Beef Basin and the Anasazi

In June the grass grows tall and straight in Beef Basin. It rises from the red clay and the white sand and on strong heads and bares its fruit; lush and green in great waves it bows to the wind as it has for thousands of years. For a brief time it is lord over the sage and king of all that it surveys. But soon the heat will topple its throne, bake its temple as with fire, and then, the wind will only find dust.

The Basin, this improbable place, this enigma, this island, lies wide in the mist of chaos. To the north, hard up against the valley sit the Needles - Ceder Mesa Sandstone worn into knotted canyons, jumbles of small ravines and pinnacles, and vertically walled narrow valleys. To the west lies Gypsum Canyon. Deep and rugged its jagged edge cuts the valley and spews its collected hate into the Colorado - always the lowest elevation in the area and fixed at the confluence of Gypsum and the Colorado at 3,700 ft. To the south-east the Abajo's cut the sky. The highest peak within the range is Abajo Peak at 11,360 ft (3,463 m). These steeply sided peaks covered with impenetrable deep bush, Gambel oak, and Ponderosa Pine are igneous intrusions laid down about 25 million years ago and thus are younger than the surrounding and lower mesas. Much of the water in the south part of the valley derives its source from the flanks of the most westerly peaks. To the south Dark Canyon cuts a ragged swath leading again to the Colorado. The moat complete, the valley rests in its peaceful solitude. I have never seen another soul in Beef Basin. It is visited, but not often.

Beef Basin is an archaeologically rich area. (See The Shell Bead) Although many of the ruins are widely known long explorations in the canyons and washes produce wondrous finds, but be prepared for rough country, climbing, and a little suffering. The ruins range from the open Hovenweep style (albeit with different masonry) of the "The Farm House Ruin" to high cliff dwellings; some extremely hard to find and get up into the ledge systems. The "Farm" complex is quite interesting and connected, I think, to other similar ruins in the valley. At some point in time the valley had a significant population. Interestingly, the farm complex is absent water today, whereas the other similar ruins are all tied to water. I suspect these ruins were abandoned in the drought from 1276 to 1299, but many have held up quite well. Some of the more remote ruins seem newer and still tied to the water that flows there today.

Beef Basin can best be accessed from the north and east with a normal 4x4 from Beef Basin Road, which leaves the pavement at Indian Creek, or from the south and west, on North Cottonwood Road just west of Blandings. From the pavement it is a committing drive either way.

One could easily spend two-weeks wondering among the mesas and canyons and only through several trips there have I truly appreciated its rugged beauty, its uncompromising remoteness, and unusual character of its location.

Water - part one

I had been walking in the desert among the mesas and canyons for five days. This was the last day. As I set off my shirt rubbed coarsely against my flesh. The water that cooled me throughout each day drained and pulled the salt from deep within; my shirt, now white and rough, was stained with the previous days' efforts. The Camalback's pack straps were also covered with small, white crystals, but inside was 100 oz of water soon to add to the ghostlike white stiffened fabric. A ring around my wide-brimmed hat told the same story.

Already it was hot.

I stepped into the dry, desiccated sand of Gypsum Creek. The drop was only several inches deep - a mere depression in the sage flat. But, down the slight grade, about 100 yards distance, the Creek made its first drop - almost 100 feet - and became Gypsum Canyon. With it fell the sand and the freshly loosened debris of Beef Basin. Sometimes though it carried the rocks and trees and the remnants of the ghosts who lived here long ago. The water, and that which it has torn away, races down into the depths of the canyon headed directly for the Colorado River some 3 or 4 miles distant; the mouth of Gypsum Canyon opening up its red maw into that great chasm and the river accepting all it will give. Time will ensure that everything here will eventually end up in the Colorado to then be swept further down into Lake Powell; slowly filling the Lake and slowly starving the great cities in California, Nevada and Arizona.

I skirted the south rim and imagined the canyon growing deeper. I could not see the bottom; it was too narrow and the rim held me away from the full view. I took a first sip of water. Each drink is a measured calculation against the day. Will it run out? Will I drink too much? Will the return trip be marred by the focused and frantic drive to quench the emptiness within? The fear of stumbling through the pinions and sage, oblivious to all but desire, controls the craving to extinguish the devil inside and the water he summons, but the battle rages nevertheless.

