trail to life.

From Halloran Summit, the route quicklymoves away from the pounding interstate free-way, into low-lying hills laced with old 4X4roads. The vegetation is classic Mojave; lots ofcreosote, Joshua trees, blackbrush and bur-roweed. We came to the base of SolomonsKnob, a prominent lava outcropping, and

dropped over a minor plateauinto Bull Spring Wash. Wecamped in the hills thatevening beyond the wash.

Continuing north the nextday, we moved quickly overagreeable terrain and into thewestern part of Shadow Val-ley. We crossed under severalmassive transmission linesthat ran between Las Vegasand Los Angeles. The hightension wires looked like spi-der webs shimmering in thesunlight draped from towerto tower for miles, and utterlydwarfed by the even more

massive scale of a blank desert. Two helicopters swooped over-head, apparently inspecting the lines or thinking twice about ourlarge backpacks. The route turned west, following a more narrowwash before coming to heavily choked and waterless KingstonSpring. We camped a few miles west of the spring, late in the dayon February 5. Cactus had announced earlier that he had broughta cribbage board, with which he would refresh Dusty and my rec-ollections of the game to play after dinner. Expecting a small,lightweight plastic board, we were surprised to watch Cactus pullan oversize, solid wood cribbage board from his pack! We enjoyeda couple of games by headlamp before turning in for the night.

The next morning, after two days and 32 miles, we arrived at ourcache along Kingston Road in the morning. We reloaded food andwater and spirited north across Valjean Valley at a quick pace.After crossing Kingston Wash, we wrapped around the ValjeanHills to the east side of the Dumont Dunes. The terrain clearlyshowed the vicinity of the dunes with sand blown loosely all

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Halloran Summit to Miller SpringBackpack; Segments P, Q and R of theCalifornia Desert Trail

Location of segments P, Q, R

11The Survivor Spring 2007

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around. We camped in the outer reaches of the dunes on Febru-ary 6, very near the site of the Dumont station of the Tonopahand Tidewater (T&T) Railroad, now obliterated by sand and time.

The next morning, Dusty found a small, but lethal scorpion tuckedaway under his pack. The scorpion seemed to be sleeping due tothe cool temperatures, but when disturbed, he quickly came to lifeand was in no mood for our company. Having missed the lasttrain leaving Dumont station, we finished getting our packs on andhiked on the railroad bed toward Amargosa Canyon with beautifulviews of the Dumont Dunes to our left.

The railroad bed is largely intact from the T&Ts original operationbetween 1907 and 1940. It was built by borax magnate FrancisMarion Smith mainly for borax transport. The old rail bed, wellengineered above intermittent side washes, soon turned north andentered the Amargosa River drainage. The river was runningabout 6 to 8 inches deep and 10 to 15 feet across, dried salts onthe river banks looked like an odd dusting of snow in the winter.We followed the railroad bed the entire way, at times along theriver and at other times well above it along the steep rocky slopes.As the terrain changed, engineers had built culverts and bridges to

move the train route along the river drainage. There were frequentplaces where the rail bed was completely washed away requiring usto drop down to the river, remove our boots and push throughreeds and thorned vegetation to the other side and back again.Parts of the river, particularly the confluence of the Amargosa andthe China Ranch drainage, are quite dramatic with Utah-like carvedriver banks and colored hills. We camped along the Amargosa onFebruary 7, played some cribbage after dinner, and listened to coy-ote calls echoing up the canyon.

On February 8 we arrived in Tecopa, known for mineral springsand trailer parks. Here we again replenished the food and waterfrom our second cache just in time to catch the outbound T&Tfrom the Tecopa station. The railroad bed is well preserved just tothe west of Tecopa amidst Amargosa River wetlands. We left therailroad bed at Tecopa Hot Springs Road, briefly followed theroad, crossed over Highway 127, and entered the lower end ofGreenwater Valley. Our westerly route went directly toward a lowpoint in the Ibex Hills where we later found a good campsite.

That night we ate dinner and looked down on the city lights ofTecopa, about 1,200 feet below us.

The next morning we were back into canyon country working ourway up an easy, yet twisting and colorful wash toward SheepheadPass. Once at the pass, there are long northwest views towardDeath Valley and Telescope Peak. Our route turned north fromthe pass across the grain of awkwardly angled contours, so wedecided to change our route to the west and exit the Ibex Hillswell south of Salsberry Pass. We approached Salsberry Pass fromthe southwest and then continued north down the long, gentleslope into Greenwater Valley.

We arrived at the vehicle just after sunset, where we had enjoyed agrilled chicken dinner almost a week earlier. After several days ofhiking, the body gets used to having things go by at 2 to 3 miles anhour. Now, sitting in a speeding car, the creosote bushes wereswept aside as our senses quickly adjusted. It was a great trip andeach of us were anxious to get home. But food was on our minds,and the next stop was to be The Greek in Baker where desert ratslike us fit right in with tourists, long haul truckers and flashy Vegasgamblers.

