September 10, 2010
The next morning, we packed up our camp (we’d be staying the remaining nights at another site), and headed to Kelso Dunes, an active – and impressive – sand dune habitat, the largest field of aeolian deposits in the Mojave Desert. According to the National Park Service website, about 25,000 years ago, nearby Lake Manix catastrophically drained. As the land dried out, sediment was exposed, and as those sediments are picked up by the wind, they are consistently deposited onto the dunes due to the eddies and crosswinds formed by nearby landforms (the Granite and Providence mountain ranges). Most of our group went up to the top of the dunes, but a couple of us didn’t feel up to quite such a strenuous hike, and wandered around at the lower elevation.
The vegetation here is sparse – mostly Creosote – and I was excited to see a couple of fantastic lizards, and a few birds, including a Loggerhead Shrike, Northern Raven, and what I’m pretty sure was a Horned Lark. We found an adorable little Desert Horned Lizard near where we’d parked the vans – a first for me, although I wasn’t pleased with the way our professor handled it. I would have much preferred for us to just view this little friend from a distance.
We also spotted a Mojave Fringe-toed Lizard. I especially love these photos as they show the lizard and some of the tracks it left behind. This lizard isn’t strictly endemic to Kelso Dunes, but it only rarely seen outside of this area.
From the dunes, we headed north toward Emigrant Pass in the Nopah Range, where we’d spend our remaining time in the desert. Along the way, though, a stop in Baker is a mandatory time-honored traditions, to see the World’s Largest Thermometer, and make a visit to Alien Fresh Jerky.
By 16:30, we’d arrived at Emigrant’s Pass, and hiked around to make some initial observations and measurements. This area is known for a couple of different types of quartzite: the top Zebrisky layer, and then a lower layer with pink, sugary “squeaky” Emigrant Pass quartzite. Between the two, there is a trilobite rich layer: the “Eagle Mountain Shale.” (There will be more about the geologic formation in tomorrow’s entry, when did the actual mapping). On this hike, we also discussed the conventions of geologic mapping – how we’d follow the contacts between layers to better understand how they are juxtaposed.
I also took the time to photograph some of the wonderful vegetation – love all these cacti! We also collected a few geological samples, as well.
After the hike, we set up camp in a nearby open space, which also happened to have some shale deposits where we could look for trilobites (so, of course, I looked). The specimen below was found in “Eagle Mountain Shale.”
Species List
Kelso Dunes: Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata), Hoary Tansyaster (Dieteria canescens), Desert Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos), Mojave Fringe-toed Lizard (Uma scoparia), Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus), Northern Raven (Corvus corax), White-throated Swift (Aeronautes saxatalis), probable Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor), Black-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus californicus), UID Dragonfly, UID Falcon (probably Prairie, Falco mexicanus), and a probable Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris).
Emigrant Pass: Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata), California Barrel Cactus (Ferocactus cylindraceus), Cottontop Cactus (Homalocephala polycephala polycephala)
Let me know what you think!