Chihuahuan Desert and Guadalupe Peak

 

I went to Carlsbad Caverns, which most people think of as a huge, amazing cave. And it is. But it's under some pretty terrific landscape, the Chihuahuan Desert. It's not super eyecatching at first, but when you start looking, you see quite a variety of plants. Agaves predominate, and the lechuguilla agave is endemic to the Chihuahuan Desert.

I didn't actually spend much time on the surface of Carlsbad. After a full day in the cave, I headed to nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park and spent the night with a friend.

We had a lovely evening catching up and then she had to leave for work very early the next morning. So good to see you, Carolyn!

Since it was really early and I had a lot of energy, I decided to tackle a trail run. And not just any trail run, why not Guadalupe Peak? It's the highest peak in Texas at 8,751 ft (2,667 m). The trail starts 3,000 feet below and 4.2 miles away. Well, that sounded a lot like hiking Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park, just starting 5,000 feet lower. I've recently signed up for a high elevation marathon, so I needed to get training, and this sounded ideal.

The trail quickly switchbacked up the mountainside, and I enjoyed great views into the Chihuahua Desert.

After about 1.5 miles, the trail went to the north side of the mountain, and I saw trees! The protection from the hot sun creates a nice microclimate.

The trail also flattened out a bit, making running a lot more manageable.

After running through the trees and more switchbacks, past a campground, I came back out on the south side to more wonderful views.

 

And then finally I was at the top! I passed two people on the way up and was the first one on the peak that morning.

I put on my jacket, as it was very windy, and took a selfie with El Capitan in the back.

This rock used to be a barrier reef during the Permian time period, and fossils abound.

After about 10 minutes alone at the top, a nice guy joined me.

 

We talked a bit, then I was getting cold, so I headed to the subpeak and then down.

The views of El Capitan and beyond were amazing.

 It was quite a bit faster going down. I had a better view of this bridge.

I passed 22 people on the way down. It was a great run, even though I wasn't super fast. It made me feel like maybe signing up for the marathon wasn't too stupid of an idea. And it was great getting to know the high country in the Chihuahua Desert a little better.

If you go, go early in the day, I can see how this could be a very hot hike. And enjoy the views!

Four North American Deserts in a Week

Last week I had the opportunity to visit all four major North American deserts: Mojave, Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Great Basin. Here's a map from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum that shows where they are located:

Image from: http://mojavedesert.net/description.html

Now comes the fun part. Check out the photo and see if you can guess which desert is pictured. Answers are under the photo. Click the links to learn more about that desert. Let's start right away:

This desert is huge, but only a small part is in the U.S., in western Texas and southern New Mexico. It's the Chihuahuan Desert, a hot desert except that it's at a higher elevation, from 1,200 to 6,000 feet, so it's not the hottest in North America. It receives an average of 10 inches of rainfall, the most of the four deserts. The most widespread and dominant species is the creosote bush, which is also common in the other hot deserts. Other common plants are ocotillo. The characteristic plant is the lechuguilla (Agave lechuguilla), usually found in limestone soils. Other agaves, yuccas, and sotols are common. Pictured above is an ocotillo in the background and agaves (maybe lechuguilla?) scattered with grasses. The photo was taken at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Next up: (hint, this one is a bit of a trick, as it's in a transition zone)

Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens), the tall spindly, plants, are common not only in the Chihuahuan Desert, but also the Sonoran Desert. The huge cactus is a barrel cactus (not sure which one). This photo is taken on the Ocotillo Trail at Kartchner Caverns State Park, which is in the transition zone of Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts. This one should be easy!

Our hottest hot desert is the Sonoran Desert, with their characteristic saguaro cacti (Carnegiea gigantea), which die in a hard freeze that lasts more than 20 hours. Other common plants are littleleaf palo verde (Cercidium microphyllum), ocotillo, ironwood, mesquite, and cholla. Photo taken at Saguaro National Park. Can you also spot the cholla and prickly pear cactus? Only two deserts left. Which one is this?

If you guessed Mojave Desert, you're right! The Mojave Desert is between the Great Basin and Sonoran Deserts and is the smallest of the four deserts. It's also the driest, with an average of 2 inches in the east and 5 inches in the west. It's divided into upper and lower bajadas. In the photo above, taken along Highway 93, you can see creosote bush, common in the lower bajada. Common associates include bur sage, Mojave yucca, banana yucca, and various cacti. The upper bajada is dominated by Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia), which happened to be in bloom!

