A Naturally Curious Road Trip Part 3: A Safari at 12,000 Feet

Climbing the Rocky Mountains in search of Moose, Elk and Bighorn Sheep Above the Trees.

It is no wonder how the sublimity of the Rocky Mountains has attracted explorers, artists and conservations for over a century. All you have to do is look up.

From June 6 to June 18, 2020, I drove from Los Angeles, California to Chicago, Illinois in a Buick Enclave. The car, filled to the brim with my college possessions, took me over 4,000 miles up the Pacific Coast, through the Sierras and Rockies, and across the Great Plains. It traversed the roads of ten different states and coasted along the scenic byways of six national parks. Along the way, we drove by Johnny Cash’s home in Casitas Springs, California and John Wayne’s birthplace in Winterset, Iowa. We visited tributes to iconic generals from Grant to Custer. We marveled at the world’s largest tree, reminisced over ancient history at one of the planet’s premier fossil sites, and braved the country’s highest paved road. We came across stately bull moose, emerald pools surrounded by red cliffs, scurrying prairie dogs, homemade apple pie, the world’s only corn palace, dinosaur tracks, a giant rock protruding out of the sea, “thunder beasts,” a double rainbow and the stuffed remains of the mythic jackalope among many other things. Climb in and buckle up as we embark on the Natural Curios Road Trip!

To read part one of the Naturally Curious Road Trip, Click Here! To read part two Click Here!

Weighing 1,800 pounds with an immense rack of antlers capable of stretching six feet across, it is no wonder that the moose has been enshrined as one of the greatest creatures in American folklore. Only dwarfed by the bison, the world’s largest deer has also been correlated with toughness in the American lexicon thanks to the indefatigable exploits of the nation’s 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt often compared himself to a tenacious bull moose during his ill-fated presidential run in 1912. After being shot by a would-be assassin in Milwaukee, Roosevelt boomed, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose!” He proceeded to give his 90 minute speech with the bullet still lodged in his chest, where it would remain for the rest of his life. Although the age of Roosevelt has faded into the nation’s collective memory, the great moose that inspired him still sparks awe to this day.

The first moose slowly made his way into the clear alpine waters, paying little attention to his crowd of fans assembled on the street.

And so it was for me when I first saw the monstrous creature ambling towards an alpine lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. I have had brushes with moose before in the Tetons, but never have I had the opportunity to gawk at a bull moose in the wild. I planted my finger on the shutter button, taking nearly half a memory card worth of pictures of the huge creature as it lazily inhaled mouthfuls of aquatic plants, indifferent to the near pile-up of cars his presence created on the adjacent road. The rest of the curious crowd was beginning to descend on me with cameras and phones poised mid-air when my Mom yelled to me from the car. Another moose had been spotted just up the road.

Rocky Mountain high

Rocky Mountain National Park is an incredible spot for wildlife viewing, home to nearly 70 species of mammals from black bears to yellow-bellied marmots. This animal hotspot is possible because of an altitude range of over 6,000 feet as the park stretches into the sky. Sixty mountain peaks here tower over 12,000 feet, topped by Longs Peak’s 14,259-foot summit. All of these altitudes are home to different habitats, from meadow valleys at 8,000 feet, evergreen forests and alpine lakes between 9,000 and 11,000 feet and the alpine tundra above 11,000 feet. Up here, the weather is too brutal for trees to grow, creating what seems like a frigid wasteland. Nearly a third of Rocky Mountain National Park lies above this tree line.

The stark transition from thick pine forests to treeless tundra occurs right along the road in Rocky Mountain National Park. Way up here, it stays cold enough to support large snow banks well into June, when we visited the park.

So how did this dramatic mountain landscape come to be? To arrive at this answer, we have to go back nearly 2 billion years. Between 1.8 billion years and 70 million years ago, the rocks that form the majestic Rockies were continuously in a cycle of burial, uplift and even submersion under an ancient sea whose beaches were traversed by dinosaurs. When most of the dinosaurs died out 70 million years ago, the Rockies began to dramatically rise towards the sky. For millions of years, this ascent continued as tectonic plates below the earth’s crust collided with each other, forcing the mountains above to their current towering heights.

Glaciers carved the soaring mountain peaks and carried hulking boulders miles across the park over the last 2 million years.

The major geologically event after the uplift of the Rockies is the glacial period that carved the rugged terrain of the peaks that dominant the park today. When the climate cooled some 2 million years ago, huge sheets of ice formed towards the mountain tops and eventually descended into the valleys below. Surprisingly, flowing ice is an incredibly powerful tool for altering landscapes. As these glaciers made their way into the valleys, they altered the shape of the space from something that looked like a V to a U-shaped valley. These frozen rivers of ice also pick things up on their way down the mountains, depositing them in far off valleys as they eventually melted. The rocks that hitched rides in glaciers are called erratics, and have been known to travel up to 500 miles. One erratic moved by a glacier in Alberta weighed over 18,000 tons.

The scars from the park’s many glacial periods during the ice ages are still visible in not only the boulder-strewn, U-shaped valleys but also in the craggy mountains themselves. These scars are known as cirques and can even hold alpine lakes. One of these, Chasm Lake, is carved into the eastern face of the park’s tallest mountain, Longs Peak. Even today, small remnant glaciers and snowfields dot large swaths of the mountainous vistas, a reminder of the icy giants that carved the Rocky Mountains to how we know them today.

The Rockies are a masterpiece carved by glaciers.

The view from near the top of Trail Ridge Road. You can actually see the road snake up the side of the mountains on the right. We started our ascent along the valley smack dab in the middle of all these mountains.

It is important to note that the Rockies extend well beyond Rocky Mountain National Park. The Rockies stretch in a nearly straight line from British Columbia to New Mexico, a distance of 3,000 miles. The 415 square foot park does a remarkable job distilling the majesty of the Rockies into one fairly compact place thanks to its mosaic of mountain habitats all within a short drive of each other. As you ascend Trail Ridge Road (U.S. 34) you are glimpsing the range of diverse landscapes found between Denver and Alaska in a mere 48 pristine miles. The road, the highest continuously paved road in the United States, also passes through the continental divide that runs from the top of Alaska all the way through Central America. The divide refers to is the drainage location for water that falls on either side of it, which U.S. 34 crosses at 10,738 feet up. Every drop of water that falls west of this divide will flow towards the Pacific Ocean. Every drop that falls on the eastern side is bound for the Atlantic.

Trail Ridge Road, once dubbed a “scenic wonder road of the world” by a local paper, begins in valleys framed by lofty peaks where rivers meander through meadows and clumps of pine and aspen trees dot the landscape. This ecosystem is called montane and is the most biodiverse in the park, home to mule deer, badgers and otters among many others. As the road rises, you leave the montane habitats and enter a dense thicket of evergreen forests that mark the entrance into subalpine country. Interspersed between the verdant tree cover are nearly transparent lakes. Up here, where the weather is colder and the habitat more streamlined, you can find snowshoe hares, yellow-bellied marmots and a host of other creatures.

It is hard to beat the tranquility of the Beaver Ponds. Right off the park’s main drag—Trail Ridge Road—this short boardwalk was nearly empty when we went and offers an intimate space to view wildlife and take in the clean air.

As you continue driving towards the apex of Trail Ridge Road at 12,183 feet, the shroud of evergreen forest cloaking the mountains abruptly stops around 11,500 feet, which marks the tree line. 11 miles of the park’s scenic drive traverse the treeless top of the mountains. Up here, the low temperatures (it is often 20 to 30 degrees colder here than the valleys below) and extreme wind (the highest wind velocity recorded here is 122 mph) limit the plant life to only the hardiest plants that often lay low to the ground. These so-called cushion plants cling to the rocks like a carpet of green moss. Lichens, a plant-like combination of algae and fungus, also hug the rocks up here. Their algae photosynthesizes the light directly above them and the fungal exterior retains water. Although these plants live in an extreme landscape, they are still fragile and hikers must be wary of crushing them with an errant step from a boot. The bighorn sheep and hamster-like pikas that feed on these low-lying plants will thank you.

Perhaps the strangest inhabitant of this harsh environment is the white-tailed ptarmigan, an elusive master of alpine camouflage. Similar to arctic foxes, the ptarmigan alters its cryptic coloration in accordance with the seasons. In winter, when the tundra is buried beneath a thick blanket of snow, the ptarmigan looks like a rotund dove, completely white save for a small red crest above its eye. When the snow subsides in the summer, these chicken-sized birds are adorned in streaks of brown, gray and black, helping them disappear into the rocky terrain. During the unforgiving winters up here, ptarmigans attempt to stay as still as possible, walking when they have to move instead of flying. When the temperature mercifully rises, ptarmigans are known to even take a bath in the snowmelt.

Keeping up with the seasonal fashion: Even though white-tailed ptarmigans retain their namesake snowy-white backends, the rest of their plumage fluctuates from bright white in the winter (left) to a cryptic mix of brown gray and black during the summers (right). The dedication to remaining unseen is taken even further by the fact that their feet are also obscured by feathers.

The Living Rockies

Although the cryptic ptarmigans eluded us, we attempted to spot many other animals as we scaled the Rocky Mountains on Trail Ridge Road. One of the best spots to catch a glimpse of the local inhabitants is the Beaver Ponds pullout right off the park’s scenic drive. A boardwalk guides you to a stream gently slicing through a meadow flanked by dark green pine forests. Known for cutting down trees with their orange teeth and constructing dams, beavers are keystone species that affect many other species when they alter the habitat. Their dams greatly affect the extent of wetlands within the park, making them a true ecosystem engineer. However, beavers have become increasingly rare in the park and are currently only found in 10 percent of their suitable habitat. As we took in the beautiful wetlands below the panoramic peaks, we were unfortunately not able to encounter the enterprising creatures responsible for maintaining these wetlands.

However, we checked off almost everything else on our Rocky Mountain bucket list, save for the beavers, ptarmigan and incredibly elusive mountain lion, one of the largest predators here after grizzly bears and wolves went locally extinct. Not far from where we stopped at the Beaver Ponds, we encountered a large male elk grazing in a meadow along the transition zone where the montane ecosystem gave way to subalpine habitats. Finding him up here during the summer is commonplace as the park’s large elk herds move up to higher elevations to graze while the weather is warm before descending back down when temperatures drop. When the park’s elk return to lower altitudes each fall, bull elk duke it out for the right to mate with females. While they’ll occasionally spar with each other, bull elk often engage in several other activities to prove their merit to females without the risk of being gored. In addition to emitting a musky aroma, bull elks will also emit an incredibly strange sound that starts with a deep bellow and crescendos to a high-pitched squeal. This vocal performance is known as a bugle and serves to both intimidate rivals and possibly to expel the tension that accompanies mating.

An elk grazes in the court of the magnificent Rockies, one of the most iconic scenes offered by any National Park in the country.

A young male elk lifts his leg to rub some of the velvety fluff that coats his antlers during this time of the year.

