Summer 2007 The Survivior Newsletter ~ Desert Survivors

Desert Pavement and DustPoetry and Prose

Survivor Tips

The quarterly journal of Desert Survivors • Experience, Share, Protect • Summer 2007, 26, 2Survivorthe

2 The Survivor Summer 2007

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Cover: The Sump, western Nevada; see page 22. Photo by Bill Johansson.

Don’t Mess WithVirtual Wilderness[The following email exchange was for-warded to the editor, whose guess isthat the facility pictured is a biometricborder security station.]

June 14, 2007

Directors and General Counsel:

I am forwarding an e-mail and attachmentsent to me by a firm that wants to use a jpgimage from the DS website that ended upbeing archived somewhere on the web.The guy called me and said he was patent-ing a product to be sold to and used by theU.S. Army in Afghanistan. It looks like ajail. The image in the background appearsto be a portion of the homepage image ofDeath Valley that we formerly had on ourwebsite (at least somebody likes it!). I toldhim NO. My response to him is also for-warded.

Steve Tabor

June 13, 2007

Subj:Using your Desert Survivors webimage for project

To: President of Desert Survivors,

Steve,

Per my message yesterday, we would like touse your image as a background plate for aproduct rendering. I felt your permissionwould be required before we proceed.Attached is the image and it's use.

For sake of our client, could the use bekept between the two of us? It is for apatent on a new product. Thank you foryour courtesy, we appreciate it! Have a niceday.

Sincerely,Tyler J. DorseyTrial Technology/Graphic SpecialistVideo Discovery, Inc.Cleveland, OH

June 14, 2007 3:44 p.m.

Mr. Dorsey:

This e-mail will serve as a formal responseto your request to use the image you referto as “RENDER11.jpg” that you havetaken from Desert Survivors material thatyou found on the World-Wide Web.Desert Survivors expressly forbids you touse in publication or otherwise this imageor any other image that you derive from usvia web search or any other means. DesertSurvivors expressly disapproves of the pur-pose for use of this material that you haverepresented to us. You are hereby orderedto cease and desist any attempt(s) to pub-lish material that you have derived fromDesert Survivors for this or any purpose.

I will duplicate this instruction in writingand send it to you by postal mail. Copiesof this letter and e-mail have been sent toour General Counsel, as has a forward ofthe image you have sent to me as the objectof your communication.

Steve TaborPresident Desert Survivors

Mountain PeakMishap

October 5, 2007

The caption to the picture found on page 2of the Spring 2007 Survivor, is wrong. Thepeak in the picture is Montgomery peak,not Boundary peak, although one can justbarely see the northern shoulder of Bound-ary behind Montgomery in the photo.

Richie Schwarz, New York, NY

[Corrected caption is printed below.-Editor]

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Image of commercial product superimposed on photograph from DS website

Montgomery Peak as seen fromBenton Hot Springs

Sur vivor DeadlineLoomsThe deadline for the Winter issue of TheSur v i vor is December 22, 2007. Maxi-mum word length: letters-to-the-editor(200), feature articles (4000), trip reports(2000), as well as desert conservationissues, natural history articles, book reviews,gear tips, and backpacking/campingrecipes. A new column on desert etiquetteis included, written by a mystery member.Also wanted: short descriptions of unusualfoods, gear improvisations, or desert-relateddiscoveries. All submissions which relate tothe mission of Desert Survivors will beconsidered for publication, including liter-ary or artistic works inspired by the desert.

Please submit text electronically, with alltext longer than a paragraph sent as anattached file. Formats of choice: (in orderof preference) Word (.doc), WordPerfect(.wpd), Rich Text Format (.rtf) and text(.txt). Please include your full name, cityand state of residence and phone number.Send editorial material to CathyLuchetti.

For photographs, please identify the peopleand locations as shown. Digital photosshould be approximately 1600 pixels resolu-tion to be printed the full width of a page(8.5 inches). Please do not submit digitalphotos with only 640x480 pixels resolu-tion.. Send all artwork to the Art Direc-tor, Andrea Young.

Mission Statement forDesert SurvivorsDesert Survivors is a nonprofit organiza-tion dedicated to desert conservation andexploration. Our members enjoy hiking inand learning about America’s 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, whichallows members who sign up to broadcaste-mail to everyone else signed up forDSOL Forum. Recent topics includedfloods, desert wildflowers, road conditions,and DS service trips. Be careful, though, tonot inadvertently send personal e-mail toeveryone on DSOL Forum.

Desert Survivor members may subscribe toeither DSEM Notices or DSOL Forumby e-mailing tortoise, desert-survivors.org.For the subject use “subscribe regular mail-ings” for DSEM Notices, and “subscribelistserv” for DSOL Forum. Don’t includethe quotation marks and do include in thebody of the message your name andaddress so that we can verify your member-ship. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have acompletely automated system, and Tortoisecan be a little slow, so it might take severaldays.

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How to Reach Us(See the new submission instructionsin the next column, and the notice at

the end of this page.)

Editor:Cathy Luchetti

Art Director:Andrea Young

Membership InformationSteve Tabor

(510) 769-1706

Desert Survivor Websitewww.desert-survivors.org

Board of Directors 2007-2008

President: Steve Tabor

Secretary: Garry Wiegand

Managing Director: Loretta Bauer

Communications Director:Andrea Young

Activities Director: Bob Lyon

Volunteer Coordinator:Lynne Buckner

Directors At Large:Neal Cassidy

Judy Kendall

John Moody

Jannet Schraer

Kenneth Logan

The Surv ivor is printed byMy Printer, Berkeley, CA,

www.emyprinter.com.

New Editor and ArtDirectorCathy Luchetti is taking over as Editor, andAndrea Young, who was elected Communi-cations Director at the Annual Meeting inSeptember, is taking over as Art Director.Complete coverage of the Annual Meetingand Board elections will appear in the nextissue. Since I had started the Summer issuesome time ago, I was given the opportunityto complete it before the new team takesover. Look for major improvements in thefuture. I would like to thank Desert Sur-vivors for the opportunity to work on TheSurvivor for the last four years, my prede-cessors, previous editor Jessica Rothhaarand art director Hall Newbegin, for adviceand instruction, and especially the manyexcellent contributors to The Survivor.-Paul Brickett

[See website for curent information]

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The Survivor Summer 2007

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Desert Pavementsand Dust: The Restof the StoryBy Marith Reheis, Golden, CO

Desert Survivors frequently hike across long stretches ofdesert pavements because they are, in the absence oftrails, the easiest ground to walk and are common in the

low-altitude arid regions. When well developed, pavements arecomposed of interlocking clasts of gravel that can be darkly var-nished on top if the rock type is suitable; desert varnish will notform on rocks that are soluble, like limestone, and does not usuallybecome thick and black on rocks that disaggregate easily, like sand-stone and granite. Other than blessing these pavements when theyextend in the direction of travel, many people do not think aboutpavements or how they form. Many of those who do have mis-taken ideas about how they form, and very few understand howold they can be.

A previous article in a Desert Survivors issue described pavementsas forming by wind erosion, which winnows and removes fine sed-iment grains, including silt, clay, and fine sand. These fine sedi-ments are removed from alluvial-fan sediments that were depositedas poorly sorted mixtures of fine sediment and gravel. In fact,most pavements form by exactly the opposite process in the west-ern deserts of North America and on other continents as well:addition of silt, clay, and fine sand to a gravelly fan surface! Manygeologists and soil scientists have studied desert pavements andtheir relations to underlying dust layers, and have used many differ-ent approaches to understand how they form. What follows is asummary of their work; for more information, check out thepapers listed at the end of this article.

Fresh fan surfaces are usually very rocky and rough, with bar-and-swale topography and sediment of all sizes at the surface. As aresult, these surfaces are very good and efficient natural dust traps;their unevenness creates small vortices and an overall surfaceroughness that slows the surface winds and causes dust particles tofall out. The dust, if not immediately blown away, may filter downor be washed down into pore spaces. Then a mechanical processtakes over that in effect is analogous to taking a jar of mixed sizesof nuts, screws, and bolts, and shaking it. The coarsest materialswill move to the top of the pile in the jar. A similar thing happenswith time in the formation of pavements: wetting and dryingevents move the fine particles into pore spaces below the surfaceand a layer of gravel floats on the top of the fines. Over longperiods of time—thousands of years of gradual deposition ofdust—the layer of fine particles thickens and the layer of stones atthe surface stays on top (the surface as a whole rises a little due toinflation by the dust layer). Because the stones are at the surface,they are more affected than stones at depth by mechanical weath-ering that breaks large rocks down to smaller sizes by thermalexpansion, wetting and drying, and crystallization of salts in cracksand pores. By such processes, the surface gravel clasts become

more uniform in size and the clasts begin to interlock, forming thekind of surface we enjoy for hiking.

The basic elements of this story of pavement formation have beendocumented by several key papers written by Les McFadden, SteveWells, and others. They used a dating method called cosmogenicnuclide accumulation to estimate the length of time that the sur-face stones have been exposed to cosmic rays at the ground sur-face. And they used ages of the gravel or bedrock (basalt flow)deposits underneath, dated by potassium-argon and uranium-seriesmethods, to show that the age of pavement clasts is the same asthe age of deposition of the gravel or bedrock beneath the dustaccumulation. Other studies by people like me have shown thatthe fine sediment, which forms a soil horizon called a “vesicular A”horizon (for its bubble-shaped pores) beneath the pavement, isidentical in mineral composition and dominant elemental chemistryto the modern dust now being deposited at the same sites. Thisshows that the fine sediment represents a long-term accumulation

Hiking desert pavement in Palo Verde Wilderness, Nov., 2005

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Closeup of surface clasts in a pavement; they are beginningto form an interlocking pattern

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of desert dust that wasdeposited slowly enough that itdid not bury the pavement. Ina very few places, such as theCima volcanic field downwindof Soda Lake, deposition ratesof dust from playas were attimes fast enough to bury apavement; in such cases thesedust deposits are called “desertloess”. But mostly, the stone-free dust layers beneath thepavements are no thickerthan 15-20 cm.

How long does it take toform a pavement? Manystudies have shown that thisvaries depending on the climate, climate change, dust-influx rates,and surface slope. Where fans are vegetated by sagebrush andtrees are nearby, pavements either won’t form or will be disruptedby bioturbation (roots, burrowing animals, etc.). In such higher rainfall zones, the dust is still present, but it is usually infiltrated

deeper below the surface and is better mixed with the original sandand gravel. In more arid zones, with normal dust-deposition rates,it takes about 10,000 years to form a fairly weak, patchy pavement,and at least 50,000-100,000 years to form a strong, interlockingpavement with 10-20 cm of underlying dust. In Australia, thedesert landscapes are very old, erosion rates are extremely low, andvegetation changes in the past glacial-to-interglacial cycles havebeen much more limited than those in the western U.S. Aus-tralians call the surfaces with desert pavement “gibber plains”.The gibbers may be underlain by as much as a meter or two ofdust-derived sediments—and these gibbers can be as old as a mil-lion years!

So, the next time you step out for a stroll on a desert pavement,(or feel tempted to dig a hole in one, or see someone driving off-road on one), consider how long it took to form and how slowly itmay recover from disturbance. Patton’s World War II tank trackson pavements in the Mojave Desert are clearly visible today.

