oh, dang, sleeping in the back of the pickup. plenty of room, but my back just can’t handle it anymore. tossing and turning, trying to find the combination of padding underneath, from available materials, to compensate for the flatness. always this way on the first night of camping. now breakfast, it’s windy, so, writing here instead of getting out and putzing around. trying to read and determine the location of the geological photos I got online compared to where I am now.
articulate or inarticulate trilobite (genus Olenellus or Dicellomus) hunting. first gotta find the local outcropping of the Chambless limestone, then trace down in the stratigraphic sequence to the bottom of that. or, figure out where the Zabriskie Quartzite is and trace upwards to several tens of feet of thinly inter-bedded quartz sandstone, shale, and limestone stringers. the Latham Shale is not ridge-forming or resistant to erosion, so it is found by default, identifying the two sequences that respectively over- or under-lie it to determine it’s location. a trained geologist can identify the rock types, but that information is no longer resident in my head in large or intact quantities, so, it’ll be haphazard. I have a few possible locations in mind, looking at the mountain directly above the wash, along with an old mine site which I want to check out.
inexperience and lack of sleep makes the surface seem rougher than it is. standing upright is an acquired skill, hiking is an acquired skill, and bush-whacking, the art of hiking off-trail, is no trivial extension of both those. here in the desert it is made somewhat easier by lack of vegetation and a clear view of possible objectives, but that fact does not make the scrambling across the surface and the constant calculation and re-calculation of optimal pathway any less processor-intensive. that and the fight to staying upright against the effects of gravity.
but. after a day of making two long hikes, it is possible to stand on an uneven talus slope and make a visual traverse without starting to fall over. the body beginning to adapt to the situation. a heavy climb up the stratigraphic column. no trilobites, but I did locate some nice samples of horizontal burrow structures — most likely the Latham Shale, but otherwise, it was difficult to figure out where in the column I was. the non-conformal contacts between several formations are not smooth, flat-lying, or revealed by the surface topography and have absolutely random strike and dip (zip and stroke we called in CSM daze). so, while making an ascent and some traverses, I was jumping through many different samples. of course, my geologic knowledge of the area is extremely limited, with no petrology lab background or even background reading except for the one field-trip document from Rick Miller at SDSU.