A desert sage adventure

Desert hills, sage in foreground

In the Mojave National Preserve, desert sage is everywhere, acres of it, whole arroyos full of it, great gardens spread out lengthwise over hillsides. Its leaves smell recognisably like common sage, only stronger, spicier, and more like armpits (hmm, maybe I'm not overselling it here?) Some plants have an almost coyote-pee stink to them.

This is not the world-famous white sage, used for smudging. Nor is it the giant Mojave blue sage, whose flower spikes have huge magnificent spheres of blue rising up out of the grey-green foliage, one of the only Mojave flowering plants that you can buy in nurseries. This is the desert sage, salvia dorrii, also called Great Basin sage or purple sage. It grows all over the place around here, but in very specific kinds of terrain: not too high up, not too low (too hot in the desert valleys), usually on sloping ground, often in wide washes.

Caruthers Canyon

Towards the New York Mountains

A spring weekend morning, an unexplored road, and a 4x4 with new tyres is a sure recipe for happiness. The trusty 'Hiking in the Mojave Desert' won, yet again, with another spot-on recommendation. 

Caruthers Canyon reminds me of very old descriptions of canyons in the desert southwest - the isolation and unspoiled beauty, the trees, flowers and peacefulness. (Probably those 19th and early 20th century authors did not have the near-constant noise of planes overhead though.) 

She gets a bit bumpy aye.

We could camp here. Look! It has a table!

This haven of pine trees, granite, and wildflowers is just three hours from home. Two of those are over dirt roads, of which some are graded and not too washboardy, and some are tracks that would make you yelp. (Barreeeee!) 

We picnicked in the shade of an oak tree. These desert species are non-deciduous and have sturdy little leaves, almost like holly leaves. The warm sun on nearby junipers made a fragrant accompaniment.

Then we walked up the track to the camping - and immediately wished we had driven up there before lunch. The pines shelter a few primitive campsites, and the granite outