Hot and Bothered on the Lakeshore Trail

Taylor as a scale for some metamorphic rocks (schist).

Mike being a field geologist.

The summer began with a wilt as Mike (a soon-to-be second year grad student in our lab, he ran in the Olympic trials 4 years ago so we call him our olympian) and his field assistant Taylor (an amazing undergrad from Carleton College in Minnesota) stepped off the Lady of the Lake ferry onto the campsite/trailhead at Prince Creek.  This name may sound familiar to you- it was where I was based out of for about half of my MS research.  The site of many adventures, including the Bible believing Christian with a handgun episode (shot a doe in the campground).  Ahh. Good times. 

Our initial plan was to hike into the high country from here (about a 5000 foot gain) and work up high for 6 days.  The snow precluded this plan but I was undaunted and decided we should geologise the so-called Lakeshore trail instead.  This trail runs about 18 miles from Prince Creek to Stehekin, a unique town at the head of Lake Chelan.  Stehekin is only reachable by the Lady of the Lake ferry or by airplane, you can’t drive there.  I will say more on this place later, but trust me, it’s a treasure. 

The forecast for our journey was in the 100s and due to a series of forest fires in the last 10 years, most of this trail has been burned, resulting in a distressing lack of shade.  I can sum up the trip by saying that is was hot.  Very very hot.  We saw some nice rocks and took some good data, but when they say “Lakeshore Trail” I’m sure you imagine happily skipping along the lake shore. Not really, you spend 95% of the trip about 500 feet above it, looking longingly at its icy waters. 

Perhaps my favorite memory of the trip was when we met ANOTHER set of “Bible-believing Christians” or “Young Earthers”.  This didn’t come out immediately, but eventually they both admitted to being preachers (who isn’t in those churches?). They were VERY interested in how old the rocks were. “90 million years you say?”…  The best part was when I admitted to being an atheist- they were visibly taken aback.  Perhaps if I had said I worshipped Satan they would have been more comfortable…

The white stuff is pegmatite, it has BIG crystals.

Most of the rocks we saw were called pegmatite.  A fun word to say, but honestly pegmatite isn’t useful for much in my book.  When magma cools deep in the Earth’s crust you get what is called a pluton.  Plutons are essentially made of granite, so the Sierra Nevada is a series of plutons. So the magma is intruded into the crust and starts cooling and making crystals. Great.  The trick is magma is made up of many different things- iron, magnesium, calcium, silicon, oxygen, etc.  Some of these things are compatible and some are incompatible.  Compatible elements make minerals- these form the granite.  Incompatible elements get rejected from the mineral party and are like the leftovers at a buffet- stuff like water,CO2, and some funky elements.  At the end of the crystallization you’re left with these enriched juices of incompatible elements.  This is what pegmatite is made of- the leftover juices of pluton crystallization.  These fluids then shoot through the pluton and form coarse grained planes called dikes.  Pegmatite is useful to many people- gold is incompatible and can be found in pegmatite. No gold in these pegmatites, though.  Because they are the leftovers, they aren’t usually very insightful for what I’m interested in, which is the pluton part.

Anyway.  Lesson over. Many thanks to Mike and Taylor for suffering through that trip.

Why am I doing this? A primer.

Magmas interacting- see the sharp contact between the grey
stuff and the whitish stuff?

Each summer I get a little better explaining this, so I’ll try again.  My PhD focuses on the deep plumbing of volcanoes.  You and volcanoes both exist up on the Earth’s surface.  My research studies what is going on about 5-30 km below where you are now standing.  Unless you are in Tibet, where the Earth’s crust is up to 70 km thick (!!!).  Then we’re playing a new ballgame. However, I digress.  Back to 5-30 km beneath the surface. Here, magma doesn’t become basaltic lava (imagine Hawaii) it becomes granite (like countertops!) because it cools so slowly- the crystals have lots of time to grow nice and big before they get cold.  There are entire mountains made of basalt (again, Hawaii) and entire mountains made of granite (Sierra Nevada is my favorite example).  What I am trying to understand is how all this granite gets put in the Earth’s crust- as a big blob? As little pieces? Something in between?  What is the link between the deep granitic stuff and the magma that gets erupted (if any)?   

 The North Cascades are a good place to study this because they have enjoyed a long history of tectonic activity- all this enjoyable activity has brought some rather deep rocks to the surface for us to study.  In particular, I’m looking at 3 different granitic-type bodies from 3 different crustal levels, let’s say deep, middle, and shallow. I’m using geochronology (exactly what it sounds like, dating rocks) and field work to understand how these 90 million year old bodies were assembled.

I love food

Let's hear it for In-N-Out burger and their Grilled cheese. 

