Rainbow
Basin Trip, March 2000
Owl Canyon Hike
Owl Canyon Hike
Sunday morning, after a hearty corned beef hash breakfast, we headed up Owl Canyon. It's beautiful hiking, but there are a few tricky spots to scramble up in the narrowest sections of the canyon. We were very glad to have sturdy hiking boots and warm layers of clothing!
The start of the trail is at the northernmost end of the northernmost cul de sac of the campground. 50 to 100 yards from the trailhead, you can either choose the gulley or a mesa. We chose the mesa, because Dad wanted to see the plants.
The above pictures show the slope up to the mesa and the view across the gulley from the top of that slope, with Dad playing Sasquatch for scale.
We haven't figured out yet what this plant is... or this one...
There were a number of big anthills, with lots and lots of industrious but fairly slow-moving black ants. Perhaps they speed up as the temperature rises during the morning? There were also a number of what looked like burrows near the bushes. Dad and I are not sure what makes them... could be desert mice, kangaroo-rat type critters, or perhaps burrowing birds or large spiders?
Some of the Joshua trees on the mesa had blossomed. The geometry of the leaning stalk and the sedimentary layers beyond caught my fancy.
On top of the slope which led back to the gulley were some technicolor lichen. The colors as I remember them are much brighter than these photos show, but I haven't decided whether or not I want to retouch the color scaling on the images or leave them as is.
The next three photos are really a panorama taken from the top of the slope we went down to return to the gulley, but I haven't Photoshopped them together yet.
We headed up the gulley for parts unknown... the holes in the side walls of the canyon made us wonder if that's where the namesakes of the canyon make or made their homes.
The canyon walls got significantly taller, and the cobbles and pieces of igneous rock imbedded in the sedimentary layers more and more interesting. The green color of some layers is from two different comtributing factors... some of the imbedded fragments' parent material was very green, and the small bits of that same parent material appeared to make the green mudstone layers the same shade. Other instances of a darker green mineral appeared to be formed in cracks in larger pieces of rock. I took some closeup shots of the conglomerate layers since the rules of the area do not allow collecting.
The gulley turned into a gorge as the walls steepened and got taller. There is a cave on one side of the canyon, about a foot off the gulley's gravel floor. We had a flashlight along, thanks to a tip from the van fellow in camp with the mountain bike, so we ventured in just a bit. The cave appears to go deep into one of the sedimentary layers, and we found a few ledges with rat middens which looked to be inhabited though not occupied. Feeling slightly hemmed in, we left the cave and continued up the canyon.
There were two really trickier places where the canyon narrowed to the point where we had to scramble up narrow dry waterfalls. Note to self: bring some rope and climbing clips next time just for safety, especially if mist or rain could be in the offing. Do not attempt this hike if the area has had or will have significant precipitation!
After the two really narrow places, the canyon opened up a bit again, to incredible views.
Every time we thought about maybe turning back, since we really didn't know how far the trail/canyon went, we found something amazing just around the next bend to keep us going... the next pair of photos are a panorama of one of the more colorful sections.
One of the green layers looks just the shade of toothpaste!
This really prickly fellow was quite at home in the canyon, as were a trio of large pheasant-looking birds which we startled coming around a bend.
In the steeper parts of the canyon, a hawk screaming got our attention. Far above us was a nest with one or two hungry little ones, and the adult watched us as we made our way along the canyon cleft below them. We were surely the aliens, and they the natives, as the adult took flight above us, soaring and then swiftly winging across the boundaries of our vision above the lip of the canyon.
About 1/3 of the way from the top of the canyon, it started to rain. The narrow gorge opened up to a basin which had not only the grey, green, rusty brown, and red shades which we had been hiking through, but also a purplish red, a blue-grey, and some dark nearly-black brown tones. Dad decided to head for one of the central and tallest promontories in the basin to get a good view before we would turn back.
I decided to investigate the above purple-red side canyon a bit, and Dad headed up the promontory to my right ahead of me, taking this picture as I returned to the fork where I had turned, heading up the trail following him.
The photo below shows not only the trail we took to get to the promontory, but if you look carefully, you should barely be able to discern three tiny shadowy figures in the gravel bed about 1/3 of the way from the right side, about halfway from the top edge of the photo. They were three intrepid hikers who wandered far up the purple-red gulley on the right side of this photo, and when we headed down, they were enough behind us that we were already having warm lunch by the time they made it back out, looking cold, windblown and soaked. Ah, the benefits of wearing the right gear!
As we got to higher ground, the wind had really picked up, driving the drizzle horizontally, the cold air whipping between gaps in our clothing. I had passable rain gear along, and once I was bundled, I was fairly comfortable, though Dad told me I looked like a "drownded rat"!
There were four-wheel drive tracks along the rim of this basin, but we're not sure where the tracks lead... they sure don't go back the way we had come up! I'm trying to get my hands on some topo and geological maps of this region to figure that little mystery out.
We wound our way back down from the top of this promontory, where we had the best view (and oddly sandy walking, perhaps it arrived carried by the wind?) but also the most wind-driven rain, and found some shelter at the fork in the canyon near where we'd seen the little hikers in the distance. Dad poses here with the most colorful combination of dark-green rock and bright-orange lichen we could find, along with a closeup view.
As we made our way back down the canyon, we found that the rain slackened as we lost elevation. The sprinkling drizzle disappeared, leaving only a small trickle of water finding its way down the canyon to remind us to hurry back to camp. Side canyons contributed to the flow, but the trickle invariably disappeared into the gravel of the streambed, and as we hiked along, it would reappear again, fed by lower side canyons as they joined the main gulley. We were very glad that the rain was not heavier in any of the canyons connected to the one we were travelling in, as some of those narrowest parts of the canyon were tricky enough when damp, and would have been much worse to traverse had there been slightly more water flowing.
We made it back to the campground in one piece, and here're the photos for Mom to prove it! Peanut butter and honey sandwiches while we waited for the water on the stove to boil.
We heated up the stove, changed into dry clothing, and enjoyed a chicken rice pilaf mix with canned chicken and corn thrown in. The wind was picking up, so we stuffed our gear in the car and headed home, taking the 15 from Barstow over Cajon Pass and into LA via the 210. Cajon Pass was gusty and cold, with blowing sleet and snow. There was a jack-knifed bigrig on the lanes going the other direction on the LA side of the summit, and we were glad to get down from that elevation as the sun broke through under the storm clouds as we got to the 210.
We stopped at REI on our way home since Dad now understands completely why I want a different tent. Dinner was at home; smoked sausages and sauerkraut from Schreiners while we sorted Dad's gear and got him packed to head home. His plane left out of Burbank bright and too early Monday morning, and we got a first-hand look at that Southwest Airlines plane parked in the middle of Hollywood Way as well as the five news helicopters hovering humming like nosy dragonflies over the situation. His flight home was uneventful and I'm told that Mom and he had all of his laundry done 24 hours after his flight touched down. Wish I could say the same...
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