References

McFadden, L.D., Wells, S.G., and Jercinovich, M.J., 1987, Influ-ences of eolian and pedogenic processes on the origin andevolution of desert pavement: Geology, v. 15, p. 504-508.

McFadden, L.D., McDonald, E.V., Wells, S.G., Anderson, K.,Quade, J., and Forman, S.L., 1998, The vesicular layer and car-bonate collars of desert soils and pavements: formation, ageand relation to climate change: Geomorphology, v. 24, p. 101-145.

Reheis, M.C., Goodmacher, J.C., Harden, J.W., McFadden, L.D.,Rockwell, T.K., Shroba, R.R., Sowers, J.M., and Taylor, E.M.,1995, Quaternary soils and dust deposition in southern Neva-da and California: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v.107, p. 1003-1022.

Soil beneath the same pavement in the previous picture (thelower part of the soil is oxidized red and speckled with

white spots that are calcium carbonate). Soil horizonboundaries are marked by nails along the left side. Gravels

are concentrated in the surface pavement layer and belowthe sign. At and above the sign there are very few rocks;

most of the soil sediment is sand, silt, and clay. The upper8 cm, just below the pavement, has no rocks and is nearlyall a pale-colored silt, the so-called Av (vesicular) horizon,

consisting of desert dust added to the soil.

Desert pavement surfaces on the west side of the McCoyMountains, California. Note the old WWII tank tracks in the

foreground.

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By Chris Schiller, Redding, CA; www.schillerimages.com

I’ve been told there is very little time left, that we must getall these things about time and place straight. If we don’t,we will only have passed on and have changed nothing.

-Barry Lopez, Desert Notes

Ihave seen two snakes mating on the trail today. I’ve seen but-terflies on horse apples. A mining boomtown reborn. Prong-horn lambs learning to run. I have seen ravens playing about

a high peak. Snow left from winter’s longing. A curtain of rainstretched across a desert land. I have felt the slight air of heavenupon my face.

IThe snakes, these two fat rattlers, are dancing and twisting in mypath. So intense their interest, they do not notice me approaching.Or they note me and dismiss me. When I coil a length of cordimproperly, and then try to use it, there is a nest of knots in theuntangling. This is the shape of their sex: knots in the untangling.They seem drunk in their desire, lolling each other nose-to-nose, aslow tilting of viper necks, then flopping to the dirt. Bodiesentwined. A shifting of knots, a boy scout’s nightmare, then thepassion of vines up an invisible trellis again. I step silently for-ward for a closer picture, and they still do not see any of theworld but their own. I look down at my camera settings, and inthat second they have seen me. They are sat up like lovers in aspied-on bed. Ahem, they say with forked tongues, facing me. Iretreat shamefully and cast a wide path around.

I IStill these things are in our path. This trail was born by the pas-sage of horses, crossing the creek many times, unmindful of wetboots. The horses drop apples, bake meadow biscuits, leave trailmulching. A hay burners’ unregulated exhaust. The butterfliescome in search of salts or perhaps some secret nectar bargainedfor in a long ago equine-lepidoptera agreement. All butterflies arecolorful except for these. Their wings are an inkblot test for theirpredators, but a wondrous block print for their admirers. If onlythe world were this simple: float the breeze in black and white,alight upon the compost of travelers, then fill the sky with flutter-ing visions. The butterflies, too, demure when we approach.They lift like a handful of wild coins tossed in the air, then landagain, all heads and tails random. A harbor full of painted sailsupon grassy waves.

I I IThis town died once upon a time in the west. Long enough agoto have left only weathered boards, crumbling bricks, and tailingsspilled about the hills. The previous boomtown lived at the endof a long supply chain stretching to San Francisco and beyond,perhaps to London or Shanghai. Nothing grew here that peoplecould eat directly. Gold and silver were born here, and that’s all.The town died when the ore ran out, like the thousand otherdusty collections of buildings and mills scattered around the west.A few hardy loners in rusted travel trailers held on and hid fromwives, previous lives, the law, or maybe themselves out herebeyond the reach of civilization. They drove to Tonopah to col-lect checks and at the same time bitched about the governmentthat fed them.

I helped a broken-down resident of this town about ten years ago,and heard at least his view of his world. This was remote countrytraveled only by ranchers and a few hikers most of the year, andhoards of hunters for two weeks in the fall. Ten years ago thatwas. I’ve visited frequently since then, but always traveled otherroads. Passing through today there are fresh new houses on theold mining claims. Shiny custom-built houses with materialshauled from Fallon or maybe Reno, hundreds of miles away. Howmuch did each nail cost once it was purchased, transported, anddriven into wood? And there’s an even newer church on the hill,let’s not forget that. This is far, far off the grid, and there aretracking solar panels in each yard. Who are these people to buildhouses out here? Retirees? Californians with ponzi-pyramidreturns on house sales? Do they know what the winters are likeout here? How soon will they tire of the hour-long drive toTonopah, and how will they be disappointed in what it has to


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Butterflies on horse apples

These Are the Things I Have Seen Today

Mating rattlesnakes

offer? Will their satellite TV carry them through? Theirsupply chain stretches to Saudi Arabia, and is as tenuousas the miners’ supply chain a hundred years ago. Butthese new boomtown residents take nothing from herebut the views. The money comes from elsewhere. If Ireturn in twenty more years, will these houses already beon their way to ruin?

The landscape contracts again as the boomtimes expandagain. I can only conjure the patience of the sagebrushhere in the heart of the Sagebrush Sea. It will reclaim,like water, this folly of men.

IVNo, there is more than gold and silver born here. InAntelope Valley (yes, there are about seven of them inNevada, but I’m talking about this Antelope Valley)nature obliges. A pronghorn which hesitates at theapproach of a truck is a spectacle. If the distance from amoving vehicle is less than a hundred yards, they are usuallyflying over the sagebrush before you see them. And a stoppedtruck demands even more space. Oh, they are a wondrous beautywhen running. Effortless and smooth across the land. As if someforce other than legs were propelling them. The deep evolutionbestride extinct predators is still large in their oversized hearts. Butthey start small, like all things. Like storms launched by butterflies.Wars from the flick of a forked tongue. Oceans from the firstraindrops of a summer afternoon.

And so the pronghorn lamb appeared from its napping place inthe sagebrush. Then another, and itsewe too. A few weeks old, they werestill growing their wings and after-burners, so the ewes only trotted asthey led, like race cars idling ahead ofscooters. They live on this plain, onanother plane. What is it to be fasterthan anything which exists, to be bornwith one of the few superpowersgranted creatures on this Earth? Togrow into this legacy of open valleys,to rise wobbling from the shrubs, trota few weeks and then never be out-raced by anything but the wind?

VThere, high in the battlements of theglaciated ridgeline, the ravens seek theanswers.

Preachers and the holy static over-power truth on the truck radio.These dozen black disciples encirclethe wind-blasted pinnacles like acrown. Sunlight flares through thecracked, buggy windshield of thesky. Darkness in the clouds fromupweather, and the ravens soar.The mighty Pulaskis of the father

hammer and thunder back there in the empty pickup bed. Wash-board here on the roads of the mortal, and the ravens soar. Theydo not feel joy, they are joy embodied in a grand dance about thepeak. Rising and dipping, they are prophets cycling the summiteddy. Their words come in quorks and hoots; they answer thewind. We fight the fires of our own making, separating dust fromflame. We heave the heavy breaths of our burdens, and the ravenssoar effortless above. We roll stones from the mountain, and theravens know where the fresh dead lie. And if the fire crowns, ifthe smoke and inferno take us, flesh and static and dust, mightthey find indulgence in us. Take sacrament, take spirit, take flight

on a thunderstorm afternoon. Cackleand play on black wings: if only thiswere our destiny, our journey, oursoul. We top out the rise and theradio clears and there is only air thereabove us now. And whooping black-winged birds below.

VIYou hear the snowfield before yousee it. A gurgle where a moment agothere was only the wind. All thingson the mountain, even the rocks,seem alive and awake, but the snowleft white sleeps on in inert repose. Itis an icy momentum of winter, exist-ing still only because it still exists.Smaller patches are long melted. Thisone thaws about the edges but keepsits center cool. Its dribble of meltwa-ter joins others, is a creek, becomes ariver, and then dies a reincarnateddeath by evaporation in the far saltyplaya. The snowfield’s outflow willnot reach the sea in this life, butdownweather, at the extreme edge ofhazy vision, lie the ranges which drainto the ocean, and there is a definiteintent of storm in the sky this noon.


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Rain curtains

Ghost town

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VIIThis is your dream. In your dream you can fly. You break thepromise you made to gravity. There are mountains. You arch yourback and you float high above those mountains. Range uponrange to the east and to the west, and between the ranges arebroad dry valleys. Valleys awash in sagebrush and fawn-coloredgrass. The ranges are darker, with blankets of trees. Some of theranges are higher than trees will grow. Above treeline is nakedrock, tilted and spilling. You are not naked in your dream; youwear clothes appropriate for flying. Silk, or maybe leather. Cotton,if that’s all your dreams will provide. Something naturally grown.Think Amelia, not Clark.

The sky is heavy with cloud, with gaps tornthrough to blue sky in places. Other placesare darker, bruised. Rain falls. You are sohigh you cannot tell if the rain reaches theground. Mottled light is a calico patternupon the far valley floor. The raincloudsjoin, one and then another, and the rainfrom them intensifies. They form a curtainacross your dream world. Fifty miles, a hun-dred. A curtain of rain a hundred milesacross the mountains and valleys. You cansmell it, but in your dream it does not fall onyou. Does not follow you. The rain reachesthe earth now, heavy and sweeping. Thecurtain is rippled and fluted and if auroraswere made of raindrops instead of nakedatoms your dream curtain would be thenorthern lights conveyed across a hemi-sphere this summer afternoon lit glowingand shaded both.

You find a voice you could only have in adream, deep and resonant. The tapestry ofstorms hums, and you sing with it. Some-thing like gospel. What angels might sing.

A choir Thor might direct. The only music Ameliacould pick up across the blank Pacific. Songs of for-lorn propellers at great altitudes. Your body shakeswith the harmony. Curtains of rain, come wash meclean. I’ve been in these heights too long. Come washme clean. The land is dry and the sky too blue. Comewash me clean. Come wash me clean.

VII IExcept it’s not your dream, it’s mine. And it’s not adream, it’s reality. High above treeline on the summitridge with the storms on a transept across the sky.

If I died here this moment, I would be at peace. Noregrets. The air calm and my head full of light. This isThoreau’s bequest: live each day as if it might be yourlast. Some days I am more successful with this legacythan others, but this day finds me complete. My heartis as light as the white grouse feather caught in thewhiskers of a coyote. Hunger slaked, it trots throughthe sagebrush on the mountain flanks below. This isthe measure of the breath of heaven: grouse down,

whiskers grinning, coyote breathing. Rain falling on the shores ofthe sagebrush sea. The breath of heaven upon me.

Epi logueBelow, the serpents are making more serpents. They invade theyards of the boomtown, chasing the rodents taking shelter underthe new houses. No horses climb this high, but the butterflies per-form perfect ascensions. The ravens are bullets against the bluesky just like the pronghorns are as distant a memory as the trucks.Naked rock cannot burn, and the snow couldn’t extinguish the fireif it could. And in a thousand years of rain, my friend, has a coy-ote followed the ravens up here to chase a feather in the wind?You know where the answer is.