Shadows on Dumont Dunes

Don on the Amargosa

Enroute to Miller Spring

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12 The Survivor Spring 2007

Black Rock High Points Backpack, May 10-14, Northwestern NV

By Cathy Luchetti, Oakland, CA

We had two choices: to reach the meeting place on Don-nelly Creek road by driving Nevadas Black Rock Desertplaya, or by rattling along Soldier Meadows road, justwest of Gerlach, for thirty miles or more. The playa, a greatinland desert lakebed, stretched more than 160,000-acres ahead,beckoning in the dusk, white and misty, each lonely mile echoingwith the seasonal shouts of the Burning Man revelers. Wonderingwhether to drive it or not, we worried about wet playa turning intoquicksand. In the fading light, who knew if it were wet or dry?We opted for the road instead, and after missing the meeting placeseveral times, finally spotted a car headlight flashing, far away onthe mesa.

This is lonesome country. You can travel for hours along theplayas ancient shoreline, an area so barren and flat that on a clearday, you can see the curvature of the earth. Hiking up the CalicoMountains toward Donnelly Peak, the wilderness turns even moreremote. We started out early: 15-miles with a 4,000-foot elevationgain would take all day. We fought our way uphill, scrunchingthrough sticky monkeypod, bitterroot, and fragrant sage, findingalong the rocky way hunks of turquoise, finely carved arrowheads,glistening obsidian shards, and a dimpled, metallic-looking rock,about 3 feet high, a possible meteorite found by Stan. The dark,spiky tufa seemed ordinary enough until Lynne Brei found tinycrystals, buried deep in the innermost crevices, sparkling in thelight.

As the group struggled upward leader John Wilkinson, LynneBrei, Mike Tadeschi, Bruce Loeb, Michael Sorenson, Stan Huncil-man, Cathy Luchetti we pushed our way through sharp crevicesin the towering rock faces and around high cliff walls, the viewexpanding with every step. The Calico mountains are home to apopulation of 150 California bighorn sheep, yet a hundred yearsago, the mountains also sheltered roving bands of Paiute Indians.My people were scattered over nearly all of the territory nowknown as Nevada wrote Paiute Sarah Winnemuca, granddaughter

of Chief Truckee. I was a very small child when the first whitepeople came into our country. They came like a lion, yes, like aroaring lion, and have continued so ever since.

Settlers must have roared right through the Calico wilderness,because hardly a trace of anyone remains today. Yet wherever theview turned wonderful, or a tiny seep of water invited flowers-sun-cups, lupine, wooly yellow daisy or Spanish clover-shards litteredthe ground, evidence that the bygone tribes, like us, wanted to restin a lovely spot and watch the sunset.

Exhausted from the peaks 8,539-foot elevation and the hours ofconstant bushwhacking, we crawled into camp at dusk, shakingticks from our shirts like a hail of watermelon seeds. The nextdays adventure was a backpack into the Pahute Peak Wilderness toclimb Big Mountain, starting at the trailhead, an arid, abandonedmining site at Copper Canyon. The trail led us quickly into theNevada Serengheti, a lush, spring-dotted area filled with antelope,golden eagles, and nonstop wild horses. The day before, wed seenshy horses in groups of three-a stallion and two mares who dancedaway from us, skittish and aloof. The paints and palominos of theCalico Range, on the other hand, were born entertainers, starvedfor an audience, with wavy manes and snappy hooves, who cavort-ed up and down the hillside, making mock war on one another,then regrouping before picking another horse to nip and harass.Minutes later, the ousted horse would roar back, nipping and frol-icking in return, forcing himself back into the herd. Friends again,the nippers would gallop side by side, the wind fanning out theirlong tailsexuberant, wild, free roaming horses, several of thethousand in Nevada protected by federal law and managed by theBLM.

The vista point we occupied was perfect. Despite the cold wind,we could watch the horses while gazing out over the mountains,long meadows and faraway desert, misty purple in the gatheringdusk, hiding the secret of the nearby Lassen-Clapper murder site,which John promised to tell us about. To the east lay Big Moun-tain, the next days destination. Yet as we sipped Bruce Loebs ginand tonics, shivering in the cold, the charm of our site grew. Did

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Rock near summit

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13The Survivor Spring 2007

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anyone reallywant to leave?After all, Stan,accompaniedby Mike T.,had driven offthe cows andappropriatedtheir wateringhole. Insteadof cow muck,we now had apvc pipe stuckdirectly into

the hillside spring and could refill with sparkling water at will. Wealso had ringside seats for the Wild Horse Rodeo and an enticingrocky outcrop nearby to climb. Why not stay?

