The Arizona Snowbelt and Volcanoes of Flagstaff

Like much of the rest of the continent, Arizona is a land of extremes.  While most people figure the land to be a sun-baked desert favored by golfing retirees, 27% of the state is still forested, which is actually on par with many countries in western Europe.  One such area makes up a good portion of the middle of the state, in a lovely mass of pines that stretch from the rim of the Grand Canyon to the New Mexican border, surrounded on the north and east sides by high sagebrush desert and grasslands, and on the south and west sides by the desert of imagination, the Sonoran, complete with the branching saguaros and seemingly bare mountains.  The lands on the north and east sides looking into the mountains and forests can be seen in an earlier post here.  Of course, the crowning point of the coniferous oasis would be the volcanic peaks around Flagstaff, renowned for their quality of skiing and picturesque proportions.

The San Francisco Peaks from I-40 eastbound, about 7 miles west of the peaks and Flagstaff, and 7200 feet above sea level.

When a child draws a picture of a mountain, usually a triangle with a jagged snowline and cap on top, these peaks are just about what they look like, owing to the neat (if volatile) formation of volcanic mountains such as these.  The scene is enough to make one think they are in some part of California or Colorado rather than dusty hot Arizona, but this is where that picture was taken, not 20 miles from the northern edge of the Sonoran desert.  Elevation means a lot out here, so much so that traveling from Phoenix to Flagstaff (150 miles) is the climactic equivalent of traveling from Phoenix to Montana or Alberta.  The area around the base of the peaks can often reach into the mild 40's during the day, but the freezing nights in the teens and persistent snowfall of 100 inches a year usually means a nice powder of several feet blesses the landscape for some time.  These were the exact conditions when I was last there, in the third week of December back in 2008.  "Powder" certainly described the snow, which gets its light consistency from being depleted of saturation after Pacific rains hit the California coastal mountains, their leftover moisture is spread thin in the desert skies, and then are forced against these higher elevations once more, this time very much, well, powdery.  This is surely one of the more difficult places in the world to make a wet and powerful snowball.

About 10 more miles back from the vantage point in the photograph above.  The peaks are visible from as far away as Williams.  

This sort of landscape survives in pockets even further south into the Sonoran desert in the form of "sky islands", mountains that catch leftover Pacific moisture before it makes a powerful stop in the Rockies to the east.  The great central Arizonan forests do reach a southern end generally north of I-10 and the Mexican border, where they are separated, by a bridge between the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts consisting of lovely grasslands and oak woodlands, from ranges to the south that carry the alpine forests and winter snows well south into central Mexico.  Like much of the rest of the arid west, the snows and forests are quickly passed through on our present modes of transportation, which no doubt leads to an even greater impression on passersby.

Other Blogs: Wildflowers of Indiana

The next few days will feature sporadic or absent posting on American Voyages.  In the meantime, feast your eyes on some lovely wildflowers over at Get Your Botany On! :

http://getyourbotanyon.blogspot.com/2012/08/post-number-500_7.html

The blog is celebrating their 500th post, which they decided to do by showing a "best of" collection of flower pictures.  Many of these species are some of the loveliest you can find in the Midwest and Nearwest, and the selections posted are a nice sampling of flora you can find everywhere from woods to fens to prairies and the ecosystems in between.

Sunday Afternoon Post: John Smith

Here we have the John Smith statue in front of the excavated ruins of Jamestowne.  He faces the James River, which he probably stared at a lot while his colony was going through the pains of growth and alternating decay.  The people he brought with him were settlers, while he and many who would follow him were not content to merely stay by the river, but explore it further upstream and into the wilds beyond.  Behind him is a lovely tidewater pine and baldcypress forest, probably looking not that different from when he first set ashore here.

Parks in the News: Hetch Hetchy possibly unleashed!