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High in the Great Basin

Deep Canyon

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A Horse Fable By Stan Huncilman, Berkeley, CA

May of this year, I with six other Desert Survivors climbedDivision Peak in Nevada’s Calico Hills. Wild horses werevery much in abundance, much to the group’s enjoyment.

In time I began to notice that though most of the horses were inherds of 8 to 12, there were 7 herds that numbered only three.This struck me as unusual. My inquiries at a local ranch came tonaught, ditto at the opal mine. Only by chance, when I happenedto mention it at a bar, did the barmaid comment “Oh, you soundlike that crazy Englishman who wandered through here a few yearsago.”

I got enough information from her to eventually speak to one ofthe world’s experts on rare horse breeds. Sir Edmund de Vere ofthe Royal Equestrian Britannia had in fact been the “crazy English-man” wandering around the desert. He was elated at the news ofmy sightings. He was not entirely surprised with the reappearanceof Los Trizillos as bands, apart from the other wild horse herds.”

“Many years ago, there was one band of three, the legacy of Tariqibn Ziyad,” he said. “But human indifference has been a friend toLos Trizillos. It has allowed them to roam in wilderness areas.And now, the breed is returning.”

“How wonderful. Seven bands! You don’t say.” He sighed. “I hada chap contact me who was in the Atlas Mountains in Moroccorecently doing location work for the cinema. He was lucky enoughto take some photographs of a couple of bands that might well beLos Trizillos and sent them to me.”

“These are most exciting times for the horse aficionado,” he con-cluded. Then he thanked the Members of Desert Survivors andother groups that had done so much for wilderness protection.

When I asked if he planned to return to Nevada, he confessed thatthe very idea of such “vast empty lands” was a bit hard for him toconsider at his age.

I followed up on the name Tariq ibn Ziyad after talking with SirEdmund. These horses are descendants of Tariq ibn Ziyad’sMoorish cavalry, whose use of the Los Trillizos, as they came to beknown in Spain, enabled the rapid conquest of the Iberian Penin-sula in 711 CE. Each member of this elite Moorish cavalry rodeUn Trillizo, a group of one stallion and two mares or fillies.

Los Trillizos were first encountered by the Arabs during theirincursions into the steppes of Northern Iran. The indigenouspeoples there, primarily shepherds, had little interest in the horses’unique banding instincts. The historian al Waqidiin, in his book“Kitab al Tarikh wa al Maghazi” (“Book of History and Cam-paigns”) makes what many scholars believe to be the first Arab ref-erence to the breed. He refers to a cavalryman al-Zuhri winningan early horse race that was reputed to last over 28 hours by hisuse of 3 horses from the land of Hecatompylus. Al Waqidiin doesnot mention if al Zuhri was disqualified for his innovative tactic.

Tariq ibn Ziyad, one of the greatest horsemen in Moorish militaryhistory, first saw Los Trillizos in Mecca during his hadj. In orderto finance his invasion of Spain he wagered “everything but hismother” in a horse race with the Caliph of Baghdad to be allowedto use the Caliph’s herd of Los Trizillos for his conquest.

Tariq ibn Ziyad made good use of his innovative cavalry. Somesoldiers were reported to have fashioned cots that spanned thethree horses and slept while the horses continued with the advanc-ing forces. The two un-ridden Los Trizillos instinctively formed aphalanx in battle making it nearly impossible for the armor-encum-bered Spanish to win–they would have to face two foes simultane-ously.

With the eventual banishment of the Moors from Spain Los Trizil-los fell into decline. The Spanish cavalry remained committed to aheavily armored knight. Los Trizillos are hot bloods, and as such,are physically unable to function as a heavy knight’s horse. TheSpanish preferred the warmblooded breeds which were more dis-posed to the steady plod of knightly transport; also one can notdiscount the Spanish hatred of all things Moorish in the neglect ofthe Los Trizillos.

Los Trizillos began to disappear. It was only because a few wildbands survived in Spain’s remote Extremadura that a new genera-tion of adventurers was able to recognize their unique qualities.The Conquistadors put purpose before pride and acknowledgedthe legendary abilities of the horses. The Conquistadors were notknights. They were poor opportunists with minimal social status.These small, tough horses could survive a journey across the sea.They could live on minimal forage. These horses were survivors,not heraldic icons.

History repeated itself in the New World. Los Trizillos carriedtheir horsemen to conquest and were neglected afterwards. Thosethat followed the Conquistadors, the ranchers and padres, pre-ferred either larger horses that were better at head butting cattle, orthe simple burro, long conditioned to the itinerant evangelism ofthe frugal padres.

Northern European settlers also saw little value in Los Trizillos.Miners preferred burros, homesteaders preferred horses that couldpull a wagon or plow. It is odd that the cowboy never took to LosTrizillos, as they were aware of them. The ballad “Just one Sad-dle” refers to the breed. The most likely reason: the now wildbands of Los Trizillos ranged in remote mountain areas and wereextremely difficult to round up. However, probably the best rea-son was economics. Cowboys were poor. Few could afford tofeed and care for more than one horse. Cowboys also had theQuarter Horse, which is about as close as one can get to oneTrizillo. So it seems that:

Nature in her wresting ways does oft have her specials ways,by which that once witheredcan come anew. perchance the soul doth seed the clay.

-Rnias

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Castle PeaksCarcampApril 5-7, 2007, Mohave National Preserve, CA

By Steve Tabor

This Easter visit to the Mojave National Pre-serve was a hot and dry one. Ten of us spentthree days in a place where Survivors had

encountered a foot of snow on the same date in1999. Daytime temperatures were in the mid-80s F,but strong breezes kept us cool and refreshed muchof the time. We saw few wildflower blooms in this dry spring sea-son, but the profusion of native grasses was a joy to behold. TheCastle Peaks Wilderness was recovering from a century of cattlegrazing. Only five years without cattle had worked wonders on theecosystem.

We met on Interstate-15 at Nipton Road, then drove on IvanpahRoad to a jeep trail just short of the Boomerang Mine on the westside of the Castle Peaks volcanic complex. The Peaks are rhyolitevolcanic necks and erosional lava remnants perched above a 1.7billion-year-old array of metamorphic rocks, schist and gneiss.Our Good Friday hike would be up Willow Wash, through themetamorphics to the ridgecrest in the volcanics. If we could getto Dove Spring on the other side of the ridge, all to the good, butI would settle for the top and a good view.

We started hiking soon after we got to an old homestead showingon the map. We hiked over a few hills, at first following an oldrailroad grade whose tracks had long ago been taken up. The rail-road dated from a time early in the 20th century when the U.S.Homestead Act encouraged farmers to clear land and lay outfarms in Lanfair Valley to the south. That effort, supported bypre-war socialistic designs by the Federal Government and a few

years of good moisture, ended about ten years later when droughtmade dry farming impossible.

Soon we were in Willow Wash itself. We hiked east and stoppedto rest in the open wash. It was 84 ºF at 10:40 a.m., unusually hotfor this time of year. I remembered the year before when we weresnowed on at 3:00 p.m. one afternoon in country just to the south.I also remembered 2000, another hot dry year when the tempera-ture reached 90 ºF on April 28. I had to cancel a fund-raising tripin the Mesquite Wilderness as a result.

Though it was hot and dry, we were impressed by the array ofMojavean vegetation near the rest stop. I did a transect. Cactusand succulents in evidence were barrel cactus, Mojave yucca, Span-ish bayonet (Yucca baccata), buckhorn cholla and beavertail cactus.Shrubs were purple sage, mallow, Ephedra, cheesebush, rabbit-brush, creosote bush, catclaw acacia, desert willow, Prunus Ander-sonii (with tent caterpillars!), Lycium, spiny Menodora, Krameria, aHaplopappus (cuneatus?), Mojave aster, matchweed, and Californiabuckwheat. Forbs were Eriophyllum, desert marigold, Phacelia,pincushion flower, paintbrush, and some kind of burweed. Notmany of the forbs were blooming and the ground was dry.

We went farther up the wash to an oldwater trough near Willow Spring wherewe ate lunch. High clouds dimmed thelight, keeping the temperature in the80s. The trough was surrounded bysquawbush and desert willow. Junipertrees grew nearby, here at 4500', andjoshua trees covered the hillsides.

The trough’s pole fence was intact, indi-cating that it was a protected wildlifewater source. The little bit of water wassweet and clear, though bright greenalgae lay on the surface. After lunch wewent farther upstream where we foundthe actual spring. It had been dug outand a spring box had been installed.Water was about four feet down in aconcrete tube, well-covered and shadedby huge mesquites. Wheel tracks led upthe wash almost to the trough, illegally

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Northeastern portion of Mojave National Preserve map

View of the New York Mountains from second night’s camp

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inside the Wilderness boundary, running overnumerous plants and seemingly making noattempt to avoid them. There were no tracksbeyond.

Upstream we took the left fork in the wash, nowgoing north toward the pass above Dove Spring.The bottom became rocky and some of our less-experienced hikers began to have problems. Wewere now in volcanic rock, the mass that com-prised most of the Castles. Pancake cactusappeared, then more Yucca baccata, grizzly bearcactus and Mojave mound. Bladdersage grew inthe gulch bottom. Native grasses were incredible,and quite a surprise in this country, which hadhistorically been subjected to heavy grazing by cattleand sheep.

We rested at a point where we had to negotiate a dryfall, thenpushed for the top. We reached it at 3:00 p.m. The pass was nar-row amidst blocky cliffs at 5093'. We had a poor view into Nevadato the northeast. Most of what we could see was more rocky hillsand volcanic cliffs like those around us. We looked down towardwhere Dove Spring should be but could not immediately locate it.We debated dropping down to look for it but reached no conclu-sion. Finally I consigned Steve Lawrence and Eddie Sudol, bothof whom exhibited boundless energy, to go down and look for it.They were unsuccessful.

We returned the way we came, arriving at the cars at 7:01 p.m. Ihad taken people up too early out of Willow Wash and we wereforced to go up hill and down dale, but we managed. Radwan Kir-wan and I drank cold beers on the veranda of an old stucco cabinas we watched the sunset. I tried to imagine what the owner’s lifehad been like, living this close to the old mine, and perhaps work-ing in it. I doubt that the old man did much hiking.

After sunset a Park Ranger came by and told us we were campedillegally. The Mojave Preserve has a rule against camping near oldbuildings because some visitors have a habit of burning themdown. I said we would not build a fire that night. Heallowed us to stay, partly because we were Desert Sur-vivors and he knew of our reputation. He said his ter-ritory ranged from the Preserve all the way to theKingston Range, about 40 miles north. Seems like animpossible job. I think we could use some of theNational Guard now in Iraq to police the area; they’dmake short work of off-roaders, illegal grazers andpeople who just burn down cabins for the hell of it.

The next morning we drove south over a low pass tothe old settlement of Barnwell, then on a graded roadnortheast that eventually goes to the huge Castle Minein the mountains to the south. Where the Castle MineRoad swings south, we kept going straight on a dirtroad, really the old railroad grade to Searchlight inNevada. We were stopped less than a mile later by amassive washout. We back-tracked and settled for acampsite at an old cattle watering place offering largejoshua trees and abundant parking.