Fired by the idea of radical leisure, one by one we made otherplans for the day, deciding to hike back in the early afternoon afterMike S. climbed a far peak, and the rest of us launched our ownexplorations. The wind had died, the sunlit landscape shone likegold. The steep hill, its rocky crest serrated as a Spanish castle,was a madness of dark, crusted, rhyolite magma, erupted up fromlava flows, frozen by time into flinty gargoyles-bent, pulled, bro-ken, twisted, perfect for climbing. The top, flat and windswept, ledto an overlook of many hundreds of feet straight down, down,down until - what? Stan pulled back excitedly from the edge, ges-turing to us to be quiet, hed found an eagle. We crept silently,pulling ourselves Marine style along the ground, trying not to makea ruckus as we looked down on the head of a perfectly coiffed

golden eagle, the size of a small wildcat. An eagle can have up to7,000 light, strong, stylishly interlocked feathers set in ruffled, con-centric swirls-as this one did. It lives in rugged, high terrain,where it scans the ground for prey and waits for a lively updraft tocarry its slightly hefty (this one was about 15 pounds) body intothe air. Eagles generally live for fifteen to twenty years, althoughthe shock of looking up and seeing three faces staring down at itcould have shortened this ones life considerably. With a snap anda flap of five-foot wings, the eagle soared away, highly annoyed.We sat there, dazed. No one had ever been this close to a Goldeneagle before, an exciting moment, one of many on this beautifulexploration.

As we left the mountains, a single delight remained: Soldier Mead-ows Hot Springs, an oasis of tule reeds, verdant marsh grass, tinyflowers and birds surrounding a chin-deep pool of warm water,nearly the size of a small swimming pool. As our toes sank intothe soft, hot mud, wesighed, floated, stayed untilthe sun sank, the constella-tions whirled overhead, andthe night birds sounded.Coyotes howled from thedesert, and still, we lingeredin the warm water, trying toimagine the Paiutes who hadprobably bathed and sighedin this same delightful water,sinking their toes into thesame deep mud. A wonder-ful trip, enjoyed by all.

Eagle Sighting in Black RockRangeBy Stan Huncilman, Berkeley, CA

Midmorning Sunday Cathy Luchetti and I scrambled tothe top of an unnamed bump north of Big Mountainaffording an excellent view of the sage carpeted lavictablelands and King Lear Peak. As it was flat on top I tookadvantage of the north face of the bump to satisfy my desire for abit of exposure. There one finds a shear face of at least 300 feet,basaltic in composition, with enough fragments and cracks to be abreathtaking compliment to the tranquil sea of sage below. Allwas in balance. Emotive tranquility expressed in an endless vistawhilst me the physical acknowledged corporeal modesty.

Swallows were enjoying the airs eddies courtesy of the escarp-ment. It is one of natures keenest moments to stand above thebirds and see as I did that day the swallows dart and fetch. Nomountain view affords such juxtaposition of the senses as doesthe avian from atop and here I stood as natures most joyous-of-creatures, birds, engaged in matters of import known only tothem. That birds may one day care! Oh weigh not but wings inheavens breathe. -Titus Meius

Yet soon my ego sobered me, for there at lands end was by but afew feet a higher point! Keys of boulders and lavic extrusions,feeble redoubts fell. There I stood at points end an arc ofprecipice to my side as if cape in wind. There my invigoration cli-maxed as I braced against the strong breeze that swept the point.

At this moment I decided to give a quick inspection to the ram-part at toes edge in order that I discern a nest or some other con-struct of the swallows. As I peered over the edge, there not threefeet from my shoe perched a golden eagle. He was upon a smallrock ledge. Such was its size that in order to land or exit he wouldhave to enable a fall or drop. The wind had deafened him to mypresence. This bird, lord of these skies, what reason had he tolook upward? What a voyeurs delight that he so keen of sightshould be now so blind! Ever vigilant he methodically scannedthe horizon; only the occasional roar of the darting swallow gavehim start. Had I but been the Aztec I would have stood at Heav-ens Gate.

I slowly retreated. I wanted Cathy and Bruce, who had recentlycome up to the escarpment, to see the raptor. I made my wayback and informed them and together we returned. We allapproached on hands and knees. Our king still held court. As Iprepared to take a photograph, a pause in wind or lens reflectiongave him notice of our presence. Not startled, but annoyed, hestepped and dropped to open wings and soon was beyond oursight.

Soldier Meadows Hot Springs

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14 The Survivor Spring 2007

By Craig Deutsche, Los Angeles

The Carrizo Plain National Monument is in the process ofpreparing a comprehensive management plan. In anticipa-tion of this, Ive been driving all the back roads in the areaso that when their route designation map is published for com-ment, I will be able to speak with some knowledge. In fact Ivespent at least twelve days driving, taking pictures, taking GPS way-points, keeping notes, and getting lost. By now I probably knowthese roads better than any of the government employees who willbe making the plan. So it was a month ago that I set out for mylast two days of exploring in the Temblor Range there, a group ofhills on the north and east side of the monument.

