Staying in Touch in the Wilderness

 

Yes, we’re in the middle of a pandemic that has pretty much locked everything down, but that shouldn’t stop you from planning your next trip into the wilderness.  I’m already plotting a trip to southern Utah, even though I’m not sure when it will be.  I’m fairly confident that as usual, it will be a solo trip.  And that brings up an important point.  I’m not as young as I used to be, and while I’m still in reasonably good shape, I need to be prepared for potential hazards.

When I’m out alone in the wilderness, I subscribe to the philosophy espoused by the author Edward Abbey: “accidents are forbidden.”  But just to be on the safe side, I’ve added a new GPS receiver to my backpack: a Garmin GPSmap 66i with the InReach satellite messaging feature.  As long as I have access to the sky, in an emergency I can send an SOS message that will scramble a search-and-rescue team anywhere in the world.  And if I just want to text my wife to let her know I’m doing fine, I can do so pretty much as if I were texting on my cell phone.  The neat thing about this is because it uses the Iridium satellite network to send the messages, I don’t have to be within the range of a cell phone service provider.

I’ve found my subscription to the inReach service to be affordable and well worth the cost.  I use the Freedom Safety Plan, which allows me to only pay the monthly fee for the months I use it and suspend it for other months.  The $15 monthly fee allows me to send unlimited SOS messages, up to 10 ordinary texts, and an unlimited number of preprogrammed texts to specific people.  I won’t go through a full review of the inReach service here, I’ll only point out that if you spend much time in the wilderness away from cell phone coverage you should consider investing in something like this.  There are several manufacturers of similar products and I don’t get commissions from any of them, so feel free to purchase whichever one best meets your needs.

Uranium Country

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the detonation of the nuclear bomb over Hiroshima.  That event had a major impact on the canyon country of southern Utah, although it was not obvious at the time.  The start of the nuclear age suddenly put uranium in high demand, and this was the place to find it.  The US Atomic Energy Commission supported anyone who wanted to prospect by offering guaranteed minimum prices for ore. The commission built many of the dirt roads now popular with off-roaders and promised $10,000 bonuses for new finds.

By the early 1950s hordes of both amateurs and professionals were combing the landscape with handheld Geiger counters. Most didn't know what they were doing and went broke, but a few got rich, at least temporarily. The prospector who probably had the most influence early on was Charlie Steen, an unemployed geologist who couldn’t afford a Geiger counter but used his knowledge of geology to find the first big strike in 1952.  His Mi Vida mine produced hundreds of millions of dollars of ore, making him a rich man and the most influential person in Moab, Utah.  But frivolous spending sprees and ill-advised investments eventually drove him broke.

As part of the research I’m doing for my book on canyon country, I decided to pay a visit to his Mi Vida mine, long since closed down.  It was many miles down rough dirt roads, and I took wrong turns twice along the way.  But I eventually arrived and was able to explore its remaining relics.  The mine itself has been blocked with tons of dirt to prevent entry, but rusting equipment remains.  I was surprised at how small the site was; I had been expecting something covering many acres.  I subscribe to the premise that if you really want to see something off the beaten path you need to figure out how to get there on your own, so I won’t post directions here, but here are a couple of views from my visit.

Great News for Public Lands

With all the focus on COVID-19 these days, it's great to hear that other things are being accomplished in Washington. Today, the Great American Outdoors Act was signed into law, providing for the care of parks and public lands without additional cost to taxpayers. It is funded by royalties paid by companies who drill for oil and gas on public lands, on the premise that some of the profits earned by depleting non-renewable resources should be used to restore other resources. This bipartisan measure was supported by numerous companies, non-profits, and legislators from both parties. Learn more about the Act and its impact here.

Exploring Paleozoic Sediments in Southern Utah

Just before the pandemic locked everything down, I went on a geology hike near Comb Ridge in southern Utah with Professor Gary Gianniny, Chairman of the Department of Geosciences at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.  I’m working on a book about the canyon country of the Southwest and this was a great opportunity to learn from an expert in its geology.  While the hike primarily focused on geology, you can’t tour this region without seeing fossils.  All our fossil collecting was catch-and-release.  I took photos but did not bring back any physical specimens.  Here’s a quick overview of our hike.