Another way elk try to woo females is with their marvelous set of antlers. Only males sport these branches of bone that are capable of growing up to an inch a day, extremely fast for animal tissue. Elk, as well as many other of its deer brethren, have a distinct stage of the year when their antlers are coated in a velvet-like substance. This velvet phase occurs when the animal’s antlers are not yet fully calcified into bone. When this happens, the bull elk will rub off the protective velvet layer, ready to flaunt his antlers for prospective females (bigger antlers mean a healthier elk). After each breeding season, elk will shed their antlers, beginning the growing process anew only a few weeks later. The elk we caught a sight of by the road still had velvet antlers. In the pine forests across the road, two more male elk silently moved through the trees, somehow avoiding snagging their antlers in the thicket of branches.

A bull moose digs into a buffet of aquatic plants in Rocky Mountain National Park’s Sheep Lakes.

We continued down the mountains, returning to the meadows we passed on our initial ascent. Horseshoe Park sported two large lakes that reflected the massive peaks above like watery mirrors. In these pools, two bull moose casually vacuumed dripping vegetation from the water. Besides their gigantic size, moose also look like a bizarre ice age beast with a humped shoulder, a bulbous snout and a drooping flap of skin hanging from their neck known as a bell. Although moose are found in northern North America from Alaska to Maine and across a large swath of Europe from Scandinavia to Siberia, they are a recent arrival in Rocky Mountain National Park. In the 1970s and 80s, small bands of moose were introduced back into Colorado from Utah and Wyoming and today the state’s population is up to 2,500, many of which are found in the park.

A close-up of the first bull moose we saw submerged in one of the Sheep Lakes.

Like their slightly smaller elk relatives, moose also engage in rigorous breeding rituals that often center around their antlers. Unlike elk, moose will often brandish their large rack of antlers as a weapon against other males. In the late fall, after females have made their pick for a mate, moose will shed their antlers to preserve energy for the taxing winter ahead. In early spring, the antlers will begin to grow again, going through a velvet stage of their own before growing in bigger than the previous year. Unlike elk, moose are solitary, eating up to 70 pounds of a mix of aquatic and terrestrial plants a day on their own. Each of these behemoths have a few favorite grazing spots, often returning there day after day. Although their grazing patterns are predictable, their behavior is anything but. Males are particularly aggressive during mating seasons and females are very protective of their calves. They will not go out of their way to attack a camera-wielding tourist, but if one gets too close, they will attack. Capable of running 35 mph, they will catch the perpetrator. Although moose rarely kill humans, they do injure more of us each year than bears do.

The second moose makes his way across a lake in Rocky Mountain’s Horseshoe Park.

A red-tailed hawk perched on top of a pine tree.

While I alternated taking pictures of the two moose, a red-tailed hawk landed on the top of a nearby pine tree, seemingly observing the grazing moose as well. In actuality, it was searching for prey on the meadows below with its excellent vision. These hawks are capable of seeing all the colors we can, as well as several in the ultraviolet spectrum invisible to us. Further along the road, a prairie dog popped his head out of its hole, rightfully wary of the possibility of a quick death from above at the talons of a red-tailed hawk.

A prairie dog peaks out of the ground, never getting too far from his hole for fear of the predators from the air like the red-tailed hawk.

We then headed towards the park’s exit. We had seen everything we hoped for except for the elusive bighorn sheep. These expert climbers had evaded us at Sequoia, Zion and Capitol Reef and it appeared they would avoid us at one more park. Then we suddenly drove by an animal that I initially thought was a deer milling on the side of the road right outside the park’s entrance. On a second glance, I saw the curved horns protruding out of the top of the animal’s head and knew we had finally spotted the mountaineering sheep. I hopped out of the car and retraced my steps to spot a cadre of juvenile bighorn sheep grazing just behind a glowing traffic sign. Although they did not sport the thick, curved horns of their adult counterparts, we were desperate for a bighorn sheep sighting and these little guys were more than enough.

It is worth noting that unlike elk and moose, bighorn sheep have horns instead of antlers. Horns grow from the tip instead of the base and are composed of bone inside a casing of keratin, the same substance that makes up our fingernails. Bighorn sheep also hold onto their horns for life (their iconic “swirl” of horn takes 8 or 9 years to fully grow) and serve a vital purpose during mating season when they ram into each other head first like a running back meeting a linebacker. The 300 pound goats, the largest goat species in North America, crash into each other at a teeth-rattling speed of 40 mph. The resulting “crack” can be heard from a mile away. Unlike human football players, bighorn sheep are actually built to use their head as a weapon thanks to a thick, bony skull, tailor-made for absorbing impacts that would crack open nearly every other skull.

A trio of young bighorn sheep scurry away from the road right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park.

They posed for a quick picture as we drove by.

Bighorn sheep are now so common in Rocky Mountain National Park that park rangers have created a zone where the animals can safely pass the road with their assistance in the spring and summer when they venture down from the mountain peaks to graze the park’s meadows. At the beginning of the park, however, bighorn sheep nearly disappeared from the area like the grizzly bear. The threat these sheep faced was threefold. Hunters often targeted them for their meat and horns. Ranchers also altered their native habitats while introducing domestic sheep that carried a concoction of diseases deadly to their wild relatives. By 1950, the only 150 bighorn sheep left in the park all lived in the areas too extreme for human encroachment. In the ensuing decades, hunting and disease were managed and more bighorns were introduced within the park’s boundaries, helping this remarkable mammal’s population rebound to around 400 individuals strong.

The near local extinction of the park’s famed bighorn sheep illustrates that people have long been attracted to these mountains, but some have used it better than others. Ancient Utes spent part of the year in the park (the Ute Trail off of Trail Ridge Road is a path they used to cross the mountains) for centuries before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Half a century later, easterners began to flood to the area, enticed by the prospects of gold. When gold proved scarce, homesteaders moved in, diverting the crystal clear mountain water for crops and livestock. The next group to journey up here were throngs of tourists and by 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park was born.

The steady influx of tourists, which hit 4.67 million visitors to the park in 2019, coupled with the growth of nearby cities like Denver have caused the climate of the park to change. In the past century, the park’s average annual temperature has risen 3.4 degrees (F) throwing off the park’s natural calendar. For example, spring snow melt occurs weeks earlier now, potentially moving up the blooming of spring flowers and causing them to miss the arrival of valuable pollinators like butterflies. Some invasive species like cheatgrass that favor a warmer climate could outcompete native plants adapted to a climate that no longer exists. Native species, like the tiny pikas that live near the mountaintops, are sensitive to even the smallest temperature changes. If their alpine home warms, they will have nowhere else to go, already on the top of the continent. John Denver anticipated the potential degradation of his “Rocky Mountain paradise” in Rocky Mountain High, one of Colorado’s two state songs: “Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more, more people, more scars upon the land.”

A torrent of white water cascades from the mountaintops alongside Trail Ridge Road.

We thought about this as we left the young band of sheep behind and headed for Evergreen, Colorado where family friends, Pat and Dale, live. Although only half an hour from Denver, their beautiful home in Evergreen is nestled deep in the mountains. Adventurous elk are a common visitor to their home and they once found a sleeping mountain lion curled up under their porch. After playing with their two dogs, Pat cooked up a wonderful pasta and salad dinner for our first home-cooked meal of the trip, and we were able to toss in a load of laundry to prepare for the final push home. On their back porch, an ephemeral late-afternoon rain yielded two towering arches of rainbow above the evergreen-covered mountaintops right before we headed back to Denver.

A double rainbow off of Pat and Dale’s back deck.

Three white-tailed deer mulling around at dusk in Evergreen, Colorado.

As we anxiously navigated the labyrinth of steep mountain roads back to the highway, we ran across three white-tailed deers grazing right after dusk. All of them were muscularly stout males and brandished a pair of velvet antlers atop their heads as they paid us no mind. Even as we wrapped up our day in the Rockies, animals abounded.

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All photos and art by Jack Tamisiea

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A Naturally Curious Road Trip Part 2: Exploring Utah's Geologic Utopias

Heavenly Red Canyons, A Monumental “Reef,” and Pioneer Pie in the Beehive State

The immense Twin Rocks in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park.

From June 6 to June 18, 2020, I drove from Los Angeles, California to Chicago, Illinois in a Buick Enclave. The car, filled to the brim with my college possessions, took me over 4,000 miles up the Pacific Coast, through the Sierras and Rockies, and across the Great Plains. It traversed the roads of ten different states and coasted along the scenic byways of six national parks. Along the way, we drove by Johnny Cash’s home in Casitas Springs, California and John Wayne’s birthplace in Winterset, Iowa. We visited tributes to iconic generals from Grant to Custer. We marveled at the world’s largest tree, reminisced over ancient history at one of the planet’s premier fossil sites, and braved the country’s highest paved road. We came across stately bull moose, emerald pools surrounded by red cliffs, scurrying prairie dogs, homemade apple pie, the world’s only corn palace, dinosaur tracks, a giant rock protruding out of the sea, “thunder beasts,” a double rainbow and the stuffed remains of the mythic jackalope among many other things. Climb in and buckle up as we embark on the Natural Curios Road Trip!

To read part one of the Naturally Curious Road Trip, Click Here!

Paradise Etched in the rocks

Mormon settlers first entered the canyon known to the local Piute Native Americans as Ioogoon in 1858, hoping to find any tract of arable land in the barren and sweltering Southern half of Utah. As they continued down the Virgin River, they found much more than they were seeking. In fact, it seemed to them like they had ventured into heaven on earth.

The signs of the spiritual enlightenment these pilgrims found here becomes more apparent as you travel deeper into the canyon and become acquainted with the rocks that tower overhead. A nearly 1,500 foot tall rock, often referred to as an “island in the sky,” is called Angel’s Landing. Deeper into the canyon, an even taller monolith of bright white rock is known as the Great White Throne. Even the canyon itself is named after a biblical place of paradise: Zion.

Great White Throne rises dramatically over the rest of Zion National Park.

Although the setting seemed heaven-sent, life on the canyon floor was anything but. The early Mormon settlers only found pockets of suitable land for agriculture. Flash floods and devastating droughts were constant threats. But they persisted, like the Piute and Anasazi Peoples before them, until the park was set aside as a national monument in 1909. Ten years later the area became Zion National Park.

The rocks of Temple of Sinawava glow red in the setting sun. Further along this trail, the canyon’s constrict to a mere 20 feet wide in an area dubbed the Narrows.

Similar to the holy names of the rocks inside Zion, the town of Springdale harkens back to early Mormon settlers. Founded in the 1860s and brimming with souvenir and fossil shops (and thankfully a laundry mat), Springdale sits right outside of the park’s boundaries, welcoming all types of modern-day pilgrims as they seek spiritual wisdom in red rocks. We drove through Springdale on June 9th, a hot Tuesday afternoon, after traversing Nevada’s desolate interior and the top corner of Arizona. California’s sequoia groves were a distant memory as we entered Zion National Park, hoping to find paradise etched in the rocks.

In the Beginning, Everything was Flat

The genesis of Zion’s striking rock formations dates back some 270 million years, when this area sat under a shallow, tropical sea near the equator. As the continents drifted on top of the earth’s crust, Zion’s environment changed from a warm ocean environment to a muddy floodplain to a windy desert covered in massive sand dunes in a span of a 100 million years. As Zion’s spot on the globe shifted, massive amounts of rock from higher altitudes was deposited here, either by wind or water, eventually causing the shallow basin to sink under the considerable weight of the giant piles of rock. Eventually, the amount of rock deposited here from the eroding mountains was 10,000 feet tall.

These giant piles of rocks eventually became cemented into the steep walls of Zion Canyon thanks to the slow filtration of water, substantial pressure from the rocks above, and most importantly, a very long amount of time. The same tectonic forces the moved this area around the earth also caused the earth to steadily uplift, eventually raising the compacting rocks of Zion thousands of feet above sea level. This uplift did not only occur in Zion, however. The Grand Canyon to the south was also part of this uplifted area, known as the Colorado Plateau, as is nearby Bryce Canyon. As you travel south from Bryce Canyon to Zion Canyon to the Grand Canyon, you are descending a geological feature known as the Grand Staircase. This set of “steps” refers to the increasing age of the rocks. Therefore, the oldest (bottom) layer of rocks at Bryce Canyon is the youngest (top) layer of rocks at Zion. Continuing south, the oldest layer of rocks at Zion is the youngest layer of rocks at the Grand Canyon.

This deep geologic history is most beautifully rendered in the rich palette created by this layering of rocks in the canyon’s walls. One of the earliest explorer’s here, Major C. E. Dutton who surveyed the area in 1880, beautifully summed up the polychromatic nature of Zion: “The slopes…display colors which are truly amazing. Chocolate, maroon, purple, lavendar magenta, with broad bands of toned white, are laid in horizontal belts…like the contours of a map.” Almost a century and a half later, the splendor of Zion’s colorful rocks still remains. The different-colored bands that Dutton described are arranged from oldest at the bottom to youngest on the top and are composed of different types of rocks that date back to the ancient habitats that were once found here. The primeval ocean of 270 million years ago is rendered in gray siltstone. The 210-million-year-old flood plains represent a crimson band of mudstone. A thick layer of pink sandstone dates back from when this area was a sandy desert 180 million years ago.

One of Zion’s spectacular red-hued arches along Zion Mt. Carmel Highway in the Park’s eastern end.

Zion is at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau, which means it bears the brunt of a gush of water desperate to eventually descend to the ocean. As the river falls off the edge of the plateau, it travels down a steep gradient, picking up speed similar to a rollercoaster flying down a precipitous drop. Fast-moving rivers are particularly adept at carving canyons because they can easily carry away large chunks of rocks and boulders as opposed to slower rivers. One of Zion’s most famous attraction is a tall and tight canyon where the Virgin River has just sliced through the rock. This created a dramatic chasm that rises up 2,000 feet and restricts to 20 feet wide at some points, giving this area the claustrophobic moniker of The Narrows.

The Virgin River meandering through Zion Canyon.

Today, the rest of the canyon is thankfully much wider, offering ample space to move through this hiker’s paradise. We drove along the one road that winds through the heart of the park towards the Zion Lodge, a historic wooden hotel nestled in the shadows of the surrounding sandstone cliffs. Originally completed using 265,000 feet of lumber in 1925, the main lodge building was soon surrounded by a smattering of log cabins that offer the only place more substantial than a tent to stay within the park boundaries. Although the original Zion Lodge building succumbed to fire in 1966, the new structure that quickly replaced it still possesses an archival feel thanks to its chocolate-colored wood and unnaturally green roof. The log cabins, set against the soaring red sandstone, similarly harken back to the classical age of national park travel. You almost expect Theodore Roosevelt to confidently stride out, in a rush to conquer the nearest mountain.

A Wild Canyon

A rock squirrel looks skeptical that we’ll be able to complete our hike when he spotted us trudging up the Emerald Pool Trail.

As we settled into our room at the Zion Lodge, our base of operations for the next two days, we were enamored with some other “guests” of the Lodge: ash-colored mule deer. These large herbivores, a constant presence around the old hotel (especially as darkness descended on the canyon), are named for their large ears that reminded early explorers of the mules that carried them through the canyons. Although the striking landscape dominates the conversation around this national park (and for good reason), Zion is exploding with life. Along the rocky trails, western whiptail and fence lizards scurry about. Curious rock squirrels ogle the endless parade of hikers all over the park. At dusk one night, a gray fox darted past our back porch at the Zion Lodge.

The wildlife we did not manage to spot was even more impressive. Elusive mountain lions prowl the canyon after dark, using their excellent night vision and fine-tuned hearing to find prey. North America’s largest bird, the California condor, soars above the ancient cliffs searching for animal remains to scavenge. These relics from the ice age almost disappeared entirely from the earth 30 years ago. Today 70 of these giants soar above Northern Arizona and Southern Utah, an area that has Zion as its wild heart. Desert bighorn sheep, the master rock climbers of the animal world, casually traverse the steep cliffs, using their hooves to grip the rocky terrain. Although bighorn sheep are perfectly adapted for an environment like Zion, they completely disappeared from the park a century ago due to hunting and disease from introduced livestock. In 1978, the Park Service introduced 14 sheep back into Zion. Forty years later, the herd has swelled to 500 individuals.

A blue heron flies through Zion Canyon.

This relative abundance of wildlife in the middle of the desert is due to the Zion’s position on the edge of the Colorado Plateau where several habitat zones collide. In addition to the Colorado Plateau Zone, the park also falls within the western edge of Mojave Desert Zone. Besides the melding of habitats, there is also a 5,000 foot elevation change within the park, offering ample space for creatures to live at different heights from the mule deer that forage on the canyon floor to the bighorn sheep balancing on the cliffs above. 115 species of mammals, reptiles and amphibians and almost 300 unique bird species are found in this relatively small park thanks to its location and dramatic range of elevations.

Hardy trees cling to the rocky canyon walls at Zion National Park.

These factors also contribute to Zion’s mosaic of plant communities from the lush wetlands along the river to the arid grasslands in the lower elevations of the park. The most striking plant communities are the dense forests of juniper and pinyon trees that replace the grasslands as you increase elevation. Higher up the sandstone cliffs are hearty ponderosa pines that somehow fasten themselves to the pink rocks. The top of the cliffs are covered in a thick carpet of pine and aspen trees, a strange sight in such a stark landscape. Similar to Zion’s rich human history, the animals and plants here are forced to find their niche to survive in the harsh Southern Utah wilderness.

Take a Hike!

We trekked Zion’s Canyon Overlook Trail in the early morning, trying to avoid the crowds and stifling heat.

On our second day in the park, we left the Zion Lodge early and hit the hiking trails. Our first stop was to venture to the rugged and much less crowded Eastern side of the park. To get there, we needed to traverse a switchback road that snaked up the side of the cliffs before plunging into an abyss-like tunnel through the flaming rock. After braving the long tunnel, we finally arrived at the Canyon Overlook Trail.

Thanks to a tiny parking lot, this mile-long trail along steep drop-offs and below rocky overhangs where tiny ferns grew out of the damp rock was relatively secluded compared to the amusement park-like crowds on some of Zion Canyon’s famed trails. Rambling over the crude planks of wood and climbing the builder strewn “path” made you feel like a retro explorer of the Indiana Jones mold. The surrounding rocks, bursting with colors in the morning light, were reminiscent of exotic lands. It was not too long ago that these canyons were similarly far-flung and mysterious.

Above: Hiking the Canyon Overlook Trail over flimsy wooden planks and along steep drop-offs revealed towering peaks, deep arches and crumbling hoodoos, or weathered spires of rock.

The view at the end of the trail was worthy of a much longer hike. The whole skyline of lower Zion Canyon greeted us, popping against the soft backdrop of a cloudless blue sky. To the left of our view, East Temple, a giant monument of white Navajo sandstone, loomed thousands of feet over the canyon floor. On the right side of the canyon, a similarly white cliff was scarred by a thick crimson streak. The devout Mormons christened it the Altar of the Sacrifice. There was even stunning rock beneath our feet. Right below us, carved into the cliff, was Zion’s Great Arch, only visible from the steep road far below us.

The sight of Zion’s Lower Canyon at the end of the Canyon Overlook Trail. On the far left is East Canyon and the streak of crimson in the middle of the picture denotes the Altar of the Sacrifice. Far below us, the highway snakes up the steep side of the mountain.

The sites from our other two hikes of the day were similarly spectacular. One took us to the entrance of the Narrows where the Virgin River just slips through the colossal cliffs. The other trail took us to another Zion landmark, the Emerald Pools. After a strenuous, but beautiful, hike through a dense forest of pines and past waterfalls and secluded alcoves, we arrived at the upper emerald pool, a green-tinted pond full of tadpoles. Behind and below us was the canyon floor. In front of us and on either side, the walls of the canyon enveloped us, creating a natural amphitheater. After a brief respite to take in the pool, we turned back and snaked our way back down to the canyon floor.

The following morning we headed east towards our next stop. Before we left the park, we were greeted by a 900 foot-tall masterpiece of the Park’s dynamic geology.

A close-up of Checkerboard Mesa’s interesting patterning.

Incredibly, Checkerboard Mesa actually resembles a giant stone checkerboard. This lofty ancient sand dune, composed of Navajo Sandstone in a color gradient from coral pink to eggshell white, is covered in crosshatches that make the stone look like it is coated in a grid. This odd patterning is the result of multiple types of weathering that have worked in unison for millions of years. The deep, vertical creases are caused by the expanding and contracting of the rock material as it is baked by the hot sun. The horizontal cracks are the result of wind eroding sand off of the dune and exposing the sedimentary sandstone below it in a process known as crossbedding. Because it is outside the relatively sheltered canyon, Checkerboard Mesa will continue to be worn down by the elements for millions of years to come. After briefly climbing up a portion of the dune and watching a bright blue scrub jay devour a potato chip someone left out, we continued across Southern Utah.

A Reef in the Desert

The immense Waterpocket Fold rises above Southern Utah’s barren landscape.

Utah is famous among adventure seekers for its five national parks, dubbed the Mighty 5 by the state’s tourism industry. As we left Zion and continued east, we passed by Bryce Canyon, an area famed for its namesake canyon full of red limestone that has been weathered into breathtaking spires and pillars known as hoodoos. On the eastern side of the state, Arches National Park is known for, well, arches. In fact, the park’s 2,300 rock arches make it the richest area of arches in the world. Just to the south, Canyonlands National Park is known for its sprawling and rugged canyons carved by the Green and Colorado Rivers.

Then there is Capitol Reef found smack dab in the middle of the Mighty 5. Labelled by National Geographic as “one of the most secret and under appreciated parks in the country,” Capitol Reef is a grand amalgamation of several of Utah’s other national parks. The rocky landscape is stunning with canyons, immense arches and sculptural hoodoos all along the park’s scenic drive. Despite its isolation from nearly everywhere else in Utah, this park has a considerable amount of human history and culture, rendered both in primitive petroglyphs carved into the rock and improbable Mormon fruit orchids.