After spending a good part of the morning finding my way alongtiny dirt roads going nowhere in these mountains, I started down-hill on another road. It was a bit steep but did not look bad until I was half way down and began to slip sideways. It was allloose shale and fine sand. At the bottom of the hill I took somemore pictures, looked around, and then started driving up the hill.There was no other way out. I was slipping almost immediately,and then one of the front wheels went off the road. When I triedto back out (in 4WD) the other front wheel went off the road.After a little more effort, I was in pretty bad shape.

This was a narrow ridge just wide enough for the road. It droppedsteeply down at least 40 meters on either side. I was aimedstraight down one of these slopes with front wheels way down andthe back wheels just barely on the road. If I had somehow turnedsideways on the hill I would certainly have rolled to the bottom,and the car would be toast. It was miles to the nearest road whereI could even hope to find help, and at least nine or ten miles tosomeplace that might have a phone. There was nothing to do buttry to dig out myself.

So for the next s e v en hours I worked at it. First I put a tough towstrap over the ridge to a tree on the other side to hold the car fromgoing any farther. I had a hand-winch to try and pull it back up tothe road, but no luck. I dug out under the wheels. I dug outunder the car. I used the jack to lift the front wheels (to get themalmost as high as the back wheels) and then put rocks under them.I put some carpet under the spinning tires. As the sun set I wasjust as far off the road as ever, and the tires were even deeper inthe sand. So I slept there and figured to go for help in the morn-ing.

Next morning I took some pictures of the mess so that when, andif, I found someone that might help, I could show them what toexpect. I spent four hours walking out until I finally found some-one with a phone. I called Mary (my wife). She said, Get a towtruck. I said that I probably needed a sky-hook, but anyway noone could ever find the car unless I rode along with them. It tookMary about two-and-a-half hours to drive up from Los Angeles,and then we went into the nearby town of Fellows to see whatcould be done. This area is all oil fields, and the town is strictlyworking-class, but at least they dont mind dirt. Neither of thetowing companies in town had a 4WD truck. They thought theremight be one in Bakersfield, 50 miles away. I could hear cash reg-isters playing like pianos. But then one of the mechanics said thathe had a friend, Dave, who might be able to help. Dave lived inthe plywood house across from the fire station at the road junctioncalled Fellows. He knew the roads pretty well; he had a jeep; andhe enjoyed rough country. If his house had a jeep and a truck infront, then he was home. There was no other choice.

When I got to the house Dave was in the back yard drinking beerwith some buddies, good-old-boys to be sure. It was now four inthe afternoon. I told them the story, showed them the pictures,and described the location of my car. The older of the friends

knew the roads well, and when I said I wentdownhill onto the ridge he said, God, that is ashit-hole of a hill. This was rather unnecessary.I already knew that.

The result was that Mary and I got into Davesjeep; two more (Mike and Rick) got into a hugediesel pickup; and we all drove out of town intothe hills. Along the way we passed a truck goingthe other way. Dave said, BLM, Humph! Isaid, Is deer hunting good up here? Im not acomplete fool nothing about Sierra Club. Wediscussed the gear ratio in his transmission andthe viscosity of the crude in the oil field. Whenthey saw my car, there was no way they wanted todrive down to it they didnt think they wouldever get back up. So we walked down and starteddigging. All of us worked like demons: digging,moving the ropes, cranking on the winch; push-ing; spinning the tires. After one and a half hoursit was back on the road, but then there was a hillto get back up. During this time, Dave had calledhis brother-in-law, and by the time my car was

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Gentle Predator OfThe SouthernDesert: TheTarantulaBy Steve Tabor

In the fall season and early winter the desert visitor will oftensee what look like large hairy spiders walking the southerndesert floor both night and day. These are tarantulas, predato-ry arthropods (spiders) several inches long, genus Aphonopelma.Though many people fear them, their deliberate gait and gentledemeanor have touched my heart more than once. Ive grown tolove these fearsome-looking creatures.

Tarantulas are seen most often during mating season when theblack-colored males roam in search of females. In the NorthernHemisphere this translates to November and December. They aremost conspicuous on the broad sandy plains of the southerndeserts but can also be found in the rocky country around DeathValley. The rest of the year they spend in their holes, web-linedopenings about an inch in diameter and four inches deep. The spi-der will make a little lair for itself at the lowest level where it canlay down facing the opening. Silk threads running up to the top ofthe hole and out along the ground are tripped by potential prey,inducing the tarantula to leap out and snag its prey. In most of thedesert, there are tarantulas all around you, waiting in their silkyburrows. Unless you know what to look for, you wont know that,unless its mating season when theyre out and about.

Though it looks scary with its long hairy legs and large sharp fangs,the tarantula has a peculiar way of eating. Once it captures itsprey, usually a beetle or grasshopper, it grasps it with the two pedi-palps in front, hairy appendages that look like short legs. Thetarantula will then vomit a copious amount of digestive fluid ontothe victims body. This nasty substance will dissolve the victimsinnards, enabling the tarantula to suck out its bodily fluids, its main

food. The spi-der may have todo this severaltimes before itcan consume allof the victimssoft parts, leav-ing behind onlyits hollowexoskeleton.