Also. As a prologue to the coming Grand Tour of North Cascades Bakeries, I bring  you the first contender: The cinnamon twirl from Caffe Mela (with cappucino).

This delight has a crunchy top with a crumbly interior.  Nice cinnamon overtones and not too sugary. Excellent breakfast.

High Sierra Route

Ten days is a long time to write about, so I'll spare you the gory details.  We entered the Sierras over Bishop Pass and spent the first five or so days working down to Cedar Grove, in Sequoia National Park (proper, with a road and everything).  Here, the kindly folks at the Cedar Grove Pack Station (more on them later!) brought us our food drop so we could begin the southernmost 40 miles of John Roper's masterful Sierra High Route, a 200 mile long route  through the Sierras (duh).  What's so special about this? Well, it's all off-trail. Once you do the 6000-foot gain over 8 miles to the first lake, you rarely drop below 10,000 feet.  By the way, the gain is a real nasty lady, it's all in the hot sun and it's dusty as heck.

Dusty after the long ascent.

Since the first half of our trip was on-trail, let's sum up and say it was nice.  We hiked, sometimes very little. We swam, often for very short amounts of time.  We ate salty dried food.  We lazed in the sun. We read books and enjoyed the amazing geology (well, I did).

Geologic contact between two magmas. With enclaves!

So the Roper Route.  We didn't have as much time as we would have liked, so we really had to push to finish it.  Off-trail hiking, even in the Sierras, is slow. Navigation is rarely a challenge, but the easiest route is rarely the straightest, of course you never figure this out until it's too late.

Ennyway.  We resupplied with our food bucket in Cedar Grove and hung out with some horse packers, who it turns out were going to the same lake as us.  Orin and Woody, the packers, asked us over for a beer later that night when we all got to the lake (as Woody put it, "Backpacking is living, horse packing is living like a gentleman").

The mules had a long day too. Yes, that is our tent in the picture.

So the horrible hike up 6000 feet ended with some Jack Daniels (from a 1-liter flask) and a Keystone and great company.  We were really sorry to leave the next morning for our long day off trail.  

So a bit of prologue.  Nearly the entire purpose of this adventure was to reach the Lakes Basin, a remote, beautiful basin in the middle of the park.  No longer reachable by any trail (since 1938), it's supposed to have some of the most beautiful lakes of the high Sierra, including Lake Marion.  This small lake, ringed by high cliffs, was named after Helen Marion LeConte, one of the early explorers of the high Sierra.  Our goal was to stay at this lake.  The hike was long, but around 5:30-6:00, we made it to the lake.  Finally, we reached the pinnacle of Sierra Nevada Lakes.....and it was hell.  The bugs were horrendous.  Mosquitos and ants attacked from both fronts and it was all we could do to eat dinner and dive into the tent.  Ah well.

Marion's plaque at her lake.

You all thought that wedding vow was a joke.

A few more days of relatively benign off-trail adventures (including one heart-stoppingly steep descent) and we found ourselves back at Bishop Pass and on our way back to Las Vegas. 

The final, and most beautiful pass of our off-trail trip, Potluck Pass.

Ready to leave

Kyle and I are once again packing up to leave for the summer. We'll begin in the Sierra Nevada, traipsing through parts of the High Sierra Route and into the Lakes Basin.  Following that, Kyle will take off for a conference in Australia and I'll head back to, where else, the North Cascades.  Planning a summer of fun like this involves mailing several food drops, canoe paddles and life jackets, and tons and tons of packing.  Here's our living room right now....

Actually, it's worse than that now, because I've unpacked everything again so I can re-pack it. 

Entiat

We spent last week in the Entiat Valley and in the Entiat Mountains. These mountains are a bit of an oddity- they are more plateau-like than the rest of the jaggedy north cascade mountains. Our plans were to do another pack trip into this area, but attrition and snow cancelled these plans. Christine, Bob, and I were joined by a SJSU undergrad, Kelly. She's awesome.

Lunch on the mountain. Bob is pointing to Kelly Mountain (or Kelly? She's on the left and Christine is in the middle).

We spent 2 days doing very long day hikes and camping out of the world-famous Fox Creek campground. Fox creek is a great campground- clean water to drink (not always a given), pit toilets, spacious campsites. Nice, right?

We spent 3 nights at Fox Creek before yet another backpacking trip. During our 3 nights we experienced some very interesting neighbors. First we were joined by a large family of pyromaniacs. They came in, parked, and promptly started chopping at every log in sight. Their children spent a large amount of the evening hacking at a big, rotten log with the back end of a hammer. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

We went to bed and were awoken by the smell of gasoline and a large explosion, followed by another explosion. This aggression would not stand, my friends. I got out of my tent and said something along the lines of "would you please be quiet?". I was tired, I can't completely remember what version of that statement I used. Another explosion followed a few minutes later. At this point we were all up.