So What’s With the Name?

One of the stately domes of white Navajo sandstone that reminded early settlers here of Washington D.C.

Unlike Arches or Canyonlands, Capitol Reef’s name is a little more difficult to decipher. This area is neither a capital or the type of reef bursting with colorful coral. The reef here is a colossal wall of rock that stretches for 100 miles from north to south—the backbone of Capitol Reef National Park. Early settlers here related this impenetrable barrier to its nautical equivalent: the barrier reefs that buffer islands and carve up ship hulls. The “capitol” of this great reef is an area of large, white Navajo sandstone domes slightly reminiscent of the Capital Building in Washington.

This reef of rock was formed in a similar manner to Zion Canyon. First, nearly 10,000 feet of rock bits, spanning nearly 200 million years, were slowly dumped in this area, which once sat much closer to sea level. Next, as the plates below the continent continued to shift, this area was raised thousands of feet, exposing most of the rock deposited at Capitol Reef. So far, the process is roughly the same as Zion. But at Capitol Reef, things became weird.

This is because of the rise of what is known as the Waterpocket Fold, the 100-foot long crease in the earth that stymied early settlers. Between 70 and 50 million years ago, an ancient fault line beneath this area became active again, pushing up the western side of the area more than 7,000 feet higher than the east side of the reef. This formed a fold in an area that was mostly horizontally flat, known as a monocline. So whereas the rock layers are arranged in a neat, layered cake pattern at Zion, the rock layers at capitol reef are like a piece of layer cake that fell on the floor. Everything is tilted by the Waterpocket Fold. Instead of rocks getting younger from bottom to top like at Zion, the rocks here get younger as you move from west to east. The Waterpocket Fold was only lifted out of the ground 15 to 20 million years ago, and the elements here are still eroding it. As water seeps into the rocks, small holes form in the sandstone, known as water pockets. The abundance of these depressions gives this strange geologic feature its name. Similar to Zion, the tilted rock layers are continually being sculpted by wind and water into fantastic shapes and narrow canyons.

Nicknamed the “Reef” by the travelers it stymied, the Waterpocket Fold is a strange geologic ridge that stretches over a hundred miles long.

Life on the Reef

One of the most prominent shapes in the park is a gigantic natural bridge named Hickman Bridge. At 125 feet high and 133 feet long, Hickman Bridge is worth the journey through a labyrinth of sandy canyons. Hickman is also a strangely alluring site in the otherwise drab expanse of beige rock here. Stripes of white and black cover the rock and seem to drip down into the empty gap below. These streaks are a phenomenon known as desert varnish that occurs when clay, water and elemental iron and manganese interact to stain the rock walls in arid environments. These colorful streaks take thousands of years and are only found on the hardiest of surfaces.

Above: Hickman Bridge is impressive—from every angle.

The main impetus behind the creation of Hickman Bridge was the fact that water once flowed through this now bone-dry area. But Capitol Reef is no stranger to rushing water. During the summer months, occasional thunderstorms can send deadly flash floods careening through the narrow canyons. With little soil and plants here, the torrent of water is free to flow without inhibition, even picking up massive boulders along the way. The forces that molded Hickman Bridge may not be as obvious today, but they are still a dangerous reality for the people and animals that live here.

Creatures of all types call Capitol Reef home despite its brutal environment. Similar to Zion, the park encompasses a variety of habitats that are home to 1,200 plant and animal species including the likes of desert bighorn sheep, mountain lions, mule deer and several other creatures we have already encountered. But look close enough and there is a menagerie of oddballs here. One of the more striking animal inhabitants of the park is the red-spotted toad. As its name suggest, this nocturnal gray toad is covered with distinct red warts. Despite the fact that the park averages only eight to ten inches of rain per year, several species of fish live in the Fremont River, one of the only permanent bodies of water in the park. Two species found here, the bluehead and flannelmouth suckers, have mouths that are specially adapted to vacuum clumps of algae off the river’s bottom. While hiking in the park, you always have to keep your eyes peeled for the cream-colored, pint-sized midget faded rattlesnake, the park’s only venomous snake. If tiny animals are your thing, look up into the sky at dusk and see if you can make out the canyon bat, the country’s smallest bat. It measures just longer than a paperclip at under two inches long.

This group of petroglyphs located right off Utah’s Highway 24 depict several humanoid figures outfitted in elaborate headdresses and several local animals, such as the bighorn sheep. These petroglyphs were done by the Fremont Culture that existed in this area for almost a thousand years.

The people who chose to reside here may seem similarly distinct. Despite the unforgiving setting, people have managed to live in this area for thousands of years. The first group to live in Southern Utah arrived some 12,000 years ago and hunted the likes of mammoths. As this large game disappeared as the climate warmed, the early inhabitants of Capitol Reef were forced to adapt to the desert. They lived in the many caves found in the Waterpocket fold and used plants and stones to make tools and clothing. A remarkable transition occurred 2,000 years ago when the inhabitants of Capitol Reef began to farm. This group, known as the Fremont People, even found time to carve people and animals into the rocks they lived around. These illustrations, known as petroglyphs, are evidence that this culture thrived in the area for nearly 1,000 years, eventually giving rise to the Native groups still surviving today like the Paiutes, Zuni and Utes.

The area of the Waterpocket Fold was the last region to be mapped in the contiguous United States. After a series of disastrous expeditions in hopes of finding a direct route to the Pacific Coast (one such expedition forced the starving explorers to eat their horses) Capitol Reef was finally explored by an expedition led by John Wesley Powell in the late 1860’s. Powell, who would go on to garner fame for discovering the Grand Canyon, traveled with several scientists, including C. E. Dutton, the geologist who vividly described Zion’s colorful rocks. Another member of the expedition, topographer Almon Thompson, named the steep wall of rock Waterpocket Fold.

Completed in the 1890s, Fruita’s one-room school house held classes until 1941. The first teacher was only 12 years old.

Mormon pioneers were not far behind Powell’s team, establishing many villages along the Fremont in the 1870s. One of these tiny towns, Fruita, is currently on the National Register of Historical Places and dubbed the “Eden of Wayne County.” Along the Park’s Scenic Drive, rows of orchards pop up in the shadow of the immense Waterpocket Fold. Planted in the fertile Fremont River Valley using the same irrigation system Mormon pioneers used in the 1880s, these orchards offer an abundance of fresh fruit that sustained the ten or so families that once called Fruita home. Several variations of popular fruit can be found growing on the 2,000 trees here, such as pears, apples (including the local Capitol Reef Red variety), peaches, cherries and apricots as well as a few antique varieties including the Flemish Beauty pear, a plump fruit whose pale yellow bottom dramatically dissolves into a bright pink top.

Fruita has remained a time capsule thanks to its isolation near the orange fortress of stone. Even though Capitol Reef was established as a national monument in 1937, the first paved road did not reach Fruita until 1952. Although the National Park Service owned all of Fruita when Capitol Reef achieved national park status in 1971, the rows of secluded orchards and timeworn wooden barns here retain a sense of pioneer nostalgia.

The Gifford barn in front of the imposing backdrop of the Waterpocket Fold.

I cannot think of a better way to rebound after a grueling hike on a hot day than a piping hot pioneer apple pie.

The Gifford house perhaps bottles this wistfulness up better than anywhere else in Fruita. Originally built in 1908 by a polygamist Mormon, the house and nearby barn were the last buildings to be used for farming in Capitol Reef. Today the home is open to visitors and houses a variety of wares from pioneer butter churns to rag dolls to dried fruit and jams, but the top commodity here is homemade pies. Even on a punishingly hot day, digging into a sizzling apple pie was sublime.

We continued along the park’s scenic driveway, pulling off frequently so I could attempt to capture the sheer scale of the reef with my camera. As we continued along the nearly eight mile road, the rich rainbow of rock began to rival the enormous size as the reef’s most breathtaking aspect. Similar to Zion, red and orange are the dominant colors here, but there are some conspicuous exceptions. First are the tall white domes of Navajo sandstone, the “capitals” of the park. The other exception are piles of yellowish gray rock usually found bellow a rich band of crimson stone. This rock layer, known as the Shinarump sediment, contains varying amounts of uranium, an element famous (or infamous) for its radioactive properties. These rocks fueled the Park’s short-lived uranium boom in the 1950’s. Although none of the mines are still active (to the chagrin of desperate prospectors, there ended up not being very much uranium here), they still exist as large scars in the otherwise pristine Great Wall of rock.

The Sound of Silence

Apache plume in Grand Wash.

Me posing in the otherworldly silence of Grand Wash.

One of the most intriguing places to stop along the scenic drive is Grand Wash. Similar to the Narrows at Zion, the canyon walls eventually contract to a cramped 16 feet at one point. Walking through Grand Wash, I could not help but picture outlaws hiding in the labyrinth of rock. One of the most legendary bandits, Butch Cassidy, allegedly would do just that here. Nearby Cassidy Arch still bears the notorious robber’s name. Thankfully the area was free of criminals when we visited. In fact, for most of the walk, we were the only souls in this sprawling amphitheater of rock. As we trudged deeper into the Waterpocket Fold, a slightly ominous silence permeated through the craggy canyon walls. It was spooky not because of what could be around the next corner (Cassidy died in 1908) but because this may have been the quietist place I had ever encountered. Remarkably, this otherworldly silence has existed here through the ages of hunter gatherers, archaic farmers, faithful pioneers and callous crooks. Hopefully, it will remain here for centuries more.

All photos by Jack Tamisiea.

Check out these related articles about National Parks and my road trip:

Sources:

National Geographic’s Secrets of the National Parks book.

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/bighorn.htm

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/animals.htm

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/checkerboard-mesa

https://utah.com/hiking/zion-national-park/canyon-overlook

https://www.nps.gov/brca/learn/nature/mountainlion.htm

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/historyculture/zionlodge.htm

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/plants.htm

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/bryce-zion/no-3e.htm

https://www.zionnationalpark.com/zion-national-park/zion-national-park-history/

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/navajo.htm

https://www.nps.gov/care/learn/nature/geology.htm

https://www.nps.gov/articles/desertvarnish.htm

https://www.nps.gov/care/learn/nature/mammals.htm

https://www.nps.gov/articles/fruit-varieties.htm

https://www.nps.gov/care/learn/historyculture/fruita.htm

A Naturally Curious Road Trip Part 1: Some Really Big Trees in the Golden State

Exploring Mount Hollywood’s dazzling flowers, Big Sur’s monster seals and John Muir’s “Forest Masterpieces” in the nation’s 31st state.