Mating practicesare performedcarefully, sinceboth genders areknown to becannibalistic.Males havehooks on their front legs that allow them to lock onto the femalesfangs while mating to immobilize them and render them harmless.The male will approach the females hole and tap lightly, waitingfor her to come out. When she does, he prepares a batch of semi-nal fluid on a pedipalp, locks on, and then deposits the fluid byhand in the place where it is intended to go. He then carefullyextricates himself from the situation and runs away, fast! Manyless careful male spiders have been eaten by their females aftermating. Males dont live long as a result. Females may live 25-30years, a long time for an arthropod.

Eggs are laid in a burrow on a soft bed of silk, then covered overwith more silk. The female watches over the mass of eggs, usually500 or 1000, until they hatch. As with many insects and arthro-pods, many young ones start out but few reach maturity.

You may find the exoskeleton of a tarantula out in the desert.This may look like the skeleton of one of the tarantulas prey,except the cephalothorax is split open on its top side. If you seethe split, the exoskeleton is a molt left behind by a tarantula thathas shed its skin. A tarantula will shed every year so it can growinto a fresh, new, larger exoskeleton that will allow it to grow.Molting is a painful process for the spider that can take quiteawhile. People who keep tarantulas as pets are often shockedwhen they first watch the molt and may mourn their animal pre-maturely as it writhes and twists, then spends prolonged periods on

15The Survivor Spring 2007

upright, the third jeep had arrived at the top of the hill with amechanical winch. Too bad that the cable on the winch onlyreached a little way down the slope.

We drove my car as far up the hill as possible until it was spinningwheels again. We used four short tow straps to extend the cableand then started driving and towing. It took fifteen minutes tomove the car 200 feet to the top, moving it an inch at a time.When it arrived, the four of them broke out the beer to celebrate.By the time we got back to their house in town it was 7:30 p.m.and they had missed dinner. One of the fellows admitted that henever expected that my car would ever get on the road again. Itwas clear that no tow truck could ever reach it or help. Moneywas out of the question, so I offered to take them out for the din-

ner they had missed. Their answer: Weve all been in toughspots. When you meet someone else in trouble, pass the helpalong. And if anyone asks, tell them that the guys living at Fel-lows are okay.

A week later Mary was in San Francisco, and I went back to finishthe road survey that had been interrupted. When we got backhome, I told her where I had been.She asked, How did it go?I said, I didnt get stuck this time.She said, Thats nice.I said, I think so too.

It is good to have a wife who understands.

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its back, appearing to be dying or dead. What a relief when thetarantula molts completely and recovers!

A tarantulas bite can feel harsh, like a pinprick, but the venom isntmuch to speak of. The tarantula has many enemies, and for theseit has developed barbed hairs on the abdomen that can produce anirritation to anything (or anyone) trying to molest it. These hairs,in fact its generally hairy appearance, provide a visual deterrent,but can also badly damage the eyes as well as the general skin sur-face of a potential predator. If you take a tarantula as a pet,remember this. Try not to handle the creature, though it is OK toallow it to walk across ones outstretched hand, as I am fond ofdoing when I lead trips for naive and impressionable desert visi-tors. Actually picking the animal up may injure it, since it is veryfragile. Be careful not to hurt any tarantula you come in contactwith.

One of the tarantulas biggest enemies is a wasp known as thetarantula hawk (Pepsis sp.). This wasp is a large one, coloredmetallic blue, green and red. When it meets up with a tarantula, itwill sting and paralyze it, then drag it to a burrow where it willdeposit eggs in the abdomen, then cover up the hole. When theeggs hatch, the larvae that emerge will enjoy a feast of fresh taran-tula meat and eat the paralyzed but not yet dead spider until it isconsumed.

Now that you know more about tarantulas, perhaps youll appreci-

ate them more the next time you see one. For me there is nothingmore elegant than this creatures graceful movements, measuredand regular, across the deserts sandy/pebbly surface. The spiderfeels its way with the tips of its sensitive feet, all eight of them. Agood thing they are sensitive, because the tarantulas eyes are prac-tically useless. Four pairs of eyes are located on top of thecephalothorax, but they dont see much. The tarantula feels its waythrough its world, which is just as well, since its rarely aboveground or out in the daytime, except during mating season.

Watch for tarantulas this November and December. Let one crawlacross your hand to get the feel of the creature. But dont yankyour hand away! You dont want to startle the tarantula or give itcause for alarm. Justlet it walk across andgo on its gracefulway. And try toimagine what itwould feel like toamble across thedesert on all eightlegs, touching eachrock and bush andcactus. Its a weirdfeeling isnt it? Getin touch with nature.