I followed the track between the pinions beside the south rim, but caught a sound almost lost to the wind. I stopped. I thought I heard the drip of water echoing from the depths. At first I wasn't sure - it seemed not a drip, nor a stream. The wind slowed and the sound collected and rose. The thought of coolness reached up and engulfed my entire being. I imagined a refreshing, deep pool. I vowed to return at the end of the day and plunge into the darkness of the canyon baptizing myself in the bliss and washing away the sins of the week. Forged by the wind and baked hard by the sun that thought remained throughout the day .

Fable Canyon joins Gypsum Canyon, but the larger of the two is Fable. I wanted to peer into its depths so I understood how to best traverse it on a future trip. As I walked west the views opened to include the entire valley system. Rugged, deep, steep and massive the cliffs tumble red and wonderful until the entire landscape seems to scream for you to turn back, yet beckons with a whisper for you to try. I clamored out, now out of the shelter of the cliffs and hills, to a point where the two canyons meet; the wind tearing at this interloping salty apparition, snapping at itself until at thought I would be picked clean of the sandstone and hurled into the abyss. Only the hot wind of the desert seems to have evil purpose. The cold winds of the high summits seem benign as they pull and push on your crampons, but these rushing desert winds tear at you with furious purpose.

Seven-hundred foot straight down was the bottom swept clean of even color. The rushing water had left nothing. I returned and followed the meandering rim of Fable south until I could see its beginnings. Next time I'll descend into Fable and follow it to the Colorado. It would however, not be easy.

With the thought of the water I retraced my steps. Turning east the wind abated and the stillness and heat descended and suffered nothing. I found a cool, low alcove and crawled in and lay in the dirt; the dust mingling with the salt, the smell, and the sweat. I rested and ate a little nodding off a bit thinking about the promise and the sound of water...

I returned to the place I heard the water like a salmon to the place it was born. I was drawn there, I did not have to know the way. The sound remained. I walked the rim looking for a weakness and found it at a small bend in the canyon. I descended the cliff bands finding a weakness in each, sometimes hanging and dropping and sometimes climbing down or jumping from block to block.

The solid limestone bottom held no stream, no coolness, no respite. It was swept clean; the water sculpting and cutting the rock into that which it desired - that which fed its inexorable journey toward the Colorado. I walked down the canyon till it was joined by side canyon equal in size to itself. The canyon narrowed into what I could not see into earlier in the day. I could hear falling water. The limestone became smooth, the canyon walls polished, water appeared.

The limestone was flat and about forty-feet wide and the water meandered across the bottom, but it was just a trickle flowing here and there sometimes breaking up and sometimes coming together. It formed small pools no more than an inch or so deep. I could see that the canyon dropped and I walked toward the sound of the water, the heat eating my flesh and baking my bones white and hot to the touch.

The red canyon walls straightened and the desert blue sky narrowed. In a crescent moon shape the limestone floor abruptly fell away to a glistening pool about 25 below. The clear water beckoned. The small trickle fell into the pool in more than a dozen spots creating the sound that tantalized me far above. The falls were undercut; the softer sandstone having eroded far under the harder limestone. I looked around for a way down - I found none. The smooth walls held no holds. Being a climber, I can get up and down most anything, especially a small vertical distances with many choices. I prodded and hung and plotted. The problem was not getting down, but getting back up. I could jump, but I couldn't even imagine a line to get up again. I could see that the canyon continued to plunge so I couldn't bank on an escape further down. Likely, there were more drops.

I sat on the edge, a mad man longing for that just out of grasp. The wind was gone. The heat between the walls collected; oppressive, unrelenting, unforgiving.

Not ready to give up; compelled by thought of the pool and a natural shower, I went back up the canyon thinking I might find a suitable tree to drag down and tip over the edge. Hydrus had swept his palace clean - they had all been swept away. Seemingly I could not commute my sentence. My sins would remain. But...looking down again past the falls I could see a large tree trunk striped clean of all branches. I thought I could move it; I thought it would work. I hung over the side and let go.

cont..