Word to the wise- geologists carry 3 pound sledge hammers everywhere. We sleep with them. You remember that scene in Full Metal Jacket about the rifle? That's how we are with our hammers. So when crazy people start blowing things up around us, we pick up these hammers and things get serious.

The pyros had already ran into their tents, so no battle ensued (bummer?). Best we can figure, these wannabe rocket scientists filled glass bottles with gas and blew them up.
nice. Luckily they left the next day.

Two days later we were preparing to leave for our backpack when a car pulled into the same campsite as the pyros. Out came the largest plumber's crack I've ever seen. It had legs, arms, a semi-automatic rife, and a 24 pack of Budweiser. The crack walked to the river, sat down, and proceeded to pour each can of beer into the water. This took about 20 minutes, after which he walked back to his car, wiped away some tears, and drove away. Funny or sad?

We left for our backpack up the Tommy Creek Trail. This is a multi-use trail- it's open dirtbikes, horses, and hikers. Dirtbikes and mountain bikes are the bane of our existence- if you've ever hiked on a trail open to wheeled vehicles you know how awful they are- the constant erosion from the wheels turns the trail into a bowl, which as you can imagine isn't easy to walk on. Plus dirtbikers are lazy. And ugly. And they smell bad.

Maybe I want a dirt bike.

Our camp on the Tommy Creek trail was a dry camp, which meant that each day as we walked back we had to stop and pump water and carry it back to camp.

Bob pumping water for the walk back to camp. Kelly and Christine are stoked!

We did some great geology in a large plutonic (intrusive igneous rock- like granite) body called the Seven Fingered Jack. We found some white rocks and some very dark rocks (called hornblendites). Hornblendites are shockingly made of a mineral called hornblende. They are quite rare. They are quite heavy. They are quite necessary to date when you find them.

Bummer.

We did two and a half days of mapping along the trail and the ridge. The 7FJ (or the Jack, as we call it) is an elusive pluton- it's often hard to tell that you are actually looking at Jack, as opposed to its neighbors. Jack is pretty tall and skinny and is bounded by both older plutons and younger ones. Our job was to do some recon for a pack trip next year where we'll bring the whole crew (Adam, Scott, Jonathan) for more detailed work (like what we did last week in the sheeted zone). I'll date the samples we collected so we have a better idea of what rock types to look for next year (we're only interested in the 90-million-year-old Jack, so we'll pay less attention to older and younger rocks).

Meadows=Mosquitos. So many mosquitos.

Nice views.

Have you been exposed?

Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Posting from Leavenworth, WA.

This is a long one, you might want to read it in pieces.

Never been here? Well it's a logging town that turned itself into a Bavarian nightmare to attract tourists. Totally worked. Tons of people wandering around pretending they are in Germany. There's an ordinance that everything in the central part of the town must look "German" so you have Der Shell Gasoline. Ha ha.

Our adventure began last thrusday after an epic shopping trip. Horsepacking isn't so much camping as it is lightweight RVing. We bought clams for an alfredo sauce, fresh vegetables, a total of 9 bottles of wine (not much, considering how long we were going). We showed up on Thursday morning to meet Aaron, our packer. This guy was THE REAL DEAL. Chaps, six-shooter, cowboy hat, Marlboros, a string of mules and one piebald horse. I was in love (don't worry kyle).

to ruin some of the fun- i slammed my pinky in the trunk 2 days ago. i am giving up on punctuation and capitalization. my apologies to the grammarophiles.

So we were 8- Jonathan, Bob (sjsu); christine and adam (osu), scott, devon, and georgina (usc/st. andrews), and me. the usc people took off after they dropped their stuff off for the packer- normal procedure. we dallied around, luckily, because shortly after the usc people left the packer weighed everything and proclaimed that we had too much stuff for the 4 animals. so the 5 of us did triage on the food- out went the wine (noooooooooooo!!!!), the bananas, the many cans of salsa. we got to an acceptable weight-still too heavy- and we took off while aaron loaded the animals.