Tarantula in Palo Verde Mts., Nov., 2005

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Rolling Down TheWash: The SmokeTreeBy Steve Tabor

In the Californias low deserts, the Colorado subsection of theSonoran and the lower parts of the Mojave, you will often seeslight wispy trees three or four or six feet high extendingacross an otherwise barren sandy wash. These will be blue-twigged and have no leaves. Branches end in a point. From a dis-tance they look like light blue wisps of smoke. These are smoketrees.

The smoke tree, Psorothamnus spinosus, is a member of the peafamily. It is in the same genus as the indigo bush, its sticky-gland-ed relative from nearby desert hills and canyons. Both have deepblue flowers that are striking during the blooming season of Apriland May. The smoke tree is much more noticeable then.

The smoke tree has a peculiar habitat, wide sandy washes of desertplains and low hills that are occasionally swept clean by flashfloods. The fact that smoke trees often grow in even-aged standsis no accident. The plants evolved that way. They evolved withflashfloods and in fact depend on them for reproduction as well assustenance.

The smoke tree, like all peas, forms its seeds in a pod. The seedsare hard and nut-like, like kitchen peas allowed to dry in the sun.Smoke tree seeds have a hard rind that withstands abrasion well, allthe better to roll down the wash in a flashflood unharmed. Therind is thick enough to withstand minor floods, but thin enough towear down in a large flood. Small floods will push it downstreamsome but not break through the coating, but a really large floodwill abrade it through, and that is the flood that will allow water toget to the live part of the seed inside to germinate it. A flood likethat will usually soak the sand enough to keep the sprout alive untilits roots become established in the soil, a matter of a few days or aweek at most. If theres not enough moisture to last the sprout, orif hot sun comes out and bakes the earth the day after, the sproutwill die. Its a fine balance. The smoke tree takes a chance that itssprouts will make it through, past the first rainstorm.

It is not unusual to see a whole lot of smoke trees all the samesize, growing all across and up and down a wash. These all sprout-ed after the same flashflood. There used to be a large thicket ofthem in the lower part of Carrizo Gorge before they were allknocked down by an even larger flood sometime in the 1990s. Itis also common to see a mass of sprouts a few inches high, notgreen and lively but brown and dead. These all sprouted at thesame time after a flood but were baked dry in the heat wave thatfollowed. It could be 10-15 years before the next flood will sprouta new crop. Smoke tree seeds, with their hard rind, can afford towait.

This is a remarkable means of reproduction, but not that unusual.Trees in forested country prone to fire, the Sierra Nevada forexample, have a similar practice. Theyve developed seeds that will

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only sprout on mineral soil laid bare by a forest fire. GiantSequoias, knobcone pines and Bishop pines depend on fires forsprouting. Their seeds do not sprout well in leaf litter. They arealso frequently found in even-aged stands. Other plants havedeveloped seeds within fruits that are eaten by birds or animals.Only when the seed passes through a bird or animal digestive tractwill the seed sprout, and then it benefits from the nutrients inwhatever fecal matter is left around it whenever it is returned tothe soil. These mechanisms of nature are an unending fascinationto those of us who seekout knowledge of them.

Ive seen excellent exam-ples of this smoke treereproduction phenome-non in action, from allu-vial fans and broadwashes in southern andeastern Joshua TreeNational Park, to theBristol Mountains andOld Woman Mountainsof the Southern Mojave,to Sheephole Valley.The trees seem to lovewashes derived fromgranite sand, which isparticularly well-drained.The northernmost standis reported from the lowfoothills of the Owl-shead Mountainsfronting Death Valley.

With no leaves and only

thin, mostly vertical,branches, smoke treesdont provide muchshade, but they may doin a pinch. In their hot,sunny environment, youhave to admire them forbeing alive at all. It isnot unusual to see thesetrees turning brown anddying back. They willreadily sacrifice wholebranches, even half thetree, to keep the otherhalf alive, but givensome moisture from afew regular rains, thetree will shoot up newbranches to replace theold. Smoke trees aresurvivors.

In the springtime of agood rain year you maybe fortunate to see theseleafless trees growing up

to six feet tall with masses of dark blue flowers at the end of everytwig. Its a beautiful sight. But even if you cant see them inbloom, contemplate them for what they are, another desert phe-nomenon, another remarkable desert plant that looks unremark-able. Once you know the smoke tree, and have observed it in itsharsh habitat, and contemplated how amazing its lifestyle really is,youll be seeing the tree with new eyes, the eyes of desert knowl-edge. Keep investigating the desert. Its a fascinating place.

The Survivor Spring 2007

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Game Guzzlers Proposed For TheIndian Pass Wilderness: AnEdifice Complex?By Steve Tabor

The re-introduction of bighorn sheep to California DesertWilderness Areas since the 1940s has been a great success.Legal protection of habitat from vehicular trespass and idlepoaching through the 1994 California Desert Protection Act(CDPA) has definitely been a factor. Though the animals keepthemselves well-hidden and are hard to see, hikers in Wildernessfind bighorn tracks, trails and sleeping beds all the time nowadays.More than forty mountain ranges now protect bighorn. Now thatthey are well-established, the sheep pretty much fend for them-selves, as they should in Wilderness.

