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Owens Valley - November 2021


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#21 ckent323

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Posted 29 November 2021 - 06:21 AM

I have been passing through and travelling to the Owens Valley on camping and ski trips since the early 1960's.  I recall seeing Elk there as early as the late 1960s and 1970's.  Indeed, it is my recollection that they were nearly extinct and the small remnant heard that all the Tule Elk have descended from was discovered near Bakersfield in the 1920s or1930s and subsequently a small herd was introduced to the Aberdeen area of Owens Valley in the mid to late 1930's.  Conservation management has facilitated that original remnant herd to grow to thousands of animals that have now been distributed to a number of location across California.


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#22 ETAV8R

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Posted 22 December 2021 - 07:53 AM

Happy belated birthday Monte. Always wonderful to read your reports and see the photos and new discoveries.

Glad to see the new knees are doing what they need to do...explore natures gymnasium.


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#23 Gussie

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Posted 29 December 2021 - 06:50 AM

GREAT road report. Happy (late) birthday!


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#24 ski3pin

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Posted 04 January 2022 - 03:34 PM

Happy belated birthday Monte. Always wonderful to read your reports and see the photos and new discoveries.

Glad to see the new knees are doing what they need to do...explore natures gymnasium.

 

Thanks for the nice comments! Yes, Julie's put a great deal of effort into rehab and it is paying off, especially as we are getting back out into nature's incredible gymnasium. :)

 

GREAT road report. Happy (late) birthday!

 

Thanks Gussie! :)
 


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#25 Foy

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Posted 06 January 2022 - 03:44 PM

A much belated Happy Birthday to Monte and a hearty "Attagirl" to Julie for the strong comeback from knee replacements.

 

Regarding the rounded rock (quartzite?) in the Owens Valley:

 

There are a plethora of geomorphology studies concerning the Eastern/Southern Sierra and DV.  Seems particularly interesting because normal evidence of very young events has been deformed by ongoing tectonic developments.  As seems to be the case just about everywhere in that part of California and adjacent portions of Nevada, one can find everything from Precambrian basement rocks well over a billion years old to mappable sedimentary deposits just a few thousands of years old.  What a laboratory!

 

There are some curious aspects of the outcrops decorated by the ancients' "pecking".  One is that quartzite would require some pretty hard tools (made of other rock) to be "carved" as the pictures show.  With so much of the artwork seeming to represent painting exposed surfaces with natural pigments, the amateur archeologist might assume that artwork carved into quartzite outcrops to be much the exception.  Chipping fresh hard quartzite is hard work, but it is what it is, so I'm left just wondering if artwork chipped/carved into hard rock surfaces is more common than my feeble mind assumes?

 

As to the water-worn appearances, that's a good one also.  The "Friends of the Pleistocene" seems to be a rich source of field trip guidebook and map information.  With all ephemeral features, how they came to be can be fascinating research and field work.  What little I've read refers to mapped Owens Lake shorelines varying over many tens of meters during highstands, and we might expect there to have to have been reasonably long highstands within a narrow elevation range for lakeshore wave action to have rounded some hard quartzite outcrops.  Two other processes may have contributed--high energy fluvial flow from melting alpine glaciers and grinding action at the interface of glaciers and the quartzite outcrop itself.  The picture of the "pavement" outcrop looks almost polished by either high energy flow bringing along lots of hard, coarse sand, gravel, and cobbles, or from simple glacial movement of other parts of the same quartzite horizon grinding along the surface along an alpine glacier's pathway into the Owens Lake.  There are some well-identified moraines in the present day lakebed of Owens Lake, so depending on just where the quartzite outcrops are today, relative to the mouths of canyons which may have had alpine glaciers, the rounded surfaces and pavements on hard quartzite might be explained by either active glacial erosion of outwash flows from alpine glaciers above.

 

Foy


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#26 ski3pin

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Posted 06 January 2022 - 05:15 PM

Foy, we so look forward to your geology minded comments! Petroglyphs are found on many rock types that I'm of the mind that the ancients just went to work and got the job done. We returned to the Owens Lake site on our winter solstice trip and - kick me for not photographing - found rounded cobble shorelines in the area. You have piqued my interest in the moraines in the Owens Lake lake bed - Google Earth time for my lunch break today! :)


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#27 ski3pin

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Posted 06 January 2022 - 05:25 PM

Foy, your mention of Friends of the Pleistocene and a quick search has yielded this wealth of information -

 

Pacific Cell Friends of the Pleistocene

 

Wow! :)

 

and thank you.


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#28 Foy

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Posted 06 January 2022 - 09:57 PM

Glad I can participate just a bit.

 

I just looked at the main FOP web page and the "Myth of Origins" is a scream.  Sounds like the "father" of the "non Organization" was a lot like the Chairman of the Appalachian State U Geology Department back in the early 1970s.  "To heck with the administrative crap and let's get together in the field where we can see it and discuss it".  Which for many old school academics translates to "get together and argue about it".

 

It was the Pacific Cell's 2017 guidebook which first caught my eye, and therein lies the mention of moraines in the northern Owens Valley, Owens Lake highstand elevations, subsequent warping of the plane of the lakeshore surface outcrops, etc.  Very cool stuff.

 

Enjoy!

 

Foy

 

Foy, your mention of Friends of the Pleistocene and a quick search has yielded this wealth of information -

 

Pacific Cell Friends of the Pleistocene

 

Wow! :)

 

and thank you.


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