Comb Ridge - Post Two, High Mesa Ruin

The topo map indicated that there was a ruin up an unnamed wash high up on Ceder Mesa. I only had half-a-day of light having gotten up at 4:00 to begin driving. I thought I could make it to the top. I grabbed my stuff and headed west toward Ceder Mesa. As soon as I hit a high spot I was able to orient the map, make sure I was headed toward the right spot, and haul out the glasses to figure out a way up the steep terrain. There are always ways up the cliffs and across the steep terrain, but if you don't plan it out the most likely outcome is you'll become rim-rocked; this is, stuck and backtracking.

By the way, I took this picture not to show the location of ruin, but in the foreground you will see part of a bowl-shaped depression that was once a pit house or similar structure. While walking I found a single shard, which I though odd, but by making circles found the reason for the "homeless" shard; the depression. I was to find three of these during the trip. I mapped the locations and sent them to Utah archaeologist Winston Hurst. He is a consulting archaeologist who lives and works in his home town of Blanding, Utah. He received a Master of Arts degree in anthropology from Eastern New Mexico University and has been actively engaged in archaeological research in the Colorado Plateau since the early 1970s. He is currently the co-principal investigator for the Comb Ridge Survey Project. The Comb Ridge Survey Project, a multi-year archaeological inventory survey of a 42,000-acre area encompassing Comb Ridge and the adjacent Butler and Comb Washes, is inventorying all the ruins at Comb Ridge to include ancient camps, food gathering and processing stations, storage facilities, settlements, shrines, ancient Puebloan roads, Navajo hogans and historic ranching and mining sites.

On the way up, there were many limestone layers mixed in with the sandstone with deeply red chert inclusions (in geology - a mineral or rock enclosed in a larger body of rock). Pieces large and small were scattered across the desert and no doubt was a large source of stone tools. I found chippings of this chert during the entire trip. I'm quite certain this area must have been well known for this material.

The climb was well worth the effort. In the picture you can clearly see the deflector stone of the kiva located in the foreground. Comb ridge points south off in the distance. It was a very defensible site with water located in the form of drips several hundred feet up just at the lip of Ceder Mesa. It wasn't an easy site to get to and didn't afford any easy route to go anywhere. Interestingly, the debris pile was cut vertically by water erosion and the layers clearly indicated the site had been abandoned several times and reoccupied. Some of the abandonment layers were more than an inch thick. I don't know what that would equate to in time, but I suspect more than 100 to several hundred years. One of charming things in abundance in most of these ruins, including this one, is the finger prints still clearly visible in the mud walls. Most of the fingers seem to be quite small.

I spent some time sitting and imagining what it might be like to live there. I wanted to climb up and check out the area, but time was ticking and I didn't want to go into the night. I hustled off the mesa and returned to the truck.

I drove down Comb Wash and found a nice place to camp among the cottonwoods. I went out to take pictures of the Comb as the sun was setting and walked back in the deepening dusk. I heard a noise off to my left and peered into the willows, but didn't see anything. As I walked away I stopped to check out the possibility of another picture and something caught my side vision or perhaps there was some small sound. I turned around and WOW, a bear! I truly thought I was seeing something else, but he was only dozen or so feet away. I snapped this picture of what must be the most southern desert bear ever seen, and he was moving south in a hurry. I guess he wasn't in the mood for a fight for he barely gave me a sideways glance.


Click below to see a few more pictures

Comb Ridge

Comb Ridge - Post One, the Place

I sat in a richly red cathedral, fire lapped the ceiling, stillness cloaked the walls in ethereal, unrelenting silence. This cathedral was last inhabited about 800 years ago and I now was only a visitor - an interloper. I left and gave the stillness to itself, and the sanctuary to those who made it their home and headed back down the wash.



Comb Ridge rises in the south-eastern desert of Utah. It is an immense monolithic, solid sandstone formation tilted at an angle of about 20 degrees running north/south about 80 miles (128 km) long (or longer, depending on the perspective), and about one mile (1.6 km) wide. Geologically speaking the Comb is a monocline — a great crack, a fold in the Earth's crust created by a slow slippage of deeply buried tectonic plates some 65 million years ago.