In recent years, the California Department of Fish and Game(CDFG) has embarked on a new program of building more gameguzzlers in the desert. These guzzlers, or water catchments, aredesigned to capture the deserts sparse runoff from infrequent rainstorms and direct it into water tanks that are designed to holdthousands of gallons over long periods of time. The intention isto provide water for sheep during the long hot rainless summermonths.

Many of these catchments were built in the early years of sheepintroduction. Some of them work, some dont. The CaliforniaDesert lacks the summer thunderstorms of the Sonoran Monsoonwith its sudden heavy flashfloods which pour water down canyonsand across desert valleys. Such storms are rare in the state. Mostguzzlers in California run dry before the summer is out and haveto be refilled with water from urban areas, delivered by truck intothe Wilderness from outside or else dropped into the tank by heli-copter. Both methods are illegal under the 1964 Wilderness Act,which forbids the use of mechanized equipment in Wilderness.

The construction of new guzzlers is also illegal. The CDPA pro-vided for the maintenance of existing guzzlers, the fifty-five ofthem already constructed in desert Wilderness, but not for newconstruction. The existing guzzlers have, arguably, been helpful tothe sheep in summer, though their drying out from time to timemust not have affected the sheep much, judging from the expand-ed population. One wonders what the bighorn did for all thosemillennia in the desert when there was no guzzler water to drink.Its likely that the animals are a good deal hardier than CDFGfunctionaries assume.

Three times since 2000, CDFG, through the federal Bureau ofLand Management (BLM), has proposed new guzzlers in the

Sheephole Valley Wilderness. After an appeal by activists to theU.S. Interior Board of Land Appeals, the BLM withdrew its sec-ond proposal, citing the need for CDFG to do a ProgrammaticPopulation Analysis of bighorn numbers throughout the desert tojudge both real need for an expansion of guzzlers and to assesscumulative impacts of such construction. This was never done,but CDFG has now proposed guzzlers there again, with the BLMcarrying its ball. Desert protection activists have again appealed.

Now there are new guzzlers proposed for the Indian Pass Wilder-ness, which is bordered by the Colorado River, hardly a dry area inneed of more water. This latest proposal is especially problematicbecause hikers have visited this Wilderness on several occasions inrecent years. Each time they have found both the Wilderness andits bighorn functioning well. Each time they have found water.

In December 2005 a hiking party from the conservation groupDesert Survivors spent three days backpacking across the Wilder-ness. The group descended Julian Wash, a major drainage bisect-ing the Wilderness from west to east, then returned via anunnamed canyon farther north. Bighorn scat and tracks werefound in many places, along the south border and also in the inte-rior.

The Fish & Game Departments Horseshoe Guzzler is proposedto be built in Julian. It would be accessed by a jeep trail runningright up the wash from the Colorado River. Eight miles of thisjeep trail would be in Wilderness. Aside from being a major intru-sion into the Wilderness, a glaring eyesore and a reminder ofindustrial civilization that will disgust any visitor sensitive toWilderness values, this road would invite vehicular trespassers intothe Wilderness who will wreak havoc on the fragile desert by dri-

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Indian Pass Wilderness Area in southeastern CA

19The Survivor Spring 2007

ving there. Julian Wash is the Wilderness major drainage, loadedwith large ironwood and palo verde trees kept alive by subsurfacemoisture.

The groups return was upstream via an unnamed canyon throughthe center of the Wilderness. So much water was found that thiscame to be known as Spring Canyon. Water welled up fromstream gravels about a mile from the Colorado River. A half-milefarther, a large rock pool hidden in a slot, shaded from the sun,held hundreds of gallons of water. In other places fartherupstream, other springs trickled in the wash bottom. Four milesfrom the river, another spring was found in an open part of thecanyon, emitting from bedrock. It was refreshing to find so muchwater here. These springs and pools make the Indian Pass Wilder-ness a special place.

The last spring described was one mile south of Fish and Gamesproposed Sheep Track Guzzler. The irony and tragedy of theseguzzler placements is that the guzzlers themselves will destroyecosystems in the canyons below them. The guzzlers are catch-ments, check dams designed to divert rain water from flashfloodsand secure it in a tank for the bighorn. The Sheep Track dam willinterrupt drainage downstream, causing the springs and poolsfound in Spring Canyon to dry up. The Horseshoe dam will cut offmuch of the subsurface flow that feeds the huge ironwood andpalo verde trees in Julian Wash, starving them of the water thatthey need to prosper. Both of these impacts are unacceptable inWilderness. They are also illegal, for they represent a definitemodification of the Wilderness ecosystem by mans industrialactivity. There is no way to mitigate these bad effects. The naturalflow of water in each instance is irreplaceable.