That leaves just one desert left, the highest elevation and coldest:

This is the Great Basin Desert, where sagebrush is the dominant shrub. Although some cacti are found in this desert, gray, low shrubs dominate the landscape. Another identifying feature is the Basin and Range Province, with alternating mountains and valleys. In the background in the photo above is Great Basin National Park, a park that is almost entirely in the range, looking out at the basins in adjacent Snake and Spring Valleys. Here's a photo of three of the most common bushes: on the left is tall sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), in the middle is greasewood (Sarcobatus vermiculatus), which is just starting to leaf out, and on the right is grey rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus). Fun fact: when early settlers were looking for good land to settle for farming, they looked for sagebrush, which showed that the soil had good nutrients, with greasewood nearby, as greasewood depends on groundwater and usually grows where water is within 40 feet of the surface. If they had that combination of water and good soil, they could probably have good crops!

Which of these four deserts have you visited? Do you have a favorite?
More to come on them in the coming days!

Spring Morning on the Ranch

 The spring light has been delicious, with moody clouds, dramatic slanting rays, and extra humidity in the air to lend an ethereal mood to the high desert. The birds have been returning from their winter sojourn, so I got up early one morning to go in search of sandhill cranes during the golden hour. My husband warned me they might be hard to find, as he thought they had moved out to the meadows. I went anyway, knowing I'd find something interesting to photograph. I stopped at the feed yard, where one cow perched as queen of the hill.

Further on, out in a field, I found a pair of Canada geese clucking away.

A raptor, I think a red-tailed hawk, perched near an abandoned building high up on a dead branch.

The raucous trill of the red-winged blackbird caught my attention.

 

I couldn't find the sandhill cranes. But I did find lots of meadowlarks. And I took many, many photos of them. The one that came out best was this one, singing his heart out for a mate, perched on a fencepost. Good luck, beautiful bird. And thank you for filling the morning with your beautiful song.

Cave Rescue Training in Texas

 In late February I jumped on an airplane and headed south to Texas for a week of teaching National Cave Rescue Commission (NCRC) training.

But before I started, I had half a day to spend with my friend Cassi. We headed over to the state capitol for a tour.

It was cool to hear about all the symbolism behind the shields. And guess which state capitol in the U.S. is the largest? Everything is biggest in Texas, right? 

The next day I slept in (oh, what a treat!), went for a run, and then Cassi dropped me off with a friend who took me up to Barefoot Lodge. We had our instructor's meeting, and then I gathered all the Small Party Assisted Rescue (SPAR) instructors so we could go over our class. We checked in students that evening.

The next morning we began with the whole group, Levels 1, 2, and SPAR under the watchful eyes of dead animals.

Our SPAR classroom is outside, and fortunately the weather cooperated. In fact, it was downright balmy early in the week, even reaching 80 degrees! Here's Kelby talking about pre-planning and decision making. (Hint: some pre-planning can go a long way. And having extra gear in your vehicle means that your gear cache is close by if something goes wrong.)

 

 Later DJ did an excellent talk about Frog system optimization. As Americans, we tend to want to set up our gear our way. But the more I (and several other instructors) tweak our systems, the more they tend to look like what the Europeans use. Extra tips here: keep everything to the left of the Croll, oval carabiners are awesome (they are compatible with all gear), using a carabiner to attach to your upper ascender gives you a lot more flexibility.

 

Carrey gave a talk about SPAR psychology. This talk was demo'ed during the weeklong SPAR in the summer. I liked it so much I wanted to have it included in our three-day class, and Carrey hit it out of the ballpark. I don't mind sharing some of it, because I think sharing things that makes cavers safer is good to do. You can avoid many accidents if you watch out for yourself and your team if they're having any of these symptoms that fit in the acronym HALTY: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, or hYpothermic. Best treatment: talking, a hug, and food. Aw, now we all want to go caving together. :)

If an accident does happen, we need to know some basic medical. Andy covered that, with the caveat that the best thing to do is get some wilderness first aid/first responder training.

Next it's time for some haul system/mechanical advantage review/overview. It's good to know your 1:1, 2:1, and 3:1 systems with progress capture.

Then we had afternoon and evening stations, and I was so busy I didn't get photos of any of those. 
Day 2 we headed to some awesome cliffs in Colorado Bend State Park. We had four stations next to each other, so traveling time between them was minimal. That meant we had 1.5 hours at each station, a luxury to have so much time. One of the stations was a Convert to Lower station with Tommy. That basically means if you come to a rope with someone stuck on it, how can you lower them quickly?

Another station was climbing and rappelling counterweights. You learn quickly that having some high help (anchor off the ground) makes a huge difference. Our other two stations were crack and crevice and stacked counterweights. Then we did some rappelling with a patient through a rebelay and traveling haul through a rebelay. After dinner we were back at our classroom for some more demos and practice time. These days are long, but the great weather made it easy!

The next day was scenario day, with four students and two instructors heading into a cave. The instructors tended to have a lot of problems caving that day!