Hetch Hetchy Valley was one of the first great casualties of the war waged by the conservation movement.  These days we tend to think of National Parks as nature preserves with recreational opportunities in them.  Back in the early days of the park system, protected lands were involved in a battle over utility vs. preservation.  San Francisco needed a reliable source of water delivered to it, and a reservoir capturing runoff from the Sierras seemed like a good idea at the time.  Unfortunately, instead of damming an expanse at slightly lower elevations, plans were drawn up to damn the valley, despite protests to the contrary by John Muir and many, many other people.  The valley, you see, was already a part of Yosemite National Park, and could easily go toe to toe with Yosemite Valley in terms of sheer beauty.  This is what it looked like before the damming:

Public Domain,  Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. VI. No. 4, January, 1908, pg. 211.

These days it pretty much looks like a third to a half of the bottom of the valley is missing.  This might very well change soon, however...

 http://www.wdam.com/story/19195501/yosemites-lost-valley-will-be-subject-of-vote

In a change of pace from the usual entrenchment of the conservation movement well into liberal front lines, environmentalists are siding with the Republican party against the San Francisco Democrats, with both the green and the elephant hoping to unleash the waters of Hetch Hetchy so that they may flow freely once more.  This comes in the midst of an age when the Sierras and much of the rest of California are experiencing some heavy drought, which is the last time one would figure a vote would be put forth to remove a source of water from a major city.  The battle of the damn is turning into a very peculiar and unpredictable conflict, and the outcome might have ramifications for water use agendas elsewhere on the continent.

A Different Detroit

If you follow the media and pop-culture produced anywhere outside of the Detroit area, you probably have a rather bleak view of a city that conjures up images of war torn streets, abandoned buildings and fields taking up the space of where healthy neighborhoods should be, and blight in general.  You know, something that pretty much every city in the world has at least a few bad places of!  '

You probably would not imagine a scene of skyscrapers rising above a very tree dense urban landscape, something almost akin to a morning scene in one of the more quiet corners of Central Park.

This sort of scene is not a carefully orchestrated illusion, but just a casual shot taken from the forth floor of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, looking out to downtown while lies four miles distant, as the crow flies.  What you see is a lovely sunrise obscured in fog and mist, not pollution.  Los Angeles and New York cannot say the same for their mornings a good deal of the time, and yet more people can relate good times and great stories about such places.  Perspective is everything, and the important part to remember about taking a fresh look at our continent's "different" places is that the negatives always seem to outweigh the positives.  Next time, instead of looking at a news report on the "worst cities", try asking someone from Detroit what they love about the area.  The same goes for any place out there you might have thought was undesirable.

Coastal Californian Sage Scrub

While the coastal basins and valleys of southern California are a welcome respite from the intense heat and aridity of the interior deserts, the succulent and drought-hardy brush even right on the misty and moderate climate of the immediate coast is a reminder that this is a dry land.

Taken at Leo Carillo State Beach, just inside the western border of Los Angeles county, California.

Indeed, were it not for the importation of water, the large cities of Los Angeles and San Diego would not be possible, to say nothing about their questionable sustainability.  Still, it seems that the pleasant climate of the coastal counties keeps people around there, and imported water is joined by all sorts of introduced vegetation to make the area seem like it is either an imitation of Florida or northern California than the dry region that it is in reality.  This is not to say that the place is a true desert; the montane chaparral is actually vibrant and quite lush.  Still, the plants here can more than tolerate the dry summer conditions that the area is prone to.

Wednesday Filler: Where Warm California Meets Winter California

At around 6,000 feet above sea level in the Sierra Nevadas, the thickening oak forests and chaparral give way to coniferous forests, which in some places include Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron Giganteum).

General's Highway, Sequoia National Park.

The transition is sudden, and even though each forest merges into the other rather gracefully, in some places one just needs to turn a corner and see a completely different world around it.  Some elements of each ecosystem do continue on into the neighboring one, but the dominant life in both transforms the surroundings in an almost magical way.