Sequoia National Park’s Giant Forest

From June 6 to June 18, 2020, I drove from Los Angeles, California to Chicago, Illinois in a Buick Enclave. The car, filled to the brim with my college possessions, took me over 4,000 miles up the Pacific Coast, through the Sierras and Rockies, and across the Great Plains. It traversed the roads of ten different states and coasted along the scenic byways of six national parks. Along the way, we drove by Johnny Cash’s home in Casitas Springs, California and John Wayne’s birthplace in Winterset, Iowa. We visited tributes to iconic generals from Grant to Custer. We marveled at the world’s largest tree, reminisced over ancient history at one of the planet’s premier fossil sites, and braved the country’s highest paved road. We came across stately bull moose, emerald pools surrounded by red cliffs, scurrying prairie dogs, homemade apple pie, the world’s only corn palace, dinosaur tracks, a giant rock protruding out of the sea, “thunder beasts,” a double rainbow and the stuffed remains of the mythic jackalope among many other things. Climb in and buckle up as we embark on the Natural Curios Road Trip!

Flowers (and Quail) On the Trek to the Hollywood Sign

The less glamorous side of the Hollywood Sign. Nevertheless, this angle also captures the skyscrapers of downtown and Griffith Park’s other iconic landmark, the Griffith Observatory.

The reason for my visit to Los Angeles, the point of origin for our odyssey across the West, was to move out of the apartment that I lived in for 3/4 of my senior year at the University of Southern California. I was also able to visit friends that I had not seen since the coronavirus curtailed our school year in mid-March and enjoy the California sunshine for one final week. The day before I packed the car and pushed off up the California coast to begin the long journey home, I decided to do something that I had once considered a requisite of living in Los Angeles—hike to the Hollywood Sign.

Erected in 1923 as a real estate advertisement, the sign originally spelled out “HOLLYWOODLAND” in 30-foot-wide, 43-foot-tall metal letters. Originally intended to last only a year and a half, the sign quickly became iconic, ditching the “LAND” at the end in 1949. Like most aging stars in L.A., the sign received an extensive face lift in the 70’s, restoring it back to its original splendor from the golden age of cinema. It’s perched near the top of Mount Lee, surrounded by over 4,000 acres of Griffith Park.

Like a few of my adventures, this one was spur of the moment and I began my ascent up the Mt. Hollywood trail without a very clear indication of the length of the trail. I had seen pictures of people on top of the Hollywood Sign pop up on my Instagram feed for years. “I could climb up there in no time,” I thought.

You can imagine my dismay when I scaled Mt. Hollywood, a much steeper hike than I had envisioned, and found the Hollywood Sign fastened to a distant peak. It turns out I had only arrived at a viewpoint for the famed logo of Tinseltown. After another hour of wandering on dirt trail and roads, with some unintended detours through thick brush, I finally arrived at the top of the Hollywood Sign. Beyond the towering white letters lied the park’s other iconic landmark, the Griffith Observatory, and the sprawling expanse of Los Angeles unfolding in every direction.

Through my accidental backpacking trip through Griffith Park, I stumbled across a blanket of wildflowers. Or more accurately, I had to maneuver through the flowery brush as I climbed, careful not to inadvertently squash any of them. Their lush beauty seemed to be out of place in the middle of such a manicured city like Los Angeles where even the river is paved. This is part of the appeal of Griffith Park, the eleventh largest municipally-owned park in the country that lies in the Santa Monica Mountains. Named after a mining and real estate mogul whose first and last name were both Griffith, the urban wilderness the park offers covers a stretch of habitats from deep canyon wetlands to the forests that grow near the mountaintops. When I visited in early June, the dirt trails were decorated with everything from bright oranges and reds to the palest shade of violet possible. One particularly beautiful flower, called the Plummer’s Mariposa Lily, looked like a dusty golden flower whose pedals had been dipped in bright periwinkle paint. Another orange flower has the amusing moniker of the orange bush monkeyflower.

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A California quail hanging out in the brush.

As I was admiring all of the flowers in the thick carpet that surrounded me, I encountered probably the most interesting looking bird I have ever seen in Los Angeles. Sporting a drooping pompadour-like crest slightly reminiscent of Elvis, the California quail is a plump bird that spends most of its time fixed to the ground. California’s state bird is a popular game species (it has been introduced to places as far away as New Zealand) and releases a loud Chi-ca-go call. This call was a peculiar reminder of how far I had to go over the next two weeks.

Up The Coast To Big Sur

The following day, my calves still aching from the meandering climb through Hollywood’s hills, I picked up my Mom at the airport (unfortunately I was a bit tardy after a preceding late night) and we headed up the coast to Big Sur, one of the most iconic drives in the entire country. Although the actual boundaries of Big Sur are hazy, the 70 mile stretch of California State Route 1 from San Simeon in the south up to Carmel-by-the-Sea in the north is generally the consensus area. Here the rugged coast remains wild, protected by the Los Padres National Forest and Pfieffer Big Sur State Park.

Starting in Los Angeles, we had to approach the iconic drive from the south, passing through the Southern portion of the Los Padres National Forest towards Santa Barbara. While stopping at an overlook, I noticed a large bird flying overhead with a bald, pink head. Initially I was ecstatic, believing we had a sighting of the critically endangered California condor. Alas, this ended up being the condor’s much more common cousin, the turkey vulture. Similar to its larger cousin, the turkey vulture is a scavenger and has adopted its featherless head for this lifestyle. Cleaning off gore and blood is less of a hassle without feathers. Turkey vultures became a staple of our trip, scouring highways from California to South Dakota for tasty roadkill as we whizzed by.

After a pitstop in Santa Barbara, we continued to snake our way up the coast towards Big Sur. At Morro Bay, we took a slight detour to see something too intriguing to pass up: a nearly 600 foot rock protruding out of the Pacific. At 23 million years old and sometimes hailed as the “Gibraltar of the Pacific,” Morro Rock is the remnant of a massive volcano that once dominated this area. When the volcano was active, a large amount of molten magma hardened deep within the volcano and became what is known as a volcanic plug. Over the 23 million years since its formation, the rest of the volcano has become dormant and eroded away, leaving just the volcanic plug behind. For centuries, this plug has been an immense beacon for wayward sailors along the Pacific, eventually becoming known as Morro Rock. Today the rock is a state historic landmark as well as a bird sanctuary that harbors the world’s fastest animal, the peregrine falcon.

After leaving the blustery beach we continued north towards San Simeon, mindful of the hulking form of Morro Rock slowly disappearing in the rearview mirror. The sun was beginning to fall as we pulled into the Piedras Blancas elephant seal rookery. Only smaller than their antarctic cousins, the southern elephant seal, central California’s northern elephant seals are monster pinnipeds. Males can reach up to 16 feet long and weigh more than a Jeep at 5,000 pounds. Female elephant seals, often seen lounging near their larger mates, are only between 8 and 12 feet and weigh up to 1,200 pounds. These seals are named after elephants both because of their staggering size and because males have large, trunk-like noses known as a proboscis. These large schnozes are used to intimidate their rivals through their ability to make thundering challenge calls as they jostle with each other for females (an encounter that often leaves both seals covered in blood).

Several elephant seals lounging along California’s rugged central coast.

Although none of them were battling for a mate this time of year, they were audible as they wrestled for space on the beach. The late spring and summer is molting season, when these huge seals return from foraging trips that take them as far as Alaska and as deep as 5,000 feet, a record for seals. They spend up to 10 months a year out at sea, hunting small sharks and octopuses at around a thousand feet below the surface. Swimming this deep helps them avoid great white sharks and orcas, the only predators in the sea capable of hunting elephant seals.

The air was full with snorts and growls as I watched the mangy seals go about their afternoon. As they molt, they replace their skin and hair, something we do continuously. Elephant seals, on the other hand, do it all at once for an entire month every year. Their old skin peels off in large, brown sheets. The combination of their floppy noses, shedding skin and enormous size make them seem more at home in a Dr. Seuss book than on the beaches of Big Sur.

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Above: Male elephant seals, complete with shedding skin, wrestle at the elephant seal rookery at Piedras Blancas.

Tragically, these beaches were once devoid of elephant seals. In fact, they almost disappeared entirely only a century ago. Similar to whales, elephant seals were aggressively hunted for their oil for decades before the advent of kerosene. Their total population, isolated to a single colony on Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, numbered a mere hundred in the 1920s. After Mexico protected them in 1922, the seal population rebounded on Guadalupe Island and these huge seals eventually made their way back to Southern California, aided by similar protection in the U.S. Today there are 160,000 northern elephant seals in the world, and thousands of them haul out on the beach at Piedras Blancas for the breeding season between December and March each year.

After leaving the elephant seals to molt in peace, we continued along the coast into Big Sur proper. Before we drove too far up the road, we saw a few cars parked along the road opposite the ocean. We slowed down just long enough to make out two elk, each brandishing a large rack of antlers, trudging up a hillside.

Spot the elk! There are two tule elk in this picture taken near the elephant seal rookery at Piedras Blancas.

Similar to elephant seals, tule elk almost disappeared entirely. Less than 30 of this subspecies of elk endemic to California were believed to exist in the 1870s because of overhunting and habitat loss related to cattle ranching. One of these cattle ranchers, however, had the foresight to preserve the remaining herd and all of the nearly 6,000 tule elk that exist today, including the two we saw in Big Sur, are descended from the final herd of 30. Both tule elk and elephant seals are conservation success stories that illustrate that it is almost never too late to bring species back from the brink of extinction.

As the sinking sun’s golden rays glowed as they bounced off the Pacific, we made our way into Pfeiffer State Park—the wild heart of Big Sur. California Route 1 narrows into two lanes as it becomes sandwiched between the Santa Lucia Mountains and the ocean far below where the road winded along the cliffs. Deeper in Pfeiffer Park, groves of California redwoods, the world’s tallest tree, tower well over 300 feet into the California sky. Content with our plans to gape at humongous trees the next day, we continued north towards Monterey.

Above: Some scenes from the road through Big Sur.

The view after every hairpin turn (and there were a lot of them) was somehow more picturesque than the last as I stopped often to take pictures of the sun plunging towards the horizon. Giant rocks, similar to Morro Rock (albeit on a smaller scale) jutted out of the water far below, tossing foam up as the waves continued their endless assault. You would be hard pressed to find a scene that epitomized California more than this.

The Divine Majesty of Really Big Trees

Standing 275 feet tall and measuring over 36 feet wide at its base, the General Sherman tree in Sequoia National Park’s aptly named Giant Forest is truly one of nature’s greatest wonders. Containing over 52,000 cubic feet of wood, it is not only the world’s largest tree. It is the largest living thing on the planet!

The gnarled trunk of General Sherman, the world’s largest tree.

All together, Sequoia’s Giant Forest is home to thousands of gargantuan sequoias, many of which rival the mighty General Sherman in sheer size. The trees in this area, perched on the Western slopes of the Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, was the impetus behind creating the country’s second national park in 1890, a full 26 years before the advent of the National Park Service. John Muir, a Scottish-American naturalist and future co-founder of the environmental organization the Sierra Club, gave the Giant Forest its name and was crucial in establishing this area for protection. He summed up the awe-inspiring role of sequoias, which he often referred to simply as “Big Trees”, in his writings: “Sequoias towering serene through the long centuries preaching God’s forestry fresh from heaven.”