I remembered this place as a lounging area for cattle with troughsand feeding stations. In 1996 it had been paved over with pulver-ized and fragrant brown cow shit. The cow shit had now mostlyblown away but ten years later, the ground was largely barren.Nothing grew except joshua trees and a few large shrubs andminute weeds. Relentless emissions from a cow herd makes for atoxic environment, even after all this time. The place had beenfree of cattle for at least five years but its condition had hardlychanged at all.

We set off on our longest hike of the trip precisely at 9:10 a.m..This day was sunnier and hotter. I led us north on easy groundthrough excellent vegetation. We soon found an old cow trail andused it to our advantage. It felt good to cruise on a trail for achange. There’s something about it; you can look ahead at thescenery without always having to watch the ground, which youusually have to do in rocky or well-vegetated country.

This walk was also a joy because we were in cactus and shrubcountry that was coming back to desert grassland. Five years with-out cows had made for luxuriant grass growth. Big swaths of gal-leta grew two feet high and six feet across. Individual needlegrassbolts grew wide across the landscape. Some of the area resembleda turf of grama grass with grass clumps engulfing the space

Good grass growth, cholla, catclaw and joshua trees on the south slope ofthe Castle Peaks

Galleta grass, junipers and one of the Castle Peaks near the range crest

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between them. The low-growing club cholla also formed a turf; Ihadn’t even noticed it ten years before, though we were hiking overmuch the same ground. What an Easter surprise this was, to seedesert grass resurrected after eighty years of purgatory dished outby the hungry mouths of cattle and sheep!

After two miles of bliss we reached a low pass and rested with along view out over Lanfair Valley. We the took a left and headedalong the ridge top toward the Castle Peaks. Grama grass formeda mat on much of the ridge, and Yucca baccata was sending upflower stalks, not yet fully opened. The views to the hazy southkept getting better. Near the high point we spooked two deer; onewent east, the other west. It was 87 ºF, but we were blessed with astrong breeze that cooled us down. Coming up top was a strokeof genius on this hot day.

We ran out of ridge and dropped down into a gulch alongsidewhere we could lounge under a spreading juniper to eat lunch. Wethen proceeded northwest in the rocky gulch with views of theCastle Peaks just ahead. The gulch opened up to a wide wash oneasy ground amidst juniper trees, chollas and yuccas at an elevationof 5100', a kind of shangri-la with great campsites and lava pinna-cles all around. I made note of this; it would be a great backpackcamp on a longer trip. Even in winter the tent sites would beinviting, a joy. This would also be a destination of mine if I doanother Coast-to-Divide trek to match the ones I did in the 1980s,a major stop-off on the way from Cima to Searchlightto the east.

My original plan was to continue north then west in aloop, but coming this close to the crest we just had togo up to the Castle Peaks themselves. We left our day-packs and one of the hikers under a juniper, thenhiked north. We topped out just southwest of thehighest point, 5828' (1776.7m). We had a better viewthis time of the country to the north. A grove ofjunipers lay just below. Bitterbrush and goldenbushwere blooming. We spotted a falcon in the air and amountain ball cactus, another rarity, on the ground.Eddie and Radwan did some bouldering in the rocks.Then we dropped down to continue the hike east.

The hike in our wash was at first on beautiful coarsesand with catclaw and other plants growing healthy

between volcanic knobs. Farther down we endedup in rocky country, a pediment on the crystallinePrecambrians, with lava knobs all around, a story-book landscape. We passed a rock dam in thegranite that had been constructed to hold water,for sheep or for wildlife we could not tell. Werested nearby.

Taylor Spring was just east over a low pass, but ahalf-mile detour to examine it would put us thatmuch farther from the cars and it was already 3:30p.m. Instead, we continued downstream, then onan animal trail down to Coats Spring, whichproved to be dry. A lot of Baccharis grew in thedamp ground there, but we found no water, onlyan old tank, ranch junk, rusty pipes and pieces of

barbed wire. It was a disappointment.

We continued downstream then up over a hill with a view east toHart Peak and southeast to the Castle Mine. Down below was aflat covered with creosote and laced with jeep trails. The topomap said there was a game guzzler there. That would be our nextobjective. We dropped down off the hill and headed over to theguzzler. It was a typical water catchment for birds, a gently-slopingconcrete pad, triangular in shape, with a low berm all the wayaround. An open drain at the downslope apex of the triangle fedrainwater down into an underground cistern made of fiberglass.The cistern, shaded from the sun, was full of clear sweet water.The pool below was thirty inches deep. Only one person otherthan me would drink it. We suffered no ill effects. There was nodate, and no maintenance had been done. Many of these catch-ments were put in in the 1950s. Its fence, designed to protect thewater from burros and cattle, was intact.

Topo maps in the area showed several of these catchments. Iwanted to check out at least one, for I will be dependent on themif I ever trek through the area. A DS backpack trip here wouldcertainly benefit from the water. I photographed the site and tooknotes about its condition and location.

In the remaining hours we hiked southwest to the cars on the oldrailroad grade. The guzzler was barely three miles from the Nevada

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The Castle Peaks at the crest. Dove Point (5829') is the highpoint on the right.

Isolated lava pinnacle east of the crest, resting on Precambrian granite

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border. The cars were about three and three-quartermiles away to the southwest. Most of the return was arushed plod on the hard road, which wreaked havocon my thigh muscles, though a great joshua woods allaround helped inspire me. We got back at 8:10 p.m,eleven hours and twelve miles after starting.

This night we had a good campfire. Coyotes calledboth evening and morning. The happy chatter of acactus wren, known in this country only in yucca terri-tory, made for a joyful noise as we packed to leave.

For the last day’s hike we drove to Keystone Canyon inthe New York Mountains. The forested New Yorkshad made an impressive sight from our last camp. Wewere soon in the midst of them. An old jeep trail led into therange. We followed it to the Wilderness boundary at 5410', wherethe desert turned toward woods and chaparral. This would be adifferent world, a real mountain rising above the desert floor,where Survivors had only deigned to go a couple of times before.

Parts of the New Yorks show a true Southern California mountainecosystem. Chaparral plants grow here in abundance: shrubs likescrub oak, silktassal bush, wax myrtle, buckbrush, lemonade berryand manzanita. Above are live oak trees (encina), pinyon, juniper,serviceberry, and other plants of the mid-level mountains. Highlimestone cliffs make for impressive ramparts toward the crest.On north-facing sides are a few white fir, well-hidden from thesun, below cliffs that catch and hold snow in the winter. We sawall but the fir on our five-hour hike, plus other plants that seemedout of place in the desert.

It was long thought that this odd plant regime was left over fromthe Ice Age. Certainly the white fir, a snow plant wherever it isfound, would seem to corroborate this theory. But the range hasother anomalies. For example, Mahonia, a hard-leafed shrub withbig yellow flowers, is known chiefly from the Colorado Plateauregion of Utah and Arizona. It is common just across the Arizonaborder between the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. Andin Carruthers Canyon on the range’s south side, the twin-leafedvariety of the pinyon, Pinus edulis, can be found hybridizing with

the more common single-leaf species, the kind of pinyon found inCalifornia and Utah. The edulis also grows separately, but only atlow elevations around the base of the range, a hundred miles fromits nearest pure stands near Peach Springs, Arizona.

The Mahonia and Pinus edulis can only have come across thedesert from the east, a migration that probably happened during awarmer and wetter time, possibly during the Altithermal Period ofseveral thousand years ago. That only would have happened if anArizona-style monsoon with summer rains dominated the Califor-nia Desert. As yet this phenomenon has been little-studied, but itcould be that global warming did bring greater species diversity tothis part of the state, a phenomenon knocked down by the colddry conditions of the present. The long ridge of the New Yorksis elongated northwest to southeast, an ideal configuration forcatching monsoon rain coming up from the southeast.

We hiked up the deteriorated jeep trail to Keystone Spring at anelevation of 5870'. At the spring we were surrounded by densewoods and chaparral. Large pancake cactus and yuccas punctuatedthe brush and trees. It was a surreal experience after our walks ofthe past two days. A small pool of water was accessible amongstthe reeds and dead grasses of the small meadow at the spring.This too was good water, in this case a life source for chickadees,scrub jays and band-tailed pigeons instead of coyotes and passing

coveys of doves and quail.

After a short lunch break at the spring we went backthe way we came. It was an educational hike, givingus a renewed perspective on the desert. This Easterhad been a rejuvenation for sure.

The other hikers were soon on their way back to theBay Area, to Seattle, and to far eastern Nevada. Idrove south into Lanfair, then down to Interstate 40to continue explorations in Arizona, also featured inthis issue. The intensity of these Easter hikes sowore me down that I stopped to sleep by the side ofthe road to recharge my batteries. Within an hour Iwas driving fast toward Kingman and beyond, as ifto see just where those Mahonia and Pinus edulis hadcome from. This Mojave trip was a good one, andan inspiration. I want many more, as do most or allDesert Survivor tripsters.

Cactus, junipers and the crest of the New York Mountains

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At the bird guzzler on Day Two; hiker at the left is sampling the water


April, 2007

By Steve Tabor

After I led my Castle Mountains trip in the Mojave NationalPreserve for Desert Survivors, I drove to Western Arizonafor six days of backpacking in the Arrastra Mountains

Wilderness. I knew little about this Wilderness until I beganresearching routes across the West for more year-long trekking. Isent away for information, got the maps, and was blown away. Iliked its possibilities for a week away from the drudgery of worklife.

For a California desert lover, this wilderness has several attractiveattributes. It’s got a real Sonoran Desert upland ecosystem, it’sonly two hours across the border, it’s got a real desert river, it’s gotthe big saguaro cactus, it’s got bighorn and wild pigs, it’s got plentyof springs, and it’s rough and remote country far from the touristtrade. It also has a higher-level ecosystem of chaparral and juniperon the ridgecrest.

From the Mojave, I drove east to Kingman to get resupplied, thensoutheast along that notorious old desert highway, U.S. Route 93. Ifound a place to camp by my car that Sunday night and awoke thenext morning to the chatter of thrashers and cactus wrens. Mycamp at 2400' didn’t have any large cactus, but it was in the midst

of well-leafed catclaw and palo verde trees, brilliant bright green asfar as the eye could see. I was swamped with remembrance of myearly years exploring in the 1970s, which always included spring-time in the saguaro. “Sweet life”, I called it! The greenery andchattering birds were always a joy after a winter in Idaho and Utah.

I packed up and drove down the highway toward the Santa MariaRiver. Much to my surprise, the beautiful two-lane road throughsaguaros was being converted into a four-lane freeway. A ten-milestretch had been horrendously dug up and blasted out of solidrock. Large saguaro cactus, protected by law in Arizona, had beenreplanted in the median strip on bare ground, mineral soil with nostructure. They were propped up at weird angles with three-wayguy wires staged to hold them vertically as if in a tripod. It’sdoubtful that any of them will survive. What a joke! I laterlearned that this road was being reconstructed as part of theNAFTA Superhighway to service the large international airportalready approved for the desert west of Las Vegas at Primm. Oneof the great desert roads was being sacrificed for the purpose ofinternational relations and cheap junk from Mexico and China.

The realignment of the road had closed off my intended trailhead.All access was now blocked by a continuous barbed wire fence. Icouldn’t stop anywhere so I had to keep going all the way to theriver, the only place to get off. The river would have to be my startpoint. I drove off to the east and back under the bridge, then

found a parking place inmesquite trees on the riverbank. I packed up food andgear for a week and headeddownstream, my hopes highfor a storybook journey.

