The Heat is On

100 degrees in places like Michigan, Ontario, and Wisconsin comes around now and then, but when it does, it tends to be an abnormal, rather than frequent, occurrence.  Thus far this summer, we have had a handful of such days, and they have been coupled with a distressing lack of rain.  Lawns are well past the point of surrender, but now creeks are also starting to run a bit dry and even some of the deeper local lakes are becoming more akin to bathwater than something refreshing.  This has come to us on top of a rather mild winter, with some days in January even sitting well into the 60's.  Furthermore, this is part of a trend of a see-saw of extremes that have visited the world in the past two decades.  Rather than enter a harsh debate about climate change, however, I think what is needed most here would be some refreshing pictures of cold things.

With the recently devastated Rockies in mind, let's head to happier times in Colorado, from a better winter a few years ago.  First we can see some snow!

Vail Pass, Colorado, May 2010.

 Lovely stuff at near 10,000 feet, which sadly, did not happen much if at all even at these altitudes this past winter.  The spires you see there are either Engelmann Spruce (Picea Engelmannii) or Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa), and it can be hard to tell with such a heavy snowpack holding down the rising branches the spruces would normally carry.  The Rocky Mountain forests are truly lovely, a great example of how massed individual species can really add to the beauty of an expansive landscape.  While variety is the spice of life and biodiversity is a very good thing, there is nothing like seeing a forest of spires like this or in the boreal north, where these trees are replaced by Balsam Fir (Abies Balsamea) and Black Spruce (Picea Mariana).  I promised I would not go on about climate change, right?  Well the truth of the matter is that these forests are actually disappearing before our very eyes as things get too warm for them and conditions in which they would otherwise flourish are heading further north or upwards.  While forests might retreat, they also have to deal with an increase in wildfires and insect attacks that their colder environments used to help keep in check.  See that snowpack?  Even for May, it is a bit low.  Our colder years now are what were once average.  The heat is on, indeed.

I-70 Eastbound exiting the Eisenhower Tunnels, just to the east of the Continental Divide.  11,100 feet up high!

Wednesday Filler: Crossing the Great Divide at El Malpais

Central New Mexico is the first place south of Wyoming where the Rockies abate enough to allow for easier passage between plains and inter-mountain lands.  Easier, of course, is a relative term, as the lowest portions of the Great Divide are still well over 7,000 feet above sea level.

The landscape, while bearing less relief than the most dramatic portions of the spine of the continent, is still rugged and thickly vegetated enough to slow down most non-road travel.  In the area around El Malpais, forests of Ponderosa and Pinyon pines are surrounded by a great deal of black rock.  Out in the open, at lower elevations on valley floors, the rock can be seen covering a wide area, as if it spread out in a flow.

Well, its actually hardened lava, and it makes for quite the interesting landscape.  El Malpais is full of lava fields, lava caves, and small volcanoes.  Consequently, El Malpais is Spanish for "The bad land", so named by Spanish explorers who passed through the area and had an impression that the vast lava fields were barren and somewhat reminiscent of popular concepts of Hell (talk about being under and over-impressed at the same time).  Of course, they also found the area passable and a good way to move between the Rio Grand valley and the lands beyond, and some particularly enjoyed a cool permanent spring at the base of a nearby rock formation.  Eastern side lava fields give way to western side points of rest and tranquility, at least at this divide crossing.

This is known today as El Morro National Monument, and many signatures of passing travelers have been etched into the base of the cliffs, leaving us with centuries of written and pictorial records of various peoples.  I was not able to see them at the time.  As you can see, this particular passage was quite rainy on those otherwise hot and dry July days of the past summer.  The funny part is, after I had left the lava fields on the eastern side of the divide, things got quite sunny, and then quite sandy.  Even a relatively level region on the Great Divide, it seems, can really knock the weather for a loop, and truly divide the waters in two.

Crossing the Great Divide at Milner Pass

North America is broken up into three major drainage areas, wherein water flows to either the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Oceans.  Mexico and the vast majority of the United States drains either to the Atlantic or Pacific bodies, whereas a very small part of the northern continental United States (Alaska is a different story) and much of Canada contains areas that flow to all three vast expanses of sea.  In Montana, one can actually stand on Triple Divide Peak and set one foot on ground that will have precipitation run down to all three oceans, which, if you ask me, is way more impressive than standing on four states at once.  Now, in some places, the divide is very apparent, and grand crests stand up that daunted travelers trying to make passage across the breadth of the continent.  Without the convenience of a vehicle, and even with one, the passage over the divide is pretty rough.  This picture was taken in May, close to the divide on I-70 in Colorado.

In other areas, the crest is shockingly low, even nearby where it might have been ridiculously high and seemingly impassable.  Passes certainly do exist in mountain ranges; North America would otherwise be very difficult to venture through, as the great north-south mountain ranges have long served as a boundary between both cultures and eco-regions, and even weather patterns.  South pass in Wyoming, for example, is a fairly level venture devoid of rugged mountain scenery that nearly every migrant took getting to destinations beyond the Rockies.  In some areas, though, the Great Divide and its pass comes as a surprise, and might be far lower than surrounding peaks, as it is here in Colorado:

This is Milner Pass, which is nearly three thousand feet lower than nearby peaks, and it runs northeast-southwest rather than the east-west one would expect from the divide being in the Rockies.  The second picture is of the eastern side of the pass, a little rocky maybe, but something that would not look too out of place in the Canadian Shield.  The western side, in the third picture, is a gentle slope with loads of pine, spruce, and fir on it, and only slopes up a mere 100 feet within the visual horizon.  So what, you might ask?  Well, this is how it looks in the surrounding area, not a mile away:

Milner Pass is very, very deceptive.  The pass lies within one of the most dramatic sections of mountain in the United States, and yet is fairly level, and nestled between ridges so neatly that it gives off the appearance of being from somewhere in north-eastern boreal Canada.  The actual rise between the watersheds was covered with ten feet of snow at the time I was there, but there was no mistaking how relatively demure it felt in the presence of otherwise dramatic scenery.  A simple rise of a few inches is all that separates water from flowing to oceans thousand of miles apart.  Take a look at this shot, viewing the pass a half mile away on the "Atlantic" side.  If it were not for the peaks in the distant background, one would hardly figure they were on the great spine of a continent.

Furthermore, Milner Pass lies within one of the source tributaries of the Colorado River, which not even 20 miles from its source is already carving out grandiose canyons and valleys.  Here, however, are some of the humble beginnings of the powerful torrent.  Passes are also known as gaps and saddles, but here we have a pass that would be better termed cradle.