Rattlesnakes and monzogranite

Erinn and I just returned from a brief-but-great couple of days at Joshua Tree National Park. We arrived Wednesday night expecting to have trouble finding an available campsite, considering Memorial Day weekend was just around the corner, but were happily surprised to find the place practically deserted. On the advice of friend and national parks guru Ian Shive, we decided to camp at Jumbo Rocks campground, a beautiful site in the middle of a huge field of giant boulders, which we later learned were made of monzogranite that, in the form of magma, had forced its way up beneath the darker upper crust composed of gneiss (nice) rock. Erosion eventually carried away the gneiss, revealing the coarse, sand-colored boulders below that now make up large sections of the northern part of the park and, like a playground in the middle of a large sandbox, provide a welcome relief to an otherwise barren landscape. After picking the ideal spot and setting up our tent we made a fire and got down to the business of grilling hot dogs, but not before taking half an hour to marvel at the density of stars above and taking a few photos. In the interest of full disclosure, the image of Erinn beneath the stars is a composite of 3 separate exposures taken from the same spot, which was the only way I was going to be able to bring out those stars and get a good exposure on her without using a flash. For more photos and text click the link below

The next morning we were up at the crack of 5:30 to catch sunrise before grabbing a quick granola bar and banana breakfast and setting out for a morning hike in a boulder field surrounding two occasional but presently empty water reservoirs called White Tank and Grand Tank. We had a great time climbing the rocks and venturing off the trail to find Grand Tank and were especially pleased not to see a single other person for the entire hike. A nice break from Venice, which as of this weekend has grown especially crowded. Following the hike we decided to lay low back at camp for the peak sun hours. The only problem was that there’s not an inch of shade to be found throughout the park, so laying low was not the cooling down experience we’d hoped for. Still it was nice to stay off our feet and thanks to generous applications of SPF 50 we both escaped unscorched.
That afternoon we headed west to scale Ryan Mountain, a relatively high peak of 5400 feet, to catch sunset. Unfortunately we made our way there way too early and got bored and cold thanks to a pretty strong wind and decided to slowly head back down in unison with the sun. Nevertheless, we ended up catching it about half way down the mountain and I can’t imagine the view was much better from the top. We then headed back for another round of hot dogs. I’d hoped to spend more time shooting the stars and had picked out a great Joshua tree to shoot, but a cloud cover came covering most of the sky. We were pretty exhausted and only stayed up for a couple hours before calling it a night.
Friday morning we got up again for a sunrise walk before packing up our things and heading south to hike Cottonwood Spring and Mastodon Peak near the park’s southern entrance. Along the way we found distractions at an old copper mine perched atop a far off mountain and at the Cholla (choya) Cactus Gardens. The gardens were fantastic, a sea of brightly topped cacti with dark trunks appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the desert. But apparently the cholla will destroy ya if you so much as touch them. Their thorns are covered with reverse micro hooks that allow them to easily stick into your skin but reluctantly and painfully come out. There are signs warning visitors that they are hazardous and to stick closely to the trail so as not to come in contact with one and ruin your day. It was tempting to test out for myself. Erinn wanted to do the same. It couldn’t be that bad if I just touched one with the tip of my finger, right? But we’re apparently wiser than we thought and both of us steered clear.
On our final hike we were talking about what a great trip it had been and how great it is that it’s so close to where we live. But we were both disappointed that we hadn’t seen anything more impressive than a lizard or squirrel in terms of wildlife. I had a feeling that such a discussion would surely change our fate. And it did! Only moments later, and with perhaps half a mile to go in our final hike, we were both startled out of our skin by a very defensive rattlesnake. Hiding in the shade of a low bush about 10 feet in front of us it let out a loud and long, perhaps 20 seconds, rattle that had us backpeddling a good 10 feet before we even realized what was going on. We stopped to look at that point and it finally stopped rattling. However, it was basically blocking what was only a 4-foot wide path. As we were standing there collecting ourselves and slowing our hearts we looked down to the right and only 4 feet away was another one! This sent us backpeddling another few feet. Fortunately, this one seemed like it could care less that we were there and went about its business. Thought that we’d somehow stumbled into an entire city of them had me quickly scanning 360 degrees to see where the others were. Luckily those seemed to be the only two. Still, we were trapped and had to make the decision whether to try to pass, walk back 3 miles the way we came, or what? Another option was to sprint by the spot and hope to get by before it realized what had happened, but Erinn dismissed that one. Despite concerns that there were probably more in the bushes nearby, we opted to slowly climb a nearby hill and make a wide loop around the spot where the snake lay, eventually coming back out on the trail 20 feet beyond. Now satisfied, having gotten our fill of nature, we headed back to the car and headed for home.
These are a bunch of photos I took along the way…

Bunny Rock