The river was a beauty! A thinstream of water meanderedlazily back and forth across awide bed of coarse sand.Huge cottonwood trees linedboth banks. Like all Arizonarivers, this one is prone toperiodic monster floodsderived from pulses of wintermoisture from Hawaii andsummer typhoons from BajaCalifornia. The remains ofbig trees lay across the bedhere and there, and swashmarks could be seen on theterraces above. The Salt, theGila, the Blue, the Colorado,the Little Colorado, the Virgin,the Escalante, the Green, theSan Juan, the San Rafael, allthe desert rivers I’ve hiked

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Footloose In Western Arizona:The Arrastra Mountain Wilderness

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Eastern portion of Arrastra Mountain Wilderness


have been a little different, but their essence is the same: big trees,good birds and wildlife, water amidst dryness, unpredictable flow,and a constantly changing aspect, always something new to seedownstream.

And on both sides was the desert: low brush, tall cactus, brightgreen palo verde trees and mesquites, bare rock cliffs! I felt athome, with water to drink and desert to love. Who could ask formore? But all good things attract the worst and this place was nodifferent. The entire sandy bed had been churned by innumerablehooves of cattle. Not a square yard was free of cow flops. Bothupstream and downstream, the riverbed had been transformed, andthere was neither grass thatch nor flood rise to obliterate whatmust have been a whole season of trampling. I only saw a few ofthe ugly beasts and I could not believe that they alone were theculprits. The whole area was grazed, both public and private.They must have just taken the cattle off for the summer.

The aspect of the river was much the same for the next ten miles,a peculiar mix of sublime beauty and degradation. So enamoredwas I of the river that it consumed more than one-quarter of thephotos that I took. Around every bend were morecliffs, more trees, more sand, more saguaros perchedon hilltops, and that same lazy stream, plus some-thing new around every corner. Schist and gneisswere the bedrock, but lava cliffs stood high above onboth sides of the river; the geology was akin to thatof the Mojave. Bedrock often came down to thewater, forcing one stream crossing after another.Mesquite and palo verde flowers were yellow and fra-grant, attracting loud buzzing insects.

In two miles I stopped for lunch at the mouth ofBlack Canyon Creek, a wide sandy bed coming infrom the south. It was a popular camp with off-roaders, though there were none here today. Thesandbank stood six feet above the river bottom; thatwas the river’s depth the last time a big flood emptiedout of the wash. Black Canyon drains one-hundredsquare miles of open desert to the south and east,

outside the mountain area.

As I ate I watched a vermillion flycatcher dartingaround, always ending up back at the same tree branch.Orioles flew in and out of the mesquites on the otherside. Swallows flew back and forth across the river, andthe inevitable ducks flapped downstream. Cactus wrenschattered in the nearby hills. For a desert, this was lush,and not only at this time of year.

I hiked downstream for many hours, past gneiss andschist outcrops and then volcanic layers, which nowcame down to the river. Treading water periodically, Ihad to change socks a couple of times. I rested twice inthe shade and at Mile 6.9 I camped at the mouth ofPeoples Canyon, a major drainage coming out of theWilderness to the north. I had an excellent bed in softsand. I feared mosquitoes and rattlesnakes, so I pitchedthe tent. Then I did a dayhike up Peoples to get wateraway from the cows and their coliform.

Fork Spring was only one-half mile upstream, but it was a tortuoushalf-mile. As in most steep-gradient canyons here, the bottom wasclogged with basketball-sized boulders. Flashfloods had washedaway anything smaller. Around a bend I saw the trees: two brightgreen sycamores clinging to a rock wall. The greenery drew meon. A dripping spring emitted from under the trees. Below was amat of ferns. The water was sweet and fresh, right out of theground. It was a classic desert spring. Because of all the cattle“sign” in the riverbed, I had to do a dangerous mile-long round-trip over loose and unstable boulders below desert brush and cac-tus to get fresh water. That’s got to be the finest metaphor formodern American industrialism and its imperatives, if there is tobe one at all.

A bat flew above the sycamores. Sheltered spots in the canyonprotected masses of dry cottonwood and sycamore leaves washedfrom far above. This bend in the canyon offered a curious land-form: a sharp bend had been broken through, leaving a “perchedmeander” above and to the west. The canyon used to drain thatway but the divide had been overtopped and the old drainage was

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The Santa Maria River on the Arrastra Mountain Wilderness boundary;Shallow water on a sandy bed, green trees, lava walls high above

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Mesquites and tamarisk on the river bank, saguaro cactus above

now bypassed. The canyon now had two half-mile longroutes to the river. The one I’d come up is the lower one,therefore the one now favored. I’d seen this in sedimen-tary terrain in the Colorado Plateau but never in thiscountry.

In the morning bright orange light crept down the canyonwall. Doves called first, then cactus wren and flickers.The latter two were seeking mates. A wild horseappeared, then galloped off. I left at 8:00 to continue myjourney in the wet sand and over terraces at the widebends, more tiring work. I stopped twice more to rest,then ate lunch at Burro Spring Canyon, four miles down.The canyon was much the same, except for more grassgrowth in the sand bed. The cattle damage persisted.

At the lunch stop I had a good long look at the riverbed, since Iwould now be leaving it. It had been my home for the best part oftwo days, but I would now be entering the desert, going intounknown terrain, apprehensive about what obstacles lay ahead.Several springs showed up on the map but you never know. Oneshowed two miles ahead, but the one after that was eleven milesfarther and 2000 feet above the river. The canyon I’d chosen forascent was rocky and narrow. Dryfalls were always a possibility.

On a quick retreat into the mesquite thicket behind the terrace Ispooked a large covey of quail. More than two hundred birdsflushed and went soaring and jumping up onto the cliff rockabove. They were still clucking ten min-utes later. It was an auspicious sign. Iwould enter the desert; they could havetheir river back, at least for now.

Burro Spring Canyon was a narrowtrench in volcanic rock. I was dismayedto find a low fall in bedrock at the firstcorner, but thereafter the bottom wasmostly sand and gravel. I spent the restof the day in the canyon, movingupstream toward the range crest. Likeany desert canyon, it had its charms.Short narrows alternated with wide grav-el beds, cool rock walls with warm hill-sides covered with saguaros and teddy-bear cholla. Green mesquites and cat-claw lined the edges of the bed. BurroSpring had a clear location on the map,but it must have been buried by a flash-flood; where it was supposed to be, Ifound nothing but a rock pile in thewash. After that I found myself lookingfor a plunge pool at every short tribu-tary.

The Precambrian metamorphic rock washere only thinly veiled by volcanics, mak-ing for interesting contrasts. At onewide spot I found a half-mile-long out-crop of beautiful garnet gneiss, large-grained, granite-like, loaded with big and

small crystals of blood-red garnet. So nice was it that I did some-thing I rarely do anymore: I took a couple of samples. (They’llend up in the DS “hands-on box” that we use for fairs and shows.)Farther on were some outstanding outcrops of beautiful red vol-canic and sedimentary rock; photographs of them would accompa-ny this article but we can only print black-and-white. Green cot-tonwoods and cool cliffs made this an excellent rest stop. In thisnarrows I found mountain lion tracks alongside those of javelinaand bighorn. The next day I was still finding lion tracks all theway up-canyon to the crest.

Six miles up the canyon I found a small rock pool. I decided tostop early to utilize the water, but no way was I going to camp in

the bottom of the trench. The drainagewas now a rocky gulch incised inbedrock about 25-30 feet. I neededsome desert expanse, so I climbed upthe rocks and onto a platform surround-ed by desert hills. The sun had droppedquite a bit by the time I got up, but I stillhad a great view south to lit-up hills andpeaks. As usual in these situations, whenI look back the way I came, I’m amazedat what I remember passing through,and that from this angle there’s not evena hint of all that detail. But I have thephotos to prove it. I sometimes wonderif anyone would ever believe any ofthese stories if I did not.

The next morning I followed the ever-narrowing canyon for another threesmiles to a pass above its right fork.There were more springs and seeps inthe canyon head and cattle tracksappeared. The cows had apparentlymade their way down from the chaparralcountry above. The lion and javelinatracks were still there, but no morebighorn. This was rougher country thanI’d done so far, and it was quite a strug-gle with the pack, up loose bedrock hill-sides and through sharp cactus andscratchy brush. By lunchtime I toppedout at the crest of the range at an eleva-


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A 20' tall saguaro near Fork Spring at Mile 6.9

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Sunset light on lava rims from Fork Spring in lower Peoples Canyon

tion of 3510'. I was in a new world uphere, with a view into completely differ-ent country with new plants and a newaspect to the land.

As I ate I noticed that almost all thesaguaros were gone. Instead there werebuckhorn cholla and pancake cactus (asin the Castle Mountains in the Mojave!),plus Ephedra, hedgehog (calico) cactus,banana yucca (Spanish Bayonet), buck-wheat, grama grass, galleta grass, Vigu-iera, bladdersage, crucifixion thorn,Krameria, fairy duster, fescue grass, Hap-lopappus, snakeweed, and nolinas. Sugar-bush, a chaparral plant, was also evident.Catclaw persisted. This was an upper-level Sonoran vegetational regime Iremembered from elsewhere in the state.There is some speculation that such areashad once been grassland with sparseshrubs and cactus but had becomedegraded through overgrazing by live-stock. I rested a long time looking outto the east, into a high-level valley sur-rounded by 4000' peaks.

I made my way down the easy grade to aold dry cow pond showing on the map, passing through groves ofscrub oak and juniper trees. I rested awhile under some cotton-woods, then headed off cross-country to a low pass on the north,also 3500'. This was a hardscrabble rise of about 300 feet, thoughit seemed like more. On the other side was a new view of cactusand brush-covered hills, much more rounded than what I’d seen sofar, no doubt affected more by the soil development that had comewith the persistent forest cover of the Ice Age. I could see somehigh peaks far away, off toward the Aquarius Plateau, some ofthem above 7000'.

I made my way down a switchback trail thatcould barely be seen, then down to a gulchrunning east. This old trail was rubbly andloose, no place for a sprained ankle. Deeperinto these hills, I found more different plants.There were more junipers and more beautifulsugarbush, which gives the best shade in thecountry, but there were also sagebrush andserviceberry, plants of the Rocky Mountainsand the Great Basin, two ecological provincesa long way from here. At the bottom wherethe canyon forked, I rested under a sugar-bush, then turned north toward the nextmajor water, Placeritas Spring.

The way north was on beautiful trail, obvious-ly kept open by cattle. Large pancake cactusblocked the way, but most were knockeddown. The trail went high on the hillside toavoid the rocky gulch, and I got a good lookat a new ecosystem, broad swaths of chapar-

ral, growing here only on hillsides facingaway from the summer sun. There werelots of crucifixion thorn, scrub oak,buckbrush and juniper, forming a closedcanopy, difficult to walk through. Onthe sunny sides were the more typicaldesert vegetation I’d noted earlier, a moreopen array easy to walk through. Nosaguaro in sight. Rolling hills stretchedaway at the next low pass. A rattlesnakebuzzed as I approached.

I made my way north to the Wildernessboundary to camp. I’d now crossed theWilderness from south to north, abouttwelve miles from the river. To get outof the wind, I camped behind a junipertree north of the jeep trail defining theboundary. There I watched the sun setover Peak 3726, a lava knob to the north,and Old Grayback, a high granite peaknear the town of Bagdad across U.S. 93.

