Friday, June 20, 2014
Dragon Canyon
Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a perfectly serviceable name, but it’s a slightly bland one for one of the most spectacular places in North America. Another gripe with the name is the fact that there are other Black Canyons (for example, one in Rocky Mountain National Park).
If it had been up to me, I would have called the wondrous gorge sliced by the Gunnison River through Central Colorado something a bit more dramatic: Dragon Canyon, after the pinkish white streaks embedded in its dark wall resembling serpentine monsters.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison is where my wanderlust began. In January 2012, after visiting Iowa for the caucuses, I stopped there on a whim and immediately became transfixed by America’s national parks. I visited again last summer and hope to visit again every summer, each time taking a different route down into the canyon.
Last year, it was the Gunnison Route, the shortest, most basic scramble originating near the South Rim visitor center. This time, for the first time, I saw the canyon from the harder-to-reach North Rim and traversed the SOB Draw (that’s really what it’s called because of all the poison ivy) down to the river.
Winter’s above average snowfall meant above average snowmelt, swelling the river, which roars even in ordinary years. Frothing and churning throughout the canyon, the Gunnison’s turbulent water in one spot formed a small waterfall over a giant rock in the middle of the river.
Not a soul was around as I found a rock of my own on the river’s north shore and took in the incomprehensible walls shooting straight up. A snarling, soaring dragon flapping between the sheer cliffs would hardly have felt out of place in this strange, beautiful place.
If it had been up to me, I would have called the wondrous gorge sliced by the Gunnison River through Central Colorado something a bit more dramatic: Dragon Canyon, after the pinkish white streaks embedded in its dark wall resembling serpentine monsters.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison is where my wanderlust began. In January 2012, after visiting Iowa for the caucuses, I stopped there on a whim and immediately became transfixed by America’s national parks. I visited again last summer and hope to visit again every summer, each time taking a different route down into the canyon.
Last year, it was the Gunnison Route, the shortest, most basic scramble originating near the South Rim visitor center. This time, for the first time, I saw the canyon from the harder-to-reach North Rim and traversed the SOB Draw (that’s really what it’s called because of all the poison ivy) down to the river.
Winter’s above average snowfall meant above average snowmelt, swelling the river, which roars even in ordinary years. Frothing and churning throughout the canyon, the Gunnison’s turbulent water in one spot formed a small waterfall over a giant rock in the middle of the river.
Not a soul was around as I found a rock of my own on the river’s north shore and took in the incomprehensible walls shooting straight up. A snarling, soaring dragon flapping between the sheer cliffs would hardly have felt out of place in this strange, beautiful place.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Mosca Pass and Medano Creek
I’d passed through Great Sand Dunes National Park two summers ago on my way back from Utah, but hadn’t spent much time there. This time, I hiked the Mosca Pass Trail, a gap in the mountains that is one component of a complex set of interrelationships maintaining the dunes.
The components include erosion (sand) from the San Juan Mountains, which gets blown across the valley floor until it is scooped up by the Sangre de Christo Mountains, rising up behind the dunes, and sculpted by runoff from mountain snowpack and wind channeled between mountain passes on either side.
Mosca Pass, the more southern of these two passes, features a trail running tightly along the mountainside then through open meadows accented by aspen groves, explosions of brilliant, rustling, lime green. Finally, the trail finds the ridge, unveiling the other side: rolling valley then more mountains. Pure Colorado.
After the hike, I visited Medano Creek. The the chilly, gurgling water which not long ago was snow only runs in spring. It wasn’t flowing when I visited previously in July.
The components include erosion (sand) from the San Juan Mountains, which gets blown across the valley floor until it is scooped up by the Sangre de Christo Mountains, rising up behind the dunes, and sculpted by runoff from mountain snowpack and wind channeled between mountain passes on either side.
Mosca Pass, the more southern of these two passes, features a trail running tightly along the mountainside then through open meadows accented by aspen groves, explosions of brilliant, rustling, lime green. Finally, the trail finds the ridge, unveiling the other side: rolling valley then more mountains. Pure Colorado.
After the hike, I visited Medano Creek. The the chilly, gurgling water which not long ago was snow only runs in spring. It wasn’t flowing when I visited previously in July.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
New Mexico Wanderings
I left Texas on June 3 headed for Colorado. I was going there to explore and gauge future opportunities (my euphemism for “job searching”). To get to Colorado, I went through New Mexico.
I’ve passed through the Land of Enchantment and visited many of its scenic and historic sites in recent years, but there’s always more to see. After a long drive through West Texas, I stopped initially at the Blackwater Draw Museum and then went to the actual Blackwater Draw archeological site. The Blackwater Draw, an ancient watering hole long since dried and buried, offered the first evidence that humans and Ice Age megafauna cohabited the North American continent some 13,000 years ago.
Just south of the city of Clovis, archeological digs at the site beginning in the 1920s and 30s discovered mammoth bones impaled by chipped chert arrowheads--the eponymous Clovis points used by long ago Native Americans. Back then, the landscape was not desert like it is today but lush, woody meadows.
I camped a little further north in Santa Rosa State Park just outside the city of Santa Rosa. The Juniper Campgrounds offered wide open views of sunset and sunrise over the waters of the dammed reservoir. There was hardly anyone around as I followed the results of the Mississippi GOP Senate primary on my iPhone from shore.
The next day, I got up early and drove north towards Taos. I spent a couple hours wandering the small adobe art enclave then headed to the spectacular Rio Grande Gorge seven miles beyond and comparatively flimsy bridge spanning it. Tourists can walk out to the center of the bridge to snap photos and peer down into the muddy river rushing below. I, of course, did this, but was slightly unsettled when the bridge shuddered every time a semi rolled over it.
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