Aaron disapproves of all our stuff.

the trail was divided into two parts- a MISH along the white river and a series of switchbacks to boulder meadows, our destination. because of the heavy snow, the trail had not been logged on the switchbacks, fortunately we had adam and jonathan- they cut 2 blowdowns while bob and i went ahead to look for anything impassable. (horses with heavy packs can't really go off the trail at all- aaron had a small hand saw on his saddle and an axe). having done trail crew (and looked at aaron's dull axe) i had quickly volunteered to scout ahead rather than cut blowdowns.

so no problems bigger than about a 1 ft diameter blowdown (poor adam and jonathan!)- bob and i waited for aaron to catch up, which he did. bob and i crossed boulder creek (crocs- knee deep for a few steps, very refreshing). i went ahead to catch up with aaron at the camp site, bob waited at the crossing for everyone else (scott was recovering from pnemonia and had a torn rotator cuff).

i crossed a few avalanche chutes filled with snow and went up another set of switchbacks and came up on aaron- unhorsed- and his pack mules. his mule mare had dropped him (he "stepped off", love it!) at a snow bridge that had partially collapsed. the snow had been eroded below by a stream- so it was about 4 feet from the stream base to the top of the snow. i found his mare tangled in some pine trees and led her down to poor aaron (he had been kicked by one of the pack mules as they passed him by). she was a very pretty little lady and very sane- no panicky baloney that east-coast horses are known to pull. she just stood there and let me untangle her and followed me down.

Aaron on Little Foot

so aaron and i got to the campsite- which was of course covered in snow. we each have a nip of whiskey, aaron has a marlboro, and we wait for bob- who showed up with bad news. Scott had taken a tumble in the stream and turned around so all the usc stuff had to go back down with aaron. bummer. at this point it's probably 5:30 in the afternoon and aaron has a 3 hour ride back. bummer bummer. we unpack everything repack the usc stuff. aaron and i go back to try and make the snow-bridge crossing more animal friendly. we say goodbye and i headed back to camp, where bob and i awaited everyone else and unpacked the stove and group equipment.

next, mule-mare (little foot) comes trotting back to our camp with the whole train in tow. aaron limping behind. i grabbed her reins (she and i are friends now) aaron gets re-horsed and we say goodbye again. this image would be funny if i didn't know how much pain he was in.

*********HORSE PEOPLE- I WILL NOT LEAD YOU INTO SADNESS************

The whole way up bob was talking about what happens if one of the animals gets badly injured. obviously you have to do some very tough things, like shooting it, gutting it, and carrying as much out as you can (and coming back for the rest). this weighed heavily on me as we worked on the snow bridge.

About 5 minutes after we said goodbye to aaron for the second time i heard a gunshot. as i started to cry, i ran to the snowbridge. all i could see was a pair of long ears sticking out of the buried stream. sobbing, i grabbed aaron's shoulder and told him i was so sorry- just as Little John (the mule) groaned. He hadn't shot the mule! He just needed help. Little john had gone a different way than everyone else and the snow had broken under him. LJ was caught between a pine tree and a bunch of snow. He was curled into a "C" and was having trouble breathing with the girth on. We cut off the pack that was accessible to us and started on loosening the girth- i was lying under the tree hoping LJ was sensible enough not to start kicking while i tried to get the girth loose. being a mule, he was indeed sensible enough not to do this.

Bob arrived and he and aaron started sawing the snow holding LJ's back end (he was lying on the axe) and finally he was ungirthed and freed. the only thing holding him down at this point was the chest harness- aaron gave me his knife and i cut this off. LJ popped up onto solid ground and took a big poop. aaron had another nip and a cig. just another day for a real cowboy.

we packed all the stuff that was on lj onto another mule and got lj across the chasm of attempted death. One last time, we said goodbye to aaron- who just had his foot in the stirrup when the rest of our group showed up over a little hill- spooking Little Foot. This mule went back across the snow bridge. Seriously. What a knucklehead. She stopped for a drink in the stream, maybe as an excuse not to be a total idiot. i was closest to her, so i grabbed her again. We said goodbye to aaron for good. he made it down fine and nobody had anything worse than a scratch.

After all this, you would think that we would get the most amazing geology ever. i have a picture for you.

mostly low-temperature crystalline hydrous oxygen.

we left 2 days after we arrived. we had to leave most of our food and gear for the packer to take out 4 days later. the scenery was amazing, though.

a view to little giants pass and the napeequa valley from boulder pass.

Instead we went and studied a very fun and interesting sheeted zone- light rocks and dark rocks layered like a cake. This isn't especially normal for magmas, so we are very interested in this! So cancelling the pack trip turned out fine. Christine and i are both super-excited to get these rocks into the lab. this layering could really tell us something interesting about how big granite bodies are put together.

layering in the sheeted zone. what are the ages of the different sheets? we'll find out!

we also went and did some other day hikes. mostly bushwhacking with the mozzies (mosquitoes).

bob in his element

what you can't see is the swarm of mozzies that follows Jonathan everywhere.

and i slammed my pinky in the trunk.

more next week. keep your axes sharp and your mules nimble.