By nightfall cumulus clouds had comeover and a brisk south wind came up;looked like a storm approaching. Iretired to flat ground beside the roadand pitched the tent. The wind stopped

at 10:00 p.m., but the clouds persisted. By morning the cloudswere all to the southeast. I broke camp and hid the pack and tent.This day would allow me a hike without the pack toward the 4000'peaks to the southwest where I could get a look at true chaparraland also good views of the desert from on high.

I hiked to Placeritas Spring, about a mile away on the boundaryjeep trail. It was a beautiful spring with deep pools in a narrowslot in yellow rhyolite. It was partly fenced to keep out cattle, butthey got in anyway. I spooked four young frogs when I passedthrough. I got a little water for the day, then moved on toward the


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Rock wall in narrows in Blind Spring Canyon

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Shadowed narrows in upper Blind Spring Canyon; Mesquite trees are in sun-shine on the right side


hills.

From the spring I did a 5.5-mile loop, startingsouth then moving clockwise back to it, top-ping out at an elevation of 3807'. Most ofthis was through juniper trees in the gulchesand flats and scrub oak and mountainmahogany on the hillsides. Most brush waseasy to walk through, kept open by cattle thathave a habit of smashing their way through.Other plants were various grasses, nolina,mesquite, catclaw, pancake cactus, buckwheatand Haplopappus. Where I topped out I gotan awesome view down into the steep canyonsto the south that tumbled down to the river.My view of the vast desert country farther out was hazyand obscured, not even clear enough to allow a photo.

Some of this day was “skywalking”, hiking a narrow ridge withsteep slopes on both sides, good views both ways. At one point Ihad to sidehill for almost a mile around a big peak; it may havebeen easier to go over the top. At my farthest point out I wasexposed to a stiff southwest breeze and thick cumulus clouds com-ing from the west again. It even looked like it was raining in thatdirection! I had no rain gear, only a wool shirt and long johns.When I saw the clouds coming, I cut the hike short and headedquickly down into a drainage leading north. If I got caught in therain, I didn't want to be on top. So much for internet weatherreports!

My descent was careful but quick. I chose the shallowest gradientto avoid sliding, dodging cactus and spiny brush as I went. Withina half-hour I was in the flats, going from bank to bank of a sandywash, following a good cow trail. I was in a juniper woods almostdevoid of cactus, cruising amongst the trees and the scrub oaks,with occasional Mahonia. The wind was chasing me and some raindrops fell. I wasted no time, pushing north as fast as I could go.At a bend I followed the trail up onto a rise heading toward Placer-itas Spring. I lost the trail but continued over the top, still chased

by droplets and the wind. I reached the spring by 3:30 pm andreplenished my water, then hiked rapidly east on the road. By thetime I got to the pack an hour later, the storm had largely passed;the threat of rain was over.

I ate behind my juniper tree, then pitched the tent on openground. I moseyed around my “desert garden” for awhile beforenightfall and discovered a few more species that were new to me.One was a thorn bush. Yellow ants with big black eyes on stalkswere just coming out of their hole; when I blew hot breath atthem they went back down. I also saw two new kinds of birds.Occasions when I slow myself down and just wander are the bestopportunities for discovery, not when I'm moving fast, as I had formost of the day.

In the chilly morning I backpacked east along the boundary road,then turned south on an old jeep trail toward Sycamore Spring.There were actual Wilderness signs and a rock barrier where theroad turned. Intriguing hoodoo rocks rose across the way. Theold road, now a trail, went south over a low pass, then one moremile to the spring at the head of a narrows. Two tributaries con-verged at the narrows, forming Peoples Canyon, which I'd encoun-tered on the first day far down by the river channel.

Sycamore is one of the finest desert springsI've ever seen. It occupies a narrows betweenhigh rhyolite cliffs for almost one-half mile. Atthe top is a fenced enclosure with a corralunder huge sycamore trees forming a canopy.Leaves litter the ground as they would in anEnglish woodland. Somebody left the gateopen and cows got in, leaving the groundunder the trees a mass of pulverized cowshit(now dry), but other than that it's a little bit ofheaven.

A loud zone-tailed hawk let it be known thathe did not appreciate my presence. A pere-grine falcon looped overhead. I saw severalother birds in amongst the trees, including onewith a yellow neck and belly that I could notidentify. I watched an Empidonax flycatcherfor awhile. Other birds whistled and calledhigh in the trees, much too high for a sighting.

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Peak 3726 in sunset light, in chaparral country near the north boundary

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Prickly pear, cottonwoods and yellow rhyolite at Placeritas Spring


This was certainly a watery oasis for birds in this dry country.

Beneath the trees a stream with deep pools trickled amongst andover the sycamore roots. Cottonwood trees, large sprawlingmesquites and what looked like hackberries grew in the shadygrove. Frogs jumped into the pools. Sycamore leaves lay in thickmasses on top of the water. I watched more birds for awhile andsoaked in the ambience of the place, then backpacked downstreambetween the high walls.

I had to slip and slide over tree roots and around large rocks. Attimes there were trails on terraces through the trees. Around acorner my idyllic stroll was interrupted by a huge chock stoneblocking the channel between high walls. I slid over backwardsand managed to catch myself on a tree root, then angled downover more rocks to a lower level. There was more boulder-hop-ping lower down, and I just missed stepping on the coils of a largerattler that was laying partly under a large rock. A few hundredfeet further, the canyon turned another corner and opened out. Istopped to eat lunch in the shade of the last rock wall. Beautifulfirecracker Penstemon and a large purple-flowered Penstemon grewat the edge of the trees near the opening. Ipeered out at the sunlit desert, so unlike myhome of the past hour and a half.

By noon I was off again with the pack,moving downstream (southeast) in themain trunk of Peoples Canyon. Some ofthe bottom was sandy but most was rockyand littered with large boulders. A fewdrops here and there created obstacleswhere flashfloods had carried away every-thing loose, leaving only bedrock. The bot-tom was wide, but flashflood hydraulicshad left an awesome mess. Lava walls andpinnacles rose high above.

For more than a mile I negotiated the rocksand drops. Then I came around a cornerand was stopped by a huge fifteen-footchockstone that blocked the whole channel.Sliding down it was out of the question;

there was a deep plunge pool below. I looked atthe east side and saw no way around the chockon the lava ledges there, but the right sideshowed some promise where a series of ledgesrose above me on my right. I snooped around,looking at the situation from various angles.Below I could see loose but passable groundsloping downhill, though some nasty cliffs along-side provided what the mountain climbers call“exposure”. Despite the danger, that appearedto be my only hope.

I decided to climb (with pack) up on the ledgeabove on my right to access the sloping ground.Now six feet higher I could see that the slopewas more dangerous than it seemed from below.I decided to climb (with pack) up onto anothersix-foot ledge; I had to destroy a catclaw bush to

do it. But up there was an animal trail, clear as day. The knowl-edge that some animal other than myself had been able to getthrough gave me hope. I angled down the sloping ledge towardthe drops I'd seen before (the slope was about 20 degrees) until Icame to a narrow part blocked by two large cacti, one a buckhorncholla, the other a pancake. No way a deer or even a bighorncould get through there; this had to be a javelina trail. Thingslooked bad again, and by now I was in a position to view the otherside and definitely determine that there was NO other way to go.

I slid down to the cacti and tested them with one foot. I pushedagainst them to see if they'd “give” and found myself pushingharder to see if I could break branches. I pushed harder still, grip-ping the rocks beside me for support, and kept doing it until I'dsmashed each cactus into but a meager portion of its former livingself. Parts of each were still standing by the time I'd stopped kick-ing, but there was now enough room for me to negotiate the ledgewithout danger. I tiptoed around the remaining cactus, huggingthe rock, then eased down the loose material below. The rubblypart ahead was an uphill, allowing me good traction there abovethe worst exposure. Then I followed the rest of the ledge, now on

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Scrub oaks and juniper in the foreground, dense chaparral on the hills, onthe ridgecrest near Arrastra Mountain

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Rocky bottom and lava pinnacles in Peoples Canyon below Sycamore Spring


a wide terrace, downhill to just above the bottom.Whew!

Looking ahead at the bed (now that I could raisemy eyes above anything other than the next fewfeet of ledge), I could see more boulder bed andanother large chockstone at the next corner,probably also impassable. I decided to stay onthe high terrace and follow more animal trailalong the cliffs and then up over more ledges andaround the corner. When I got over there, I sawthe trail dropping down again to more bedrockand a beautiful pool sheltered by short green cot-tonwoods. That shady spot would be my nextrest stop and my next waterhole, where theextreme tension of the last 30 minutes wouldmelt away into a renewed appreciation of thedesert's beauty, as it had so many times before.

I spent a good twenty minutes decompressingand relaxing by the water. Suddenly I felt hungryafter my action-packed ordeal so I ate a little snack. The mapshowed more problems downstream toward South Peoples Spring,and I'd about had enough. It was late Friday and I had only onemore day to get to the river and my car. I looked at the map andcharted possible ways out of the canyon, now 400 feet deep andgetting deeper. There were four more miles of boulders andchockstones and god-knows-what between me and the river, so Idecided to take my chances crossing gulches and hills in highercountry to the east where I'd have more room to maneuver.

Moving downstream again, I came to a fork, then followed anobscure old hardscrabble trail directly east up sloping lava layers.It was all bare rock veneered with loose pebbles, but if cattle anddeer (and javelina) could do it then so could I. Views down intothe lower part of Peoples Canyon, now deeper and narrower, con-vinced me of the rightness of my decision. I kept hiking uphill tothe crest of a peninsula, then veered left and rose higher up until itlooked like I would run out of room to move. I crossed the nextgulch to the east and went higher still, finally topping out 400 feetabove the channel. In the maze of gulches and peninsulas I'd losttrack of my position but I got out the old GPS and marked themap. I'd gotten clear of the deep stuff and was now home free.Rolling hills and an easy descent to the river were all that remained.There were seven gulches and as many ridgelets to cross, but thesewould be an annoyance more than a danger, and I now had thetime to move more deliberately with an empty pack.

Getting to this high pass and out of the troublesome canyon gaveme a sense of accomplishment. Not only that but at almost 3000'I now had a magnificent view. White limestone plateaus alternatedwith black basalt ones across the Santa Maria to the east in countryI hadn't yet seen, and for once the sky was clear, not hazy andmurky. Seeing new country was an inspiration. I waited andwatched almost until the sun went down, then hurried east until Ifound a good camp on another ridge with a lousy view but a goodflat surface.

The country up here was badly damaged by cows; the animals hadbarged through cacti, knocking them over. There were lots of bro-

ken pancake cactus and even the catclaw had been trampled. Thiswas still the Upper Level Sonoran where thorny brush and spinycacti were the rule, but the bovines didn't seem to mind.

The rest of the trip was an empty-pack eight-mile amble back tothe river, mostly downhill. I stopped at Negro Ben Spring to getwater. It was impacted by cattle, but I managed to crawl back intothe rocks to a wholesome source pool. I crossed several gulchesand ridges carved into crystalline granite; most resembled the rockknobs of Joshua Tree, but they were orange instead of white. Itraversed a long, broad, upper valley loaded with huge six-foothigh, ten-foot wide creosote bushes. This was lower country,grown also to tall saguaros and large buckhorns, even bloomingbrittlebush.