John Muir visited this grove in 1875 and was rightfully blown away by the sheer size of the sequoias here. “This part of the sequoia belt seemed to me the finest, and I then named it ‘Giant Forest’.”

We arrived to Sequoia National Park the day after our sojourn along the California coast. What awaited us here was a far different California natural marvel: intact groves of sequoias high up in the mountains. But before we could walk among giants, absorbing their lessons of “God’s forestry,” we had to climb into the Sierras on the Park’s main road, the Generals Highway. Sequoia National Park tripled in size shortly after achieving protection in 1890, making it one of the largest national parks in the country. In addition to towering trees, the park also boasts the highest point in the contiguous United States at the peak of 14,505 foot tall Mount Whitney, and is next-door neighbors with the smaller Kings Canyon National Park, an area known for both groves of sequoias and its namesake canyon that plunges a mile below the surrounding peaks, the handiwork of a glacier that once tore through this area. Needless to say, there is an incredible amount to see in this area of California, but we had our sites set on visiting the sequoias three thousand feet above our car as we entered the park.

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Above: Dug out by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression in the 1930s, Tunnel Rock once hung over the main road into the park. Today only hikers, not automobiles, use Tunnel Rock.

Generals Highway winds its way into the mountains, reminiscent of California State Route 1. It offers ample opportunities for stunning views of the Middle Fork River that sliced through the Sierras far below (right). Eventually we lost sight of the river as we entered the dense forests that cloaked the mountains. The temperature outside the car plummeted by almost 30 degrees Fahrenheit (F) to 45 F. We had entered a new world.

At last we saw one! Turning around a bend in the road, the broad, rust-red trunk of a sequoia clogged our windshield. Sequoias continued to pop up along the drive, each one seemingly larger than the last until we pulled into the Giant Forest parking lot and decided to take a look at them up close. Giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are one of three species of redwoods, the group that constitutes the giants of the tree world. California’s other species of redwood are the aforementioned coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) found in Big Sur. A particularly lanky coastal redwood that resides further up the coast in Redwood National Park is almost 380 feet tall, over a hundred feet taller than General Sherman! However, sequoias have much more girth than coastal redwoods as they maintain large trunk widths well up into the air like a column. If you were to measure the width of General Sherman sixty feet above its base, the tree would still be over 17 feet wide.

General Sherman stays wide even as it soars towards the top of the Giant Forest.

The Sentinel tree (foreground) weighs more than two jumbo jets…and it is still just an average-sized sequoia!

Both coastal redwoods and sequoias can live for an incredibly long time. One sequoia lived for 3,266 years, making them the third longest living tree in the world. General Sherman, estimated to be a spry 2,000 years old, is relatively young compared to some of the other behemoths in its neck of the woods. These venerable trees keep a valuable record of how the climate here has changed over the years in the amount of space between each of its age rings (more space between rings means more moisture as it helps the trees grow). The trees’ ancient aura also transports you to prehistory when gigantic forests like these were common around the world. Walking around Giant Forest, you constantly expect to see a sauropod dinosaur plod out of the dense forest, straining its long neck to reach the lower branches that bristle with pine needles. Sequoia fossils have been found dating as far back as the Cretaceous Period, meaning they cropped up during the dinosaurs’ last stand.

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Above: Fallen giants are strewn around the Giant Forest, offering a poignant glimpse into what these groves looked like thousands of years ago.

The mountain yellow-legged frog of the Sierras.

Although nothing as big as dinosaurs lives here today, the park is still bursting with wildlife. Over 200 birds, including the California quail, either live here or stop here along migrations. Black bears roam around the park, always a threat to tear apart someone’s car after a whiff of snack food. Sequoia and Kings Canyon are also the sites of potential wildlife conservation victories. Bighorn sheep have been re-introduced here and endangered mountain yellow-legged frogs are making a comeback thanks to an effort to remove trout from several of the alpine lakes in the park. The fish, introduced by humans hoping to entice anglers to flock here, nearly wiped out the frogs by eating their tadpoles and out-competing them for insect prey. Although many trout have been removed here, the arrival of chytrid fungus poses an even bigger risk to the mountain yellow-legged frog in the future.

The potential demise of the mountain yellow-legged frog, despite a valiant trout-removal effort, hints at the environmental scars still present in the shadows of the sequoias. The last California grizzly bear was spotted in the park near Generals Highway in 1924. Two years before that, a grizzly was shot nearby. That turned out to be the last confirmed grizzly bear kill in the state where they only endure on the flag. Many of the sequoias, thousands of years old, have deep, jet-black fire scars. Although sequoias are adapted to sporadic flames, even relying on fire to clear the underbrush for saplings to take root, a warming climate may create longer and more intense fire seasons that could harm even these giants. A prolonged drought between 2012 and 2016 related to higher temperatures contributed to the mortality of 40 giant sequoias as the lack of available moisture exacerbated other issues the trees were facing like disease. Giant sequoias may seem impenetrable when you touch their thick, spongy bark or gaze up at their soaring crowns but they prefer a particular climate where winter temperatures drop to about 10 F and summer temperatures do not exceed 85 F. As the earth continues to warm, will John Muir’s big trees be one of the casualties?

A close-up of the bark of a mighty sequoia.

The next day, our last in California, we left early to visit Grant Grove, a sequoia grove in Kings Canyon National Park. Similar to General Sherman, the star attraction here is a colossal tree named after another Civil War Union hero, Ulysses S. Grant. (It is worth noting that Sequoia and Kings Canyon recently took action to remove the names of two trees named in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Similar to the General Sherman tree, these two trees were named by early settlers who served under him in the Civil War.) Designated as the nation’s Christmas Tree by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926, the General Grant tree is the second largest tree in the world and has a 107 foot circumference around its base!

We arrived to Grant Grove early in the morning when the popular trail around the mammoth tree was nearly empty and the temperature was a frigid 36 F. In the shadow of General Grant, we also admired an immense sequoia stump called Fallen Monarch and wandered around Gamlin Cabin, a relic log cabin from 1872 when the owner owned a timber claim here. In the fresh, cold morning air, rays of sunlight filtered through the foliage of the sequoias, many of them taller than a 20-story building. It felt like somewhere I could wander around forever but I knew we must push on. We still had a long way to go and so much to explore. John Muir expressed this sentiment best: “The world is big and I want to get a good look at it before it gets dark.”

Above: Among the giants, including General Sherman, in Sequoia National Park.

All photos (except those that I’m in) and art by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/California_Quail/overview

https://hollywoodsign.org/the-history-of-the-sign/

https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-super-bloom-wildflowers-carrizo-catalina-griffith-park-20190314-story.html

https://www.morro-bay.ca.us/383/Morro-Rock-Beach

https://www.elephantseal.org/theseals.htm

https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/animals-a-to-z/northern-elephant-seal

https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/nature/tule_elk.htm

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/cook/sec10.htm#:~:text=The%20requirements%20for%20successful%20growth,in%20summer.

https://www.visitsequoia.com/explore/spring-summer-fall-activities/general-grant-tree

https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/nature/grant.htm

https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/nature/bigtrees.htm

https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/nature/amphibfish.htm

https://www.livescience.com/29144-worlds-largest-tree.html#:~:text=General%20Sherman%20is%20estimated%20to,based%20on%20tree%20ring%20counts.

https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/nature/sherman.htm

https://psmag.com/magazine/how-to-bring-back-a-bear-reintroducing-grizzlies-to-california

Afternoon in Death Valley

America’s most inhospitable environment is a surreal geologic wonderland comprised of expansive salt flats, color-stained rocks and weathered badlands. In Death Valley, you will meet singing sand, desert fish and a golf course from hell.

“Half a league onward...Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”

— The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Why would anyone ever venture into somewhere with the moniker Death Valley? The landscape is desolate, animals (seemingly) scarce, and long stretches of empty roads dot the seemingly infinite landscape. The most daunting aspect of the area is the oppressive summer heat. The world record for atmospheric temperature was recorded here in 1913 at a scorching 134 degrees Fahrenheit (F). If you think that has to be an aberration, think again. The hottest month on record here was July 2018, with a smoldering average of 108 degrees F. 21 days that month reached, or exceeded, 120 degrees. Suffice to say that you do not want to enter Death Valley in the summer months. But that does not mean you should never venture there at all.

Many of Death Valley’s most popular sites for those in a rush are located along State Route 190, the Park’s main, and often empty, road.

Death Valley is a land of extremes, spanning a range of habitats and ecosystems that support some of the hardiest life on earth. In only this park, you can see soaring, snow-capped peaks rise above barren, alien salt flats and windswept sand dunes. Rugged badlands and chemically-stained rocks give this brutal landscape an otherworldly beauty. Even incredible fish live here! Death Valley may be brutal, but it is well worth a visit, as its nearly 1 million visitors a year can attest. Just bring a lot of water and make sure the fuel tank is topped off.

6:30 AM

I head out to Death Valley from Los Angeles on the first day of February, 2020. Death Valley National Park, which received that distinction in 1994, is about 4 hours northeast of Los Angeles, straddling the California-Nevada border deep in the Mojave Desert, the driest desert in America. After slowly slithering through Los Angeles’s never ending “rush hour”, the road opens up around Palmdale. As the cars around me begin to fall behind and out of view, the landscape empties as mountains rise on the sides of the increasingly bumpy and dusty road. After traversing a mountain pass, I descend, and descend, into Panamint Valley, southwest of the Park. I am one of the only cars on this lonely stretch of road as I fly past the lonely sign denoting that you are entering a National Park. You would have no way of knowing otherwise.

11:00 AM

Even though it is not crucial, I top off the tank at a gas station in the tiny town of Panamint Springs, nuzzled just inside of the Park’s border. Death Valley, the largest national park outside of Alaska at a sprawling 3.4 million acres, is no place to be with a dwindling fuel tank. I pick up a map and head into the heart of the park towards the two larger visitor centers at Stovepipe Wells Village and Furnace Creek (aptly named because this is where the ungodly 134 degrees was recorded). Along the way the highway descends again. Through the windshield, however, you can see the highway climb vertically into the Panamint Mountains as I drive towards Stovepipe Wells Village.

11:45 AM

After paying the visitor’s fee and refilling the water bottles, I leave Stovepipe Wells for the Mesquite Dunes. Nothing signifies a desert like towering sand dunes. Some of the dunes here rise a hundred feet high, making them some of the tallest dunes in the Park and by far the most accessible. If you make it to the Eureka Dunes, the park’s largest clump of dunes, keep your ears open for eerie bass notes in the air. This is due to a haunting phenomenon known as singing sand. Although we picture seas of sand when we imagine deserts, under one percent of Death Valley is actually covered with sand dunes.

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The constantly shifting sand dunes are covered in ripples etched in the silky sand by wind (especially when I was there, when wind speeds were over 20 miles per hour in some parts of the park). Many people visit around sunrise and sunset to take pictures of the dunes as they’re bathed by the sun’s most vulnerable rays, and some even partake in hikes after the dark when only the moon can guide you over the dunes. Signs in the parking lot warn late visitors to be careful of sidewinder rattlesnakes who emerge from the dunes after dark. These venomous snakes, named for their efficient style of desert locomotion, often sit motionless, with just their eyes and devil-like horns poking above the sand.

