Hiking in the desert is fairly easy. The views are distant, the plants life is well dispersed, though spiny, the cactus is easy to avoid, and the surface is easy to negotiate due to the ‘desert pavement‘. In some places it’s like walking on a mosaic tiled lane. This however is man-made desert pavement, a little patio I laid between the camper and trailer.
The pictures just don’t do the rocks justice, they are so sparkly with quartz and pyrite (fools gold)!
A motorcycle ride took us to a distant mountain peak that is covered with antennas and microwave towers. Black Mountain is so named because from a distance it looks very black. As we rode up the gradual slope we noticed that the color is derived from the surface rocks that are covered with desert varnish, a dark, glossy thin layer composed of minerals oxidized, over the course of thousands of years, by bacteria living on the rock surface.
From the peak we looked east towards the Colorado River. We saw it as a ribbon of blue with margins of green vegetation in the distance as it emerges from the Picacho Peak Wilderness. The landscape is so large it just doesn’t translate well to a tiny website picture!
It’s warm and sunny, but very windy a lot of the time. We try to hike at least four miles a day. We headed out on one of the many gravel roads criss-crossing the mountains, then ventured off into a little canyon or dry wash.
There must be episodes of very heavy rainfall from all the erosion evidence.
Not all holes in the rock are man made! The man made mine entrances have piles of tailings spilling from them.
We’ve moved on to the desert south and east of the Salton Sea, at the base of the Cargo Muchacho mountains. The amazing Algodones Dunes lie west of us. We can see them from our vantage point. They may be the result of these mountains eroding over the millenium, or the accelerated erosion caused by the extensive mining of the area over the last 300 years!
The ocotillo have leafed out meaning there has been some precipitation recently. A few are still in bloom.
The Dunes are the very faint beige line on the horizon to the left.
We returned to the Oasis via another road yesterday, hiking another 7 miles around and under the palm shade.