On the western side it drops vertically 800 to over 1,000 feet (245 to 300 m) to Comb Wash. On the eastern side it drops gently into Butler Wash. For the entire length, it is a slickrock playground, a geologic masterpiece, a natural history museum, and a archaeologist's dream. The dryness preserves the past as if time happened yesterday.

Both Butler Wash and Comb Wash flow into the San Juan River which cuts through Comb Ridge between Bluff and Mexican Hat. To the south the of the river the Navajo make their home; to the west lies the magnificent Monument Valley; to the north, the Abajo Mountains. The desert creeps up the washes and canyons, invading the mesas; shriveling the landscape, compelling the unprepared or uninitiated to stay on the far-flung roads. The heat and the dust and the miles and miles of sandstone bake the imagination.

Yet, there is water here. I found it everywhere; hidden in the creases, folded along the frozen and tiled dunes, sitting in cool huecos high on the ridge. The lost would die here, the wanderer would live wonderfully. The Anasazi, the Ancestral Puebloans not only wandered here, they lived here for thousands of years and their mark is still on the land. This is what I came to see and in this wash I found their hand prints on the walls, their kiva walls standing, and the places where they ground their corn and straightened their arrows. Here they grew squash, beans, and corn; hunted small game with finely woven nets, raised turkeys making intricate woven feather blankets, and painted beautiful pots, the shards of which make you long to see the original.

(more next post)

Day Nine - Yellowstone

Aside from Lake Titicaca, Yellowstone Lake, sitting at about 7,700 feet, is the largest high altitude lake in the world. It doesn't, however, have quite as good a name. We struck out early headed for Jackson Hole as we scooted through the Tetons too quickly the first time to get to Yellowstone. So, we had some unfinished business. It was then a driving day and Yellowstone Lake was the only thing we hadn't previously seen.

Aside from the usual few stops for some geothermal sites, a buffalo traffic jam, and a grizzly too far away to appreciate, it was a short drive to the Lake. One way to illustrate the size of the lake is that the Yellowstone River flows directly out of the lake as a very large, full blown, river. It's big, right away. Over geological time Yellowstone Lake has drained into the Pacific Ocean, the Arctic Ocean via Hudson Bay, but it now drains into the Atlantic via the Gulf of Mexico (via the Missouri and the Mississippi).The Lake is 20 miles long, 14 miles wide, and 320 feet deep at its deepest point averaging about 150 feet deep.

We left the lake and Yellowstone and drove toward Jackson.

Allow me a few reflections on Yellowstone. There is no doubt YNP is a special place - it is home to many "onlys" in the world, and even if some of the spectacles are located in other places, they are indeed rare. It is a unique and special place deserving of its reputation, but aside from the geothermal wonders and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone the place is no different than any one of hundred places I've been. The landscape is not spectacular, actually rather plain. The Winds, for example , are magnificently beautiful. Consider this: you could drop YNP in many places in Wyoming and quite possibly find only a handful of people, if any - not a million, plus. That very fact draws me to the other places. But, and this is big - what does makes the landscape unique is the variety and number of wildlife. I wish the surprise and wonder of those animals existed in more places. The draw of the wildlife is clear - people discuss the animals, stop for the animals, and clearly adore each sighting.

I'm beginning to think we've done ourselves a disservice.

Day Four

We got up early in Colter Bay at Jackson Lake in the Tetons to head for Yellowstone. We didn't have grand plan, but we did know that camping spaces were often limited. We also had to be in West Yellowstone to meet a friend at a certain time so we wanted to head that direction to ensure we had a camping spot. Our usual "camp anywhere" approach doesn't work in Yellowstone. The drive up somewhat follows the Snake River whose headwaters are located in Yellowstone. It eventually becomes the main tributary for the mighty Columbia River and then flows into the Pacific. The lower Snake was first explored by Lewis and Clark and was first known as the Lewis River. Most likely Colter was the first to explore the upper Snake and the road would have roughly followed his route - at least in Yellowstone Park.

The southern entrance road is heavily forested with lodgepole and is not particularity scenic. We crossed the Continental divide three times at about 8000 feet (now eight times total) and dropped down into Old Faithful. It is, or course, a must see, but because of the number of visitors everything is "sterile", and there are people everywhere. Old Faithful was awesome and we enjoyed the surrounding geysers and springs, but I must say we enjoyed the back-country hydrothermal features a lot more.