The sidewinder is part of one of the many ecosystems that exist in Death Valley, the hottest and driest place on the continent. Elsewhere in the park, isolated wetlands and springs offer an often fleeting view of what this area used to look like thousands of years ago. 15,000 years ago, this hellish “wasteland” would have been submerged by lakes. Hundreds of millions of years ago, it would have been buried beneath glaciers.

The few areas that have managed to stay wet as Death Valley dried out support some of the most hardy species of fish on the planet, collectively known as pupfish. Large swaths of dry desert lie between these tiny bodies of water, which has led to the development of nine different species of pupfish in Death Valley National Park alone. As Darwin discovered thanks to the existence of unique tortoises and finch species on the different Galapagos Islands, isolation kick starts evolution. Isolation here has created unique species like the endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish, which lives in an underwater cave where water temperatures rise above 90 degrees. Despite efforts to preserve the Devil’s Hole pupfish, these tiny, shimmering blue fish (only around 35 mm long as adults) are picky breeders, only reproducing on a shallow shelf in Devil’s Hole before the cave drops another 500 feet into the earth. This phenomenon effectively takes captive breeding out of the equation.

Despite the macabre name, Death Valley is also home to a whole host of other sturdy organisms that not only survive but thrive here. The desert bighorn sheep that scale the Park’s mountain slopes can survive days without water. Taking it one step further, kangaroo rats can survive their whole lives without a drop of water, obtaining the minimal amount of moisture they need from their vegetarian diet. The desert tortoise spends up to 3/4 of its year in its burrow to avoid the Park’s searing heat. Similarly, many species, like bobcats, are nocturnal, avoiding the heat at all costs.

Reptiles, like this desert banded gecko, are some of the most successful creatures inhabiting Death Valley. Like the desert tortoise and banded gecko, many burrow into the ground to avoid the most extreme temperatures. Picture taken at the Phoenix Zoo.

12:30 PM

The beginning of a trail that enters into the badlands at Zabriskie Point.

After stopping at Furnace Creek to grab a sandwich and some post cards at the visitor’s center, I make my way to Zabriskie Point, one of the most picturesque sites in the entire park. These badlands are composed of sediments from a dried-up ancient lake where camels and mastodons once trudged along the shore. These canyons are the masterpiece of millions of years of erosion, which makes the rocks appear to be covered by a wrinkled blanket. The weathered rocks that form these badlands range in colors from dull gold to mustard yellow to a rich, coffee brown, which indicates that lava once seeped through here from nearby volcanoes some 3-5 million years ago.

A view of Manly Beacon, the point jutting above the rest of the weathered badlands, from the top of Zabriskie Point.

This location, named after a manager of an early 20th century borax mining company, is best viewed at sunset or sunrise, when the richly-textured rocks glow orange and red. The iconic area has also been pictured on the cover to U2’s critically-acclaimed Joshua Tree album and was the setting for a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus as a stand-in for ancient Egypt. As I get back into my car and pull out of the parking lot, Bruce Springsteen’s Badlands serendipitously blares through the radio as I snake back towards the main road, moving past millions of years of time trapped in weathered rocks.

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A panoramic view of the badlands taken on my phone at Zabriskie Point.

1:15 PM

After arriving back on State Route 190, my car begins a continual descent towards the bottom of North America. But first I need to visit Artist’s Drive, a scenic drive cutting through a rainbow of rock. Slowly winding through nine miles of eroded cliffs and canyons, the splash of color jumps right out at you and beckons you to pull the car over for a closer look. While Zabriskie’s point exploded with earth tones, Artist’s Palette, the drive’s most famous spot, is a collection of rocks that form a kaleidoscope of bright colors. The colors, which range from mint green to a bright, chalky pink, are the result of the oxidation of chemicals (losing an electron according to high school chemistry) in the ground here. The oxidation of iron, for example, creates red and pink-hued rocks while oxidizing manganese produces the soft purples. This entire formation of colorful rocks was created by a particularly violent volcanic eruption millions of years ago that left enormous amounts of dried lava behind. Millions of years of chemical weathering and the occasional downpour of rain made these colors pop. If you get an eerie sense that you’ve seen Artist’s Drive (and its vivid landscape) before, it may be because the area was featured in the first Star Wars film, 1977’s iconic A New Hope.

Above: Artist’s Palette (first two images) glimmers in the afternoon light, but the rest of Artist’s Drive is not to be overlooked.

2:15 PM

After winding through the rest of Artist’s Drive on the heels of a strategic bathroom break, I again hit the open road destined for Badwater Basin, the lowest point on the continent. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky as I pushed down the lonely road, the wind sweeping dust across the paved highway. But before I descended to rock bottom, an intriguing sign caught my attention. It denoted that the next turn would lead to Devil’s Golf Course. It’s not surprising that Death Valley, as its name suggests, has several grimly-named locations within its boundaries. Hell’s Gate. Desolation Canyon. Dante’s View. But none of these piqued my interest like the Devil’s Golf Course. And it delivered.

Only the Devil would unwind by playing golf here.

Jagged rocks, smothered with crystallized salt, stretch as far as the eye can see. It is said that these rocks are so sharp (and extremely hot most of the year) that only the devil would tee off here. But it is no stretch to imagine that even his cloven hooves being cut up on these razor-like rocks. When the temperature rises, this golf course is filled with subtle sounds of metallic cracking as the salt crystals expand and contract.

3:00 PM

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A sign at Badwater Basin denoting the location’s extreme altitude.

Just down the road from the most forbidding golf course in the world is Badwater Basin, one of the most popular sites in the park. Less than 85 miles from the highest point in the continental United States, Badwater Basin is submerged some 282 feet below sea level! The land here is covered in a think blanket of salt, almost 60 inches thick at some points.

Where is all of this salt from? The Badwater Basin salt flat is comprised of salt from an area as large as New Hampshire that trickles down from mountains, carrying minerals with it and eventually landing at the continent’s lowest point. As a result, Badwater Basin is often temporarily covered in water. Near the road is (usually) a small pool of incredibly salty water that gave this area its name when a prospector’s mule refused to drink it. But on the adjacent salt flats, the water never lasts for long. Once it evaporates (the area has the highest rate of evaporation in the country), only the salt is left. Strikingly, the salt flat is covered by hexagonal, honeycomb-shapes, the result of constantly expanding and retracting salt crystals. These shapes only add to the area’s alien feel.

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The walkable path extends into the snow-like salt flat for what seems like miles. The salt stretches even further to where it meets the base of the surrounding mountains. As is usually the case, walking too far off the path could result in breaking through the salt (which is only a couple inches thick at some points) into mud below it. Not an ideal way to end a day in Death Valley.

This desolate area was bequeathed with its unwelcoming name by a group of pioneers unfortunate enough to be stranded in this hostile environment in 1849. Although only one of them perished here, another triumphantly exclaimed as they escaped across the surrounding mountains, “Goodbye, Death Valley!” The name stuck. Walking back toward my car after the sun dropped below Badwater Basin’s mountainous backdrop, leaving the salt flat an eerie dark blue, the quietness of this landscape made any comparison to a valley of the dead conceivable.

The Badwater Basin salt flat painted by the rosy-hued rays of light at sunset.

5:00

After stopping at Furnace Creek to fuel up, I hit the road in the dying light of dusk. With a full water bottle and a full lineup of podcasts loaded up, I began the arduous journey back to Los Angeles. Before I can pass the Mesquite dunes, the night has already swallowed up the park. Blackness engulfs everything save the area right in front of my headlights. Occasionally, headlights pop up miles in front or behind me as I exit the park. Every so often, I looked up at the most exquisite canvas of stars I have ever seen.

“In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

— When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

Sources:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/death-valley-national-park/

https://www.livescience.com/63234-death-valley-heat-record.html

https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/nature/animals.htm

https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/extraordinary-lives-death-valleys-endangered-devils-hole-pupfish

https://www.nps.gov/deva/faqs.htm

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/badwater-basin

Joshua Trees: Trapped in a Crucible of Climate Change

Southern California’s iconic Joshua trees may be an early casualty of climate change as their desert home continues to heat up.

“It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.”

— Jeannette Walls

In a habitat as inhospitable as the Mojave Desert, the driest desert in North America where temperatures can soar above 120 degrees, plants and animals often need each other to survive. Nowhere is this natural teamwork more apparent than in Joshua Tree National Park, where the namesake Joshua trees rely on a relationship with a symbiotic moth. However, the park’s changing climate is straining this vital relationship.

A study from 2018 found that Joshua trees are being forced to move to either higher altitudes or farther north as temperatures continue to increase. This raises the logical question of how will these trees move? Trees and other plants move in groups, often with the aid of wind or animals to help disperse their seeds to new areas.

One of the early “vehicles” of seed dispersal was an animal you would never expect to find in such an inhospitable environment. Until 11,000 years ago, Shasta ground sloths lived in these deserts, feasting on the fruit of the tough Joshua tree, all the while ingesting the plant’s seeds as well. While the shaggy ground sloths moved across the southwestern deserts (probably at a similarly slow pace to their living relatives), they would drop the Joshua tree seeds in heaps of dung, some of which have been found fossilized with almost intact seeds. The bear-sized sloth probably succumbed to human hunting-induced extinction, which removed an important seed disperser for the Joshua trees.

A Shasta ground sloth skeleton on display at the La Brea Tar Pits Page Museum

Relatively intact remnants of Joshua trees found in Shasta sloth dung preserved in Gypsum Cave, Nevada.

Shasta sloth dung preserved in Gypsum Cave, Nevada!

But the Joshua trees have been able to survive the disappearance of the ground sloths thanks to another mutualistic relationship (a relationship between two species where both benefit) with the yucca moth. These moths help the trees by pollinating their flowers and the tree returns the favor by offering the moth’s offspring food and shelter in their developing seeds. Adult yucca moths are selfless, lugging (relatively) large balls of pollen from tree to tree before promptly dropping dead. Only their offspring will reap the rewards of eating through the Joshua tree seeds before returning the favor themselves as adults in a cycle that has worked for eons.

The 2018 study examined this relationship throughout the park, finding that Joshua trees were healthiest in the areas where the moths were abundant. More moths makes it easier for the trees to reproduce, but will the two species be able to maintain this relationship as the Joshua trees continue to creep closer to cooler temperatures?

Joshua trees are incredible plants, capable of reaching 40 feet in the most hostile of environments.

This is where the outlook for Joshua trees turns bleak. The study found that the yucca moth populations, in the few areas with suitable temperatures for Joshua trees, are not healthy. The relationship of these species is so tight, they may not make it through the century as climate change continues to force them apart. And the clock is already ticking down for both the yucca moth and the Joshua trees. In Joshua Tree National Park, the trees at lower altitudes are already becoming scorched and dying from the heat as trees in higher altitudes cannot successfully reproduce without the moths. Without the moths, Joshua trees are forced to asexually reproduce, creating inadequate clones that are vulnerable to pests and not able to disperse the species.