 Even though I've taught this class a lot of times, I always learn something new. This time around I was working on perfecting my Portuguese bowline, helped by peanut butter and jelly.

After our three-day SPAR had ended, I was planning on jumping in with Level 2 and helping there. But we had a surplus of instructors, and I asked DJ, the lead for the event, what he thought about teaching some SPAR skills to instructors. He said yes, and that was how MicroSPAR was born. I spent the next two days giving a one-day version to instructors. We started with about half an hour lecture, half an hour of Frog System optimization, an hour+ of convert to lower and an hour+ of traveling haul. It was great to repeat some of these things over and over and see the tweaks to make them even better. 

In the afternoon we went out to a cave and practiced various rescue techniques like traveling hauls and diminishing loop, climbing, and rappelling counterweight systems and compared them all. MicroSPAR was a blast, I hope to teach it again. This version was aimed at instructors and specialists, all who had been through at least Level 3. Some had taken SPAR before, others were new to it.

The next day I took the instructor written test. We have to take it every so often to stay current as an NCRC instructor. (I passed.) Then I helped out with the mock walkthrough, which is basically a smaller version of the mock rescue with several repeats so that students can learn how a cave rescue is launched and how the Incident Command System works. For one of the evolutions, I volunteered to be a patient in the SKED, a burrito-type rescue litter, to go out a tiny entrance. My nose almost touched, but not quite. The students got me out successfully, and I reminded them not to stop in the really tight spots, just keep moving steadily and slowly. (Yes, I can get claustrophobic, especially when I'm tied up in a litter and the cave wall is right in front of my face. How do I deal with it? Close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else.)

With a recent reminder of how much I don't like to be in the litter, when the mock scenario was presented that night, I did not volunteer to be a patient, but rather an "angel" for my friend Les. We went into a cave we had never been in before, so we weren't sure how the rescue would go. The temperatures had plummeted into the 20s at night, so we were thinking that being in a 65-degree cave would be nice and cozy. It turned out we were under a skylight, and it started snowing on us in the cave! Time to go a little deeper!

Here's Les waiting to be rescued. He even brought his own lantern.

Eventually he was packaged up and they started moving him towards the entrance. 

Here's one of the tight spots he went through. It wasn't even the tightest! They eventually got him out, although with some modifications to the original plan.

You learn something from every mock rescue and training. I'm very thankful I could be part of the Texas training. Thanks to DJ for putting on another successful training and inviting me to come be part of it. Thanks to all the students who choose to attend--you're the reason we can have the trainings. Thanks to all the other instructors, it's always inspiring to be with you. And thanks so much to Megan and the food crew--the amazing food is a huge part of why I came back!

Checking out Panaca's Multi-Use Trail

Snake Valley Trail Partnership is working on developing more trails, including a paved one-mile long multi-use trail in Baker, Nevada.  To learn more about this type of trail, I visited the two-mile long paved multi-use trail near Panaca, Nevada. It starts at the entrance to Cathedral Gorge State Park (above).

Here's the view looking north towards the state park. Folks reaching this part of the trail can then enter the state park and get to the visitor center easily.

Continuing south, the wide trail veers closer to Highway 93 to cross a culvert.

Here's a closer look at their culvert extension.

A Pedestrian crossing sign announces that the trail crosses the highway. It's a 45 mph zone here.

The multi-use trail has stop signs for the users.

Then the trail continues on the other side, getting close to the highway again for another culvert crossing. 

At about the one-mile mark, it reaches the intersection of Nevada Highway 319 and US Highway 93. The pedestrian crossing marks have mostly worn off on NV Highway 319. This trail was put in about 10 years ago.


Here's a view of the trail along Highway 319 looking west towards the intersection and the gas station that's on the other side. For this culvert, they were instructed to do a dip, so when the Panaca spring is drained, this portion of the trail is inundated.

Continuing east along Highway 93, the trail is often far from the highway, but gets closer for another culvert crossing.

I called one of the trail sponsors to learn more about how it came about and how they maintain it. He said they had gotten a grant with an 80:20 match. They had had no problem raising the match. It had cost about the same as our one-mile paved project, in the $700,000 range. They had done nothing to maintain it except sweeping gravel off it and spraying weeds along it.

As I went along the trail, I found that there were sections with some gravel on it, but otherwise it looked great.

The most damage was where this driveway crossed it and it looked like something heavy had been dragged across.


My liaison also mentioned how it got used frequently. I'm certain ours would be also, especially by kids who want a place to rollerblade or bike ride, and those who want to go on a stroll and not worry about dodging traffic.

Hopefully we'll be able to get started on the Baker Multi-Use Trail soon and have a success story like Panaca!