Moving out of this valley, I hiked up to a high ridge that wouldlead me down to the river. On this ridge was a wide band of purewhite quartz, the kind that holds gold and silver, if someone wouldever be able to find it. Palo verde trees, chollas and saguaros beganto dominate, here on dry open ground. I followed this long ridgefor three more miles, dropping 800 feet to the river. It was anoth-er mile to the car and I hiked the riverbank slowly, reluctant toleave so early. I stopped to birdwatch again, and spotted two morevermilion flycatchers and a pair of lazuli buntings, both classic Ari-zona birds that I'd seen before. I'd never seen either in California,so I lingered long.

But all things must come to an end, so after dodging a few morecows and crossing the river a few more times I arrived at my car.It had been a great six days, a whirlwind tour through some of themost amazing desert I'd yet seen. Visions of leading a Desert Sur-vivors trip here began to dance through my head. I mulled overthe possibilities. After taking the note someone had left on my carand reading it with dismay, I packed up quickly and headed out ofDodge, away from the river and back to my American reality. Whoneeds “reality TV” when you can live it in person. I drove quicklyback home on my last free Sunday. Home to the job, home toDesert Survivors.

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Lava rims and saguaros in the hill country above Peoples Canyon.


POSTSCRIPTThe note on my car is worth quoting in full:Sir : You are parked on private property. You failed to make eye contactto say hello on your way down the river. You probably trespassed onour Peeples Canyon property. May even have camped. This may becustomary for Californians but to us it is impolite and rude. In thefuture I would confront the rancher first or expect to have your cartowed.Erik BarnesSanta Maria Ranch

There was no No Trespassing sign on either of the two gates Idrove through to get to my river trailhead, though on the first gatebelow the freeway there was a sign reading “Please close the gate”,which I did, both times. No structures anywhere near marked theplace as part of a “ranch”, though there was some constructionparaphernalia back against the freeway, used by road crews. The“Santa Maria Ranch” referred to was a house on a hill about a mileupstream on the other side of U.S. 93. In the crazy-quilt of publicand private land that is most of Arizona, there was nothing here toindicate that this parcel was associated with any other that may ormay not have had a habitation.

I concluded from this that the owner probably thought so highlyof his own importance that he had in his own mind laid claim toall the land in the vicinity, so why bother posting any of his actuallegal parcels? And of course it never occurred to me to go walk-ing up to someone's house to say “Hello”, especially a house a mileaway, when what I really wanted to do was park my car away fromany house. My assumption would be that the resident would pre-fer to exercise his privacy rather than encounter every stranger whodrove down the road, especially now that that road is a NAFTASuperhighway.

In California, a private parcel's prop-erty line has to be posted with NoTrespassing or equivalent signs everyone hundred linear feet to have legalprotection from entry. I don't knowthe law in Arizona but I doubt that itrequires visitors in country featuringadjacent federal, state and private landto go knocking on the doors of near-by houses to find out who owns theland, but I should research this. I'veheard that is the custom (if not thelaw) in the State of Texas.

I remembered some kind of disputeabout the Arrastra detailed in HighCountry News awhile back so I didan internet search. I located an articledated February 18, 2002 thatdescribed the problem. It seems thatMr. Barnes had bought the SantaMaria Ranch in 1990. With it came aforty-acre parcel centered aroundSouth Peoples Spring, which is ashort distance southeast of where I

left Peoples Canyon on my hike. Mr. Barnes wanted to build aroad in to the spring so he could run more cattle, perhaps eventu-ally to establish a resort. But the Arrastra had been made Wilder-ness in 1990, shortly after Mr. Barnes purchased the land, and theWilderness Act forbids the building of a road in Wilderness.

The Arrastra was actually established as a Wilderness Study Area(WSA) in the 1980s, long before Mr. Barnes bought the land.Even as a WSA, the land was protected from development; Mr.Barnes should have known that. Actually, he should have beeninformed of that fact by the seller(s) of the property and theirreal-estate agent(s), and by his own agent(s) and lawyer(s).

According to what I read in the HCN article, as a “rancher” Mr.Barnes is more or less a wanna-be, having come from Alaska aftera career of outfitting trips on public lands there, so he shouldknow better. I'm glad that his persistence has generated commit-ted adversaries, as described in the article. Southern ArizonaWilderness has a lot of healing to do, and that's not going to hap-pen if the BLM gives in every timepeople want to build a road totheir inholding.

For more information on this con-troversy, check out the February18, 2002 High Country News arti-cle atwww.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Arti-cle?article_id=11020 . An earlierarticle in HCN dated February 16,1998 covering the more generaltopic of Wilderness inholdingsmay be found atwww.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Arti-cle?article_id=3946 .

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Looking down into the rough country in lower Peoples Canyon. High lava rims andnarrow shaded bottom; more rims are beyond.

Arizona javelina

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July 6-10, 2007

By Bill Johansson, Stockton, CA

Civ i l izat ion

We began our trip at 4 p.m., leaving Stock-ton, in the Central Valley, on Highway88. We were too late to go in the visitor

center of Indian Grinding Rock State Park, but didsee the outside grinding holes. We ate at 9 p.m. atKirkwood. We passed Carson Pass and followedHighway 88 all the way to Minden, Nevada, Gard-nerville’s sister city, right next to it to the north-west. The following day I spent a short hour atthe Carson Valley Museum research library inGardnerville. I plan on ordering reprints from theCentral Nevada Historical Society Photo Collectionlocated there, mostly of places where I have been.

Our F i rs t Adventure

On our way once again, we headed south on U.S. 395. Our goalwas to find Carters Springs. The map showed a water tank oppo-site the springs. We found the water tank, but no springs close tothe road on the other side, nor the two roads to the springs. Wehiked towards the hills, found a draw of sorts and followed it for alittle while. There was some evidence of water, plants that were alight green. I thought there could be surface water under the trees.We had thought once we were near the spring it would not be dif-ficult to find, but we were wrong. Perhaps we were on the righttrack. We hiked some 45 minutes. We weren’t prepared to spendmore time hiking as we brought little water nor did we wear hikingboots! It was a hot, sunny day. Later I looked at the maps and Irealized a mine, the Veta Grande Mine, and its tailings were upfrom the springs. On the internet I read the mine was abandonedand somewhat of a hazard to nearby wells; however not as muchas years ago, as the rain and snow melt has percolated and rinsedthe tailings. Also, on the internet the springs are listed as being at6,600 feet and Carters Station on the other side of Highway 395 islisted at 5,680 feet. I wouldn’t have thought there was such a dif-ference in elevation, we didn’t hike up much on our search. Iimagine we might not have been any closer than just the generalvicinity. I enjoyed the hike. It was getting kind of wild. Explor-ing was fun!

We followed U.S. 395 further south with a stop at Topaz Lake for aswim, then to Bodie, a ghost town in arrested decay, now a StatePark; it is high off the highway about 25 miles. Continuing on 395we passed Mono Lake and spent the night at Lee Vining. Thenext morning we reached the beautiful ski resort of MammothLakes and rode a shuttle down 1,500 feet to the Devil’s Postpileand San Joaquin River. Late this third day we reached Big Pinewhere a serious fire was blazing high above in the Sierra: thiswould have stopped our progress the day before, as U.S. 395 hadbeen closed south of Bishop.

Stuck On The Deser t Tra i l

As part of “my day” to do something I specially liked, exploringNevada, I planned a visit to my favorite place, Lida Summit, anduntried unpaved roads, to be away from civilization. We hadalready seen the touristy places Bodie and the Devil’s Postpile, sowe headed east from Big Pine, past Westgaard Pass and GilbertSummit, up to Lida Summit, which I have now visited twelvetimes. I call it the Lida Summit Adventure.

After a picnic lunch at this pristine summit we headed back westand turned north through Dyer and Fish Lake Valley and on to seeThe Sump. I had heard about this place but didn’t know where inNevada it was. I had passed close to it on Route 773 in 1997 and1998. This first time we didn’t observe it from the bottom, butdid drive north of it on an unpaved gravel road. It is an impres-sive sight, looking down on the eroded hoodoos or the like fromthe upper viewpoint. We drove on and soon joined the DesertTrail, which was coming in from the south. We followed the grav-el road on to an electronic site. The 7.5 minute map of the area isnot precise, as I thought the 4WD road we were looking for beganfrom this installation. There seemed to be a road headed out fromhere - we tried it briefly but this road (if it was one) had not beendriven on in a very, very long time! However we could see to theeast the road we wanted going down the rolling hillside. We finallybegan descending the 4WD road in our Ford Explorer SUV,rejoining the Desert Trail. Roger Mitchell from the SUV trailsbook series, had reassured me our car could make it. We were notlong on this road before the sand became deep. We tried turningaround but got stuck! The car dug itself in and wouldn’t move.

Bob Lee, our driver and friend, “volunteered” to walk back to themain road to get help – with his cowboy hat on, hiking boots andbottle of water. It was 4:15 in the afternoon. It was hot! Mean-

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Exploring the Eastern Sierra and Nevada

Searching for Carters Springs in the Pine Nut Mountains

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while we tried to phone 911 and dialed several numbers to try toget help but it was futile. The only cell phone that works in thisarea is a Satellite cell phone. To me it seemed like an hour passed,but it was more like three. At the end it was finally cooling down.I looked to the west and two cars were coming down the 4WDroad picking up dust. Bob Lee was with the Esmeralda CountySheriff and friends. We found out it took Bob Lee an hour toreach the main road and another hour for the first vehicle to pass

by, a FedEx truck that didn’t stop! Bobtold us three vehicles passed by beforehe reached the main road, but he wastoo far to try to flag down these cars.The car that did stop went to Dyer tobring help - friends of the sheriff.They came to rescue us and got stuckthemselves once they reached us! Withshovels, they dug out the sand and bledair out of our tires for better traction,and we pushed. We didn’t need chains.At the main highway we had to replacethe air; but the compressor only filled ithalf way, which required our backtrack-ing to our new friends’ homes for abetter machine.

Finally, we were off to MontgomeryPass, then thankful that the Benton gasstation was still open at 10:00 p.m. Wefilled up, and called June Lake to saveour two motel rooms. As we rode onhighway 120 in the dark, a grown fox,baby fox and 4 rabbits crossed ourpath. We dragged in at our motel at 11p.m. for a grateful rest and refreshing

shower. We came back through Tioga Pass high above YosemiteNational Park.

The Sump is a worthwhile visit, but beware of the sandy 4WDroad! This part of the Desert Trail would be better hiked in thespring.


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How To Extricate A Lone CarFrom Sand

By Leonard Finegold, Philadelphia, PA

Iread with sympathy the exploits of Craig Deutsche on freeinga car, in the Spring 2007 Survivor. After helping a friend extri-cate his car from Mojave sand some years ago, I asked a group

of outdoors people for advice, and the following is a distillation oftheir replies.

1. Keep calm, walk around car, look at it. Start drinking water.2. Ensure 4WD is engaged and that the hubs are locked (if applic-able.)3. Reverse out of trouble if possible.4. Engage a reasonably high gear if you can.5. Stop as soon as the wheels start spinning.6. Dig out the sand from each wheel and put anything solid under-neath (wood, stones, dead camel skulls, spare wheel...)7. Rock the car violently from side to side so compressing the sandunderneath each wheel.8. Lower the tire pressure little by little until you can move. Use atire gauge, because if you lower too far, the tire can come off therim.