These impacts, like many in guzzler territory, are not even contem-plated by those seeking to do the constructions. Their focus is onone thing: an increase in bighorn numbers, most notably in hunt-able heads. In the 1980s bighorn hunting was allowed in only twomountain ranges in the California Desert. That has now beenexpanded to six, and CDFGs goal is further increase. Thoughoverall numbers are important to the agency since it is mandatedto protect wildlife, huntable heads - males with large horns - arethe bread and butter. The first hunting tag of each season is auc-tioned off for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Subse-quent tags are also sold for hefty amounts. The agencys main con-stituency is hunters and the outfitters that feed off them. That iswhy conservationists efforts to combat the agencys proposals arerepeatedly ignored and discounted. CDFGs main goal is still toget the kill. Wilderness, the land itself, the plants in the ecosys-tem, even any other form of wildlife that isnt a huntable ungulate,none of these are important compared to that overriding objective.

When the Survivors visited, they found wheel tracks in many partsof the Wilderness, all of which were illegal. The jeep trails used toaccess these guzzlers will invite trespassers in to do damage, andthey will be even less controlled than now. The CDFGs con-tention that water in the tanks is supposed to last 2 years is apipe dream. CDFG has to drive into the Wilderness again andagain to fill the tanks, once bighorn have become dependent onthem. Thus their wheel tracks become a de facto road that is fol-lowed by others who want to trespass. Neither the CDFG norBLM will be around to make sure trespass does not take place after

they leave. The BLM has done nothing to prevent this trespassfrom occurring. This will have a detrimental effect on the Wilder-ness.

There are other considerations. As permanent water, guzzlersinvite in predators who otherwise would impact the Wildernessonly sporadically: coyotes, bobcats, ravens. Desert wildlife who donot need to drink water will be under threat: the lizards, jackrab-bits, ground squirrels and desert tortoise. Ravens will be speciallyharmful, for they have been known to eat baby tortoise, whoseshells have not hardened enough to provide protection from thebirds sharp beaks.

Construction of these guzzlers also ignores the problem of wildburros. The BLM has expended a great deal of time, energy andmoney in trying to reduce numbers of burros throughout thedesert, including in the territory west of the Colorado River. Bybuilding guzzlers, CDFG will invite burros into the interior of theWilderness where they currently do not go. Burros will use thewater at these guzzlers to leave their usual haunts along the river tothe east, where they hide out all summer in dense riparian vegeta-tion. The BLMs Notice of Proposed Action for the guzzler con-struction mentions no effort to protect against burros.

Building guzzlers for bighorn is just one particular use of theWilderness that should not be allowed to have detrimental effectson everything else in the Wilderness. There is no evidence thatbighorn sheep are in danger. CDFG will not do a metapopulationstudy on bighorn, because if they do they will find that there areplenty of bighorn in every mountain range. Once that informationbecomes public, there will be no need for more guzzlers. Suchknowledge may also threaten funding for those still studying thebighorn after all these years. The bighorn repopulation of thedesert since the 1940s has been a tremendous success. CDFGshould move on to other tasks, like attacking ORV abuse ofwildlife habitat and combating poachers, tasks that everybody canget behind.

I see this whole guzzler campaign as a massive edifice complex.CDFG and the BLM have found a bunch of interested volunteerswith time on their hands to do good works in the desert. Theguys volunteering to build these guzzlers really believe that they aresaving wildlife, but at this point their efforts are largely redundant.The bighorn have been saved. The main function of guzzlersnowadays is to enable those building them to feel good aboutthemselves. But the Wilderness does not exist for their therapyalone. If they want to do some good, they could put their consid-erable skills and their monetary donations toward an outfit likeHabitat for Humanity, or they should go to Iraq and build civilianinfrastructure.

Building edifices in Wilderness may make volunteers feel goodabout themselves, but its an illegal as well as an unnecessary intru-sion that we dont want or need. The bighorn dont need this con-struction, and neither do Wilderness users, who prefer a real,unadulterated Wilderness experience on land that is untrammeledby mans industrial fixtures.

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In This Issue

Benton Bash II....................................................................2

Desert Survivors Annual Meeting.......................................2

Desert Conference .............................................................2

How to Reach Us...............................................................................3Contribute to The Survivor..............................................................3Mission Statement for Desert Survivors.........................................3E-Mail Notices and On-Line Forum..............................................3Letter: Sempra Ends Black Rock Coal Plant Project..................4Desert Survivors Goes To The Green Festival!...................4

Art Show; Call For Artists....................................................4

DS at 2007 Whole Earth Festival.....................................................5Anza-Borrego Carcamp....................................................................6Wind Wolves Preserve Service Trips...............................................9Halloran Summit to Miller Spring on CA Desert Trail......10

Black Rock Mountains and Beyond..................................12

Eagle Sighting in Black Rock Range................................13

Temblor Range Rescue...................................................................14Gentle Predator Of The Southern Desert: The Tarantula........15Rolling Down The Wash: The Smoke Tree..................................16Game Guzzlers Proposed For Indian Pass Wilderness..............18

The Survivor Spring 2007

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