Ok, now it's time for your geology lesson. In order to really appreciate, see, and understand Yellowstone it is necessary to understand the geology. The most striking, and obvious aspect of Yellowstone is the relative nearness of magma to the surface. Yellowstone is located in an active Caldera - yes, I meant to say active. That is, of course, in geologic time. Parts of Yellowstone have risen more than three feet in recent years due to the magma chamber located under Yellowstone rising. Of course, the theories as to why and how are all simply conjecture, but the end result is undeniable. The past, also undeniable, and is etched around most of the lower 48. What is located under Yellowstone is called a "hot spot". Such hot spots are located around the globe and include places like Hawaii, the Galapagos, and Iceland. The volcanic activity has nothing to do with plate tectonics - they are simply places where earths crust is "thin". These hot spots "move", or at least the crust moves in relation to the hot spot, and the Yellowstone hot spot has moved also. This is referred to as a hotspot track. The old calderas can be located on a west-south-west line stretching across the western US.

You may have noticed that I referred to the Yellowstone Caldera affecting most of the lower 48. Some of the older eruptions may have snuffed out most life in the entire US with an order of magnitude somewhere around 2000 to 3000 times that of Mt. Saint Helens. Ash was deposited many feet deep for thousands of miles. What wasn't wiped out by the initial event was killed by a "volcanic winter". The most recent, the Lava Creek eruption, occurred about 640,000 years ago and deposited tuff now about 1000 foot deep locally. (Tuff is consolidated ash with all kinds of volcanic material mixed in)

The complete picture of the volcanism is complicated and beyond even what I want to read about, but this quick outline should give you some idea about this supervolcano. It is not completely understood and is still studied extensively, but the point is that it is massive - wipe out the entire US in a heart beat massive.

The next interesting thing to know about Yellowstone geologically is the two most recent glacial periods and the effect on the topography. Perhaps it is first best to know what these glaciers were not. They were not alpine (or piedmont) glaciers and they were not continental glaciers. They were ice caps similar to modern day Greenland. Again, the scale exceeds our ability to readily imagine the size. The Pinedale Period (the most recent) wasn't that long ago (about 25,000 years at its peak), so the marks are still very clear on the landscape. Although there were many glacial periods we can only really see the last two - the Pinedale and Bull Lake. They are similar, but the Pinedale partially obliterated the Bull, so I will discuss the Pinedale Period.

If you went back to the peak of the Pinedale Period and stood on the Grand Teton you would see the terminus of the ice cap that covered Yellowstone. The entire valley would be covered by glacial till (rocks and silt), glacial melt would be cascading off and thundering from under the ice and immediately creating a river much larger than the Snake is now. The mountains of gray silt and the bolder fields would almost be uncrossable. Descending and walking north you would be walking on only the glacier - quite steeply at first, then almost flat. Standing in the center of Yellowstone you would have about 4000 feet of ice below your feet. The only visible land would be the Absarokas to the north. You would have to walk several more days back down the glacier north to escape the ice, and you would have traversed about 120 miles. The ice cap was enormous and all of the features it left are easy to see today - eskers, kames, terminal and lateral moraines, glacial striations, drumlins, erratics, and many other things.

There is one place in Yellowstone Canyon that has one of the best geologic views I have ever seen. As you look across the river cut (almost a slice) the far side has glacial till many feet deep on the top. Immediately below that is about 60 feet of basalt that formed in hexagonal columns. These are always neat just by themselves. These dark columns lie directly upon another layer of glacial till - really round stones of about equal sizes surrounded by glacial flour. The layers mark a period of glaciation, a period of volcanic activity, and another period of glaciation.

Back to the trip. We drove west, toward the west entrance, stopping at every pullout to check out the geysers, springs, and thermals. They are really awesome, and we took about 100 pictures. We camped at Madison Junction walking around the meadows and checking out the buffalo before turning in. We were to stay here three days so we set up the tarp, cuts lots of wood, set up an extra tent, and generally made ourselves more home than usual.