9. Jack-up the back of the vehicle using the spare wheel as a jack-support, then put material under the wheels or just drive off thejack and repeat (this can gain you nearly 2 feet at a time).10. Wait for the sun to start going down, the air temperature tocool and the sand to become more dense.

Incident on departure from Kingston Range, April, 2003

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Miss Cactus onManners

[Editor’s note: This new column wassubmitted by a long-time member ofDesert Survivors who wishes toremain anonymous. Opinionsexpressed here are not necessarilythose of the Board of Directors,although possibly they should be.See page 3 for submission informa-tion.]

Dear Miss Cactus,

I recently went on a DS trip to centralNevada. The trip leader carpooled withmy friend and me. After the first day ofhiking, my friend and I realized that thepace was too slow for us, and we wishedto leave. The trip leader seemed a bitmiffed when we arranged another ridehome for him, but he gamely offloadedhis gear, and we left after the secondday’s hike.

When we arrived home, we discoveredthat he had forgotten to take his sleep-ing bag. We heard that he only discov-ered this after the others had retired andthat he spent a chilly night. Now hewon’t respond to emails. I am afraidthat we have hurt his feelings. What canwe do to make things up with him?

Yours truly, Bailing and Wailing

Dear Bailing and Wailing,

Miss Cactus feels that accidentally leav-ing with the trip leader’s bag is one ofthose things that happens and that youdo not need to apologize. However,Miss Cactus feels that it was very rudeof you to bail out of the trip becausethe hike is too slow. You agreed to goon the trip and the trip leader took youat your word. You took a spot on thetrip that someone else may have wantedand then you abandoned the trip. MissCactus suggests that you apologize foryour behavior with an offer to assist in afuture trip as a co-leader in charge ofresponding to trip participants who cre-ate hassles. Your trip leader should beamused and very grateful.

Yours truly, Miss Cactus

P O E T R Y

Three Haiku Poems

Kangaroo Rat liesDead in the road; deserves aProper burial.

Datura blossomsBring thoughts of Moon medicineAnd nature spirits.

Morning breeze speaks whileI remove cholla spines fromMy shoes – with pliers!

Jeff Parker, Carson City, NV

Associated PressArticle Quotes DesertSurvivor

Exper ts doubt SteveFosset t s t i l l a l ive

By Martin Griffith, Associated PressWriter

September 11, 2007

RENO, Nev. --As the search for Steve Fos-sett dragged into its ninth day Tuesday,experts said they doubted the millionaireadventurer could have survived more thana week in the rugged desert since his planevanished. While the resourceful aviatorcould scratch water, food and shelter fromthe desolate Nevada landscape, experts saidhis first order of business would have beensignaling rescuers.

“There’s no news of him signaling for helpand that’s a problem,” said DavidMcMullen of Berkeley, California, a leaderof the hiking group Desert Survivors,whose members frequently venture intosome of the country’s harshest terrain.“He’s either so injured he can’t signal orhe’s perished.”

“Shelter from the sun would be just asimportant as water to Fossett had he sur-vived the crash,” added McMullen of theDesert Survivors. McMullen was strandedwith a severely sprained ankle for threenights in Death Valley National Park inSeptember 2001. He hunkered down inthe shade of a fig tree before he was res-cued by a military helicopter, with the helpof a detailed itinerary he had left his wife.“You’ll lose water faster than you canabsorb it in heat, and that’s why a shelter isso important,” McMullen said.

He and other survival experts faulted Fos-sett for not filing a flight plan, which mighthave allowed searchers to focus on a small-er area. “The itinerary I filed for my 2001hike saved my life,” McMullen said. “Theyknew where to look for me.”

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Petroglyphs

My own flawed quick notesAre not like thoseOf the singer who sang of Beowulf,Nor the Bard who graced blue Avon’s shore.No. The poet whose work is most like mineChipped stone, rubbed rock,And worked a wordless tune on granite’s face,In caves or in the desert’s emptiness;Or scratched a feather dipped in dragon’s bloodAcross a drying autumn leaf,And flung it to a nameless wailing windWhose passage brought it to my door.

Mimi MerrillFeb. 2, 1986

Vision Fast Poems

Preparat ion Between the wind’s breathsI hear the beating Of the earth’s heart.

To Dine at the TableTonight I dine at the table of the Beloved.I have but water to drink.The table, a feast set before me.Dirt, rocks, pines, juniper, sage scattered about.Dead trees for table ornamentsAll arranged beautifully on this earthen tablecloth.

Illuminated by sun and sky,Clouds both light and gray.My water transformed to the wineOf the Divine Presence.The food served to nourish my soul’s hunger.I am the guest.

Wisdom #2Wisdom is all around us and Inside of every being.Silent like a drumbeatDetermined to be heard.Only you can hear yours.Medicine for the whole planet!

One wi th Spi r i tLet everything I seeLet every sound I hearLet every sense I feelLet every thought I haveLet every move I makeLet every breath I takeBe One with the SpiritBe One with the Spirit.

Spir i tsOh spirits from the South, the West, the North, the Eastcome dance with me.Come share your medicinethat we can be in Harmony.

Oh people from the South, the West, the North, the EastCome dance with me.Come share your medicineThat we can be in Harmony.

Oh grandmother earth, grandfather HeavenCome dance with me.Come share your medicineThat we can be in Harmony.

Conversat ionsMountains to the Clouds:Come closer that we may experience the shade of your great spanAnd the coolness of your breath on our warm bodies.

Clouds to Sun:Oh sister sun, your gaze is so intense.We came to provide some shade So your children do not burn up in their desire.

Pinion to Juniper:Together we share and celebrate each season in the Inyos.And wait to greet our brothers and sistersWho come to visit.

Roger Appelgate, 2006

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Petroglyphs, Wadi Rum, Jordan

Death ValleyDreamin’By Marith Reheis, Feb. 2001, Pacific FOP (Friends of

the Pleistocene), Death Valley

Tune: California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and Papas

1.All the mud is brown, and the salt is gray,I went for a walk across the playa today.Should be drinkin’ beer and watchin’ palm trees sway,Death Valley dreamin’ on such a winter’s day.

2.Waded through a lake that lay across the way,Lord, I sank up to my knees, and I began to pray,“You know I’m stuck here in the salt, please don’t sendrain today!”Death Valley dreamin’ on such a winter’s day.

3.There’s scarps at Mormon Point, so most geologists say,If we weren’t the best of Friends, there’d be hell to pay.“It’s not a fault, it’s a beach, as any fool can see.”Death Valley dreamin’ Pleistocene geology.

4.Slept upon a fault near Furnace Creek last night,Well the earth began to shake, I had a terrible fright.Strain accommodation on several intersecting splays,Death Valley dreamin’ could be a nightmare today!

Repeat 1.

All the mud is brown, and the salt is gray,I went for a walk across the playa today.Should be drinkin’ beer and watchin’ palm trees sway,Death Valley dreamin’ on such a winter’s day.


By Karen Rusiniak, Berkeley

Reinventing ourselves is an ongoing process. As time shiftsthe circumstances in which we find ourselves, people aswell as companies and organizations need to reinvent

themselves to be optimally effective and successful. On Septem-ber 11th the Desert Survivor Board of Directors decided to allowlocal trips on the regular trip schedules. This is a change thatreflects, I believe, two trends in our current world: the increasinglybusy lives we lead that often prevents us from driving the 8-10hours many of the desert trips require and the increasing concernover the use of a non-renewable oil resource to get to our beloveddesert.

I look upon the Board’s decision in two positive ways. Firstly, thelocal trips can really be considered conditioning trips for ourlonger desert outings. What better way to get and keep in shapefor our desert car camps and backpacks! Secondly, there has beena local project in the back of my mind for years that I alwaysthought would be a great fit for a Desert Survivors service project:helping out at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge. Therefuge has sand, many plant genera we are familiar with from theCalifornia and Nevada deserts and has been known since the1930s as an entomological hotspot that attracts large and colorfulinsect species with desert affinities.

Located right in our back yard, just 38 miles from Oakland CityHall, is the first and only wildlife refuge in the country establishedto protect endangered plants and insects. This 67 acre refuge wascreated in 1980 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protectthree endangered species: Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly, the ContraCosta Wallflower and the Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose, whichare only found in or near the refuge’s boundaries, and twelvespecies designated Federal “species of concern.” Today the refugeexists as an isolated inland riverine dune system, all that is left of

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Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly (Apodemiamormo langei)


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the dunes that used to stretch for two miles along the river. It isbordered on the north by the San Joaquin River, and on the otherthree sides by industrial development: the Burlington Northern/-Santa Fe Railroad on the south, the Fulton Shipyard on the westand the Georgia Pacific Gypsum Plant on the east.

The scope of this service project will be to remove invasivespecies such as Star and Russian Thistle and Ripgut Broome in thewinter, plant about 400 plants of buckwheat that the Lange’sMetalmark needs to survive in the spring, and then place larvae ofthe butterfly (that are being bred in two separate laboratories) onthe buckwheat also in the spring. Additionally, volunteers will beneeded in the spring/summer months to take surveys of individualplants and butterflies to quantify the populations.

So if you are interested in rolling up your sleeves and helping outon this project, please contact Karen Rusiniak or sign-up for theDSOL listserv so you can be notified of the upcomingwork parties. The first one is scheduled for November 17th.When I and three other Desert Survivors visited this place in Maywe were all struck by how fragile an environment it was and wecould easily see the work that needs to be done in removing inva-sive species. Won’t you join me in helping to save these speciesfrom extinction? And stay tuned for a more in-depth article onthis project in the next issue of The Survivor.

Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose (Oenothera deltoideshowellii)

Contra Costa Wallflower (Erysimum capitatumangustatum)

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Antioch Dunes location and site maps

California Native Plant Society conducting a survey

Prescribed burn used for nonnative weed control

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In This Issue

Letters:Don’t Mess With Virtual Wilderness...........................................2Mountain Mishap............................................................................2

How to Reach Us (Revised!)............................................................3Survivor Deadline Looms................................................................3Mission Statement for Desert Survivors.......................................3E-Mail Notices and On-Line Forum.............................................3New Editor and Art Director..........................................................3Desert Pavements and Dust Marith Reheis..........................4These Are the Things I Have Seen Today Chris Schiller.....6A Horse Fable Stan Huncilman....................................................9Castle Peaks Carcamp, Mojave NP Steve Tabor......................10Western AZ’s Arrastra Mountains Wilderness Steve Tabor....14Exploring the Eastern Sierra and Nevada Bill Johansson.....22How To Extricate a Car From Sand Leonard Finegold.......23On Manners Miss Cactus............................................................24AP Article on Steve Fossett Quotes Desert Survivor...........24Poetry:Haiku Poems Jeff Parker.............................................................24Vision Fast Poems Roger Appelgate.........................................25

Song: Death Valley Dreamin’ Marith Reheis.........................26Antioch Dunes Service Project Karen Rusiniak.......................26

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Join Desert Survivors Today!Members of Desert Survivors become part of a nation-widenetwork of savvy desert hikers and activists. Benefits include:• Four more-or-less quarterly issues of The Surv ivor .• Over 40 free trips per year to explore desert locations. Trips

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Summer 2007 The Survivior Newsletter ~ Desert Survivors