If Joshua trees were to disappear from their namesake park, something that could happen by as soon as 2100, many other animals, besides the yucca moth, would feel the loss. They provide shade from the brutal desert heat and provide habitats for insects, small mammals and birds. But some of the life that sprouts up around Joshua trees are harmful. Invasive grasses have entered the park, bringing with them a higher chance of wildfire that can decimate Joshua trees, which have never adapted to fire. As climate change continues to warm the park, the threat of wildfires will only increase.

While many visitors will mostly only see Joshua trees when they visit Joshua Tree National Park, there is an abundance of life that perseveres in this difficult environment. 57 species of mammal call this park home, including this coyote.

So is there any way to save the Joshua trees? In terms of helping the trees navigate to cooler environments within the park, people with knowledge of all the different pockets of climate around the park can try to plant the fruit of the trees in cooler areas, but this would be useless in the long run if yucca moths are not able to live there too. The complexity of interspecies relationships makes navigating climate change that much more difficult. Another, more out-of-the-box idea, would be trying to bring back the Shasta sloth to fill their ecological roles as large seed dispersal—a role that has remained empty after they left. Copious amounts of hair and other genetic material has been preserved in the hot, dry caves throughout the area to make them a somewhat logical de-extinction candidate. But at this point, that idea is more science fiction than reliable solution.

The reality is there is no easy solution to the Joshua tree’s predicament. The only thing we can do is treat the world better and try to individually reduce our emissions of green house gases that drive climate change. This phenomenon is not only sinking faraway islands and melting the ice at the poles. It is happening across the United States, even threatening an iconic Southern California symbol. It takes over a century for a Joshua tree to grow to a mangled, wind-beaten adult. In 80 years, the spiny symbol of perseverance in the inhospitable desert could be gone from its last stronghold. It simply cannot take the heat.

Above: Almost nothing is more hauntingly beautiful than gazing upon Joshua trees at sunset. Their mangled limbs make them seem like alien monsters as light fades beyond the horizon. They are the perfect subject to highlight the incredible explosion of colors in the back drop.

All photography by Jack Tamisiea.

Similar Articles:

Sources:

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2439

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/joshua-trees-moths-threatened-climate-change-scientists-seek-solutions/

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/04/13/missing-sloths-modern-pollution-and-the-fate-of-the-joshua-tree/

https://www.nps.gov/articles/shasta-ground-sloth.htm

Climate Change Hits the Tetons

One of America’s iconic National Parks is feeling the heat from climate change. The results could trigger a dangerous cascade through the last (relatively) untouched pocket of wilderness in the United States.

The last rays of sunshine falling over historic Moulton Barn.

Thirteen million years ago, the land of what is now Wyoming violently shook. All the shaking resulted in a tear in the earth along the earthquake’s fault line miles below. The land west of the fault line was lifted upward as the land east of the line sunk some 20,000 feet. The result of these vicious earthquakes is the Teton Mountain Range, the picturesque backbone of Grand Teton National Park, and the sunken valley containing Jackson Hole to the east.

But the craggy pinnacles of the soaring mountain range were not only created by tremors deep in the earth. Glaciers carved the mountains into the iconic, jagged shapes we see today over tens of thousands of years as they advanced and retreated. While the massive, canyon-carving glaciers have been gone for the past 10,000 years, many smaller glaciers formed in an extended cold period that lasted from 1400-1850. Today these small glaciers demonstrate how the park’s climate is changing.

The majestic peaks of the Tetons soar high above the sunken valley at dusk one summer night.

Glaciers are a body of thick ice that slowly move as snow accumulates and compacts on mountains or near the poles. Logically, a warming climate would cause glaciers to melt. But another important factor is the rate and extent to which the Teton glaciers are shrinking. This is what researchers in the park’s Glacier Monitoring Project are trying to determine by mapping the retreat of the glaciers.

With the additional benefit of glacier data that dates back to the 1950s, the project has uncovered some startling trends as the ice continues to thaw. Overall, 25 percent of the total glacier cover has disappeared between 1967 and 2006. All seven of the park’s remaining glaciers have shrunk between the 1960s and 2010 and one glacier in particular, Teepe Glacier, lost 60 percent of its area over this period as summer temperatures continue to skyrocket. Teepe Glacier can be gone in as little as a decade as it has stopped moving, becoming a stranded snowball in a climate change-induced hell.

One of the most recognizable glaciers remaining in the National Park is the Skillet glacier on Mount Moran. Easily seen from Jackson Hole, the glacier resembles a skillet or broken guitar.

The Grand Teton glaciers may seem like a logical casualty of global warming, but that does not make their loss any less devastating. Besides their role in creating the iconic soaring peaks of the Tetons, the natural melting of the glaciers provides crucial cool water to downstream ecosystems. The park’s dozen or so native species of fish, from the mountain whitefish to the cutthroat trout, rely on the cool water from glacier melts. These fish control the insect population and provide food for a multitude of creatures, including bald eagles. Trout, in particular, bolster the park’s reputation as one of the premier trout fishing spots in the country. Once the glaciers are gone, will the park’s ecologically and economically vital native fish population disappear as well?

Climate change will not only expedite the melting of glaciers, but it will also continue to change the distribution of animal and plant species, altering the park’s ecosystems. For example, in Alaska’s Denali National Park, high-altitude Dall sheep have been forced to continuously climb higher into the mountains as their plants of choice are found only in increasingly higher altitudes due to the warming climate below. Eventually they may have nowhere else to go.

During my visit to the park, we were constantly playing “spot the moose” as the large herbivores were surprisingly cryptic. Whenever we were close to a moose it would disappear into the forest and vanish. This is one of the best shots I was able to capture of an adult female moose as it retreated into the thicket with its calf.

The Grand Teton National Park is such a crucial area to examine the effects of climate change because it constitutes a large swath of one of the last, relatively undisturbed areas of temperate wilderness in the world. Together with the nation’s first national park, Yellowstone, and a handful of protected forests and state areas, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem harkens back to a Western landscape nearly untouched by man. The ecosystems containing the world-famous natural phenomenons, like Yellowstone’s geysers and hot springs that helped it achieve the distinction as the world’s first national park, flow seamlessly into the ecosystems surrounding the iconic Tetons to the south. Together this connected web of wilderness encompasses some 20 million acres of habitat for iconic species, from bison to grizzly bears.

America’s national mammal, the hulking bison, in Grand Teton National Park.

Grand Teton National Park, in particular, is located in the rugged heart of this undisturbed wilderness and acts as an ark for animal species that once inhabited most of the western United States. The park contains 18 species of carnivore, 7 hoofed mammals, 5 amphibian species, 300 birds and 900 species of flowers that splatter the alpine meadows with color each spring. The full reach of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem even stretches farther than the three states (Idaho, Montana and Wyoming) that it officially spans. The Swainson’s hawk that resides here in the summer travels all the way down to South America each winter.

An American crow, one of the 300 or so bird species that fly through the park at some point each year, lets out a vocal “CaaW!-CaaW!-CaaW!”.

Grand Teton National Park is also the summer destination of one of the continent’s last great mammal migrations. As the snow begins to retreat north at the beginning of spring, hundreds, even thousands, of pronghorn antelopes begin the 100 mile-plus journey north from their wintering grounds in the Upper Green River Valley in central Wyoming to Jackson Hole.

What was that? One of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken is of this pair of alert pronghorn antelopes trying to figure out where a sound came from.

With large organs to aid air intake and padded feet, pronghorn antelopes are the second fastest land animal on the planet, capable of reaching speeds of 60 miles per hour. These incredible speeds easily outpace any living predator in North America. The only creature that could ever keep up with the pronghorn was a prehistoric North American cheetah that pursued ancient pronghorns here millions of years ago. The pronghorns outlasted the cheetah and have been traversing this migration path for some 6,000 years. However, their migration is becoming more strenuous as several areas along their route are claimed for large-scale energy development. Large swaths of protected wilderness are vital to help pronghorns continue their incredible migration for thousands of years to come.

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In such a complex collection of ecosystems that comprise the Grand Teton National Park, one species disappearing could have unforeseen consequences throughout the environment. For example, in nearby Yellowstone, the removal of wolves through decades of hunting interestingly led to the near disappearance of the park’s beavers.

So what was the connection between wolves and beavers? With the wolves eradicated, the population of elk skyrocketed. The unnaturally large population of elk heavily browsed young willow plants, which served as the beaver’s lifeline during the winter months. The return of wolves to the park in 1995 helped dent the large elk population and disperse them throughout the park, saving the willows from over-browsing and resulting in larger beaver populations. Moreover, the more robust beaver population caused improved hydrology of the streams where they lived. Their dams store water and help remove some of the seasonal runoff into the streams.

A herd of elk saunters across the plains in Grand Teton National Park.

The Grand Teton National Park is an incredible habitat for dozens of species which represent the last vestiges of a bygone era before the west was settled. Huge herds of bison roam the plains, nonchalantly crossing a highway, indifferent to the automobiles and pavement beneath them. Their incredibly brawny frames illustrate the defiance of the natural world as they lumber across the road. It is one of the last places where you need to worry about both the mother grizzly and the territorial bull moose.

Kings of the Road: Weighing up to 2,000 pounds and standing over 6-feet tall at the shoulder, the American bison is the largest mammal in North America and more than capable of doing its fair share of damage to any vehicle. Yellowstone National Park is the only place where bison have continuously lived since prehistoric times as the great creature was almost hunted to extinction in the 19th century.

But physical signs of man’s quest to conquer nature still are evident here, none more iconic than the Moulton Barn. The wooden barn is perhaps the most picturesque barn in the world with the jagged peaks of the Tetons as its backdrop. It has come to symbolize the inclusion of humans in the western landscape, a trend that began when settlers rushed to grab any parcel of land they could over a century ago.

Today, the signs of man’s relationship with nature are becoming more and more evident as the glaciers in the Tetons continue to melt. This will cause ripples in the park’s ecosystems, already complex and fragile. Each species plays a major role for the rest of the ecosystem, as the wolves in Yellowstone illustrate. As the climate continues to warm, whole ecosystems can vanish in one of the world’s last great wildernesses.

A Uinta ground squirrel hanging out by the Moulton Barn in Grand Teton National Park.

All photographs by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem

https://www.conservationinstitute.org/10-fastest-animals-on-earth/

https://snowbrains.com/nasa-how-the-teton-mountain-range-wy-was-created/

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/greater-yellowstone-ecosystem.htm

https://northamerica.wcs.org/wild-places/yellowstone-and-northern-rockies/pronghorn-field-program/pronghorn-migration-path.aspx

https://www.nps.gov/im/gryn/climate.htm

https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/nature/animals.htm

https://www.gtnpf.org/wolves/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/surface-of-the-earth/yellowstone-tetons/

https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/nature/glaciermonitoring.htm

https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/nature/upload/pope-parks-climate-change.pdf

https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/nature/fish.htm