We started from a point on the southeast side of a feature called the Monument Upwarp, about 16 miles west of the town of Bluff, Utah.  Here is an annotated Google Maps satellite view of the area:

Our starting point overlooked an abandoned meander of the San Juan River.  The river long ago took a shortcut by punching through a narrow wall of the meander (out of site behind the near slope), leaving it now abandoned.

From there, we turned east and went down the side of cliffs bordering Comb Wash.  During the first part of the hike on the top of the Monument Upwarp we were in the Honaker Trail Formation, a marine limestone of the Pennsylvanian Period.  Gary has done quite a bit of research on these limestones. He pointed out numerous examples of fossils in this formation.  The first was a brachiopod (I didn’t get the species).  Notice the spring-like squiggly lines along the hinge line at the top.  This is called a spiralia. Gary said it is indicative of it being a brachiopod:

Here is an example of crinoid pieces.  Gary said this limestone is made up of about 90% crinoid fragments:

As we descended, the layers got younger because of the way they were tilted.  When we got to the red layers, Gary explained we were now crossing into the Halgaito Formation, terrestrial sandstones of the Permian Period.  He pointed out fossils of plant roots encrusted in calcium carbonate (the light gray areas).  These are called rhizoliths.  He said you can still see rhizoliths forming today on the roots of modern plants.

Like most geologists who frequently get out onto the landscape, Gary was in good physical condition.  I however, was another story.  The 600-foot return climb across gullies, boulder fields, and loose scree was about the limit of my sorry physical condition.  But it was a great experience and one I wouldn’t hesitate to do again.

Digging for Fossil Fish in Wyoming

My wife, Nicki, and spent a week driving through Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming last fall.  One of our target destinations was the American Fossil Quarry outside of Kemmerer, Wyoming, to dig for fossil fish from the Green River formation, a world-famous lagerstatte—a region of extraordinary quantities of fossils of exceptional quality.  The fossils here come from the Eocene epoch about 50 million years ago.

I had corresponded with Seth, the owner of the quarry, before we left to work out the details of our visit.  He wasn’t there on the day we visited, but his assistant, Nick, was very helpful in getting us started.  I brought a bag full of tools which, as Seth had warned, were mostly unnecessary.  All you really need is a brick hammer and a thin chisel, both of which the quarry provides.  Since this was the end of the season and their chisels had undoubtedly seen hard use all summer, they had pretty blunt tips.  I had brought my own set of thin spring-steel chisels designed expressly for fossil extraction and was very happy I had them.  Nicki used the chisel they supplied and was quite successful.

It was a productive day, and we both bagged some nice finds.  The floor of the quarry was covered with a fine powder of shale, and by mid-afternoon the wind had picked up and was blowing the powder around so much we decided to call it quits.  Nick loaded our fossils onto a cart and took me over to a line of diamond saws I could use to cut off the excess matrix and trim the specimens down to a reasonable size.  As we had to fit all our finds into our car, this was very helpful.  After a quick tutorial I was happily working on my own trimming down all my specimens.

About 10 years ago we had visited the Warfield quarry across the road.  At that quarry we were right up against the rock wall where we were on our own to pry the shale from the wall (which was a bit of a chore even at my then-younger age).  At American Fossil Quarry, they extract the shale for you with a giant excavator and lay it out in rows of piles for you to access.  Probably a lot safer than being right up against a crumbly rock wall.  You don’t get the chance to record exact location and orientation of the fossils in-situ, but unless you are a professional paleontologist you won’t care.  As Nick said, this is a commercial quarry, not a scientific expedition.  The fun is in finding the fossils, which we found plenty of, even in the space of only a few hours.

The dirt road leading to the quarry is reasonable for a family car right up to the descent at the quarry entrance.   It’s then a bit of an adventure if you don’t have 4WD (which we fortunately did), but at the bottom there were even large travel trailers that had made it down safely.  If you like the idea of digging for fossils I highly encourage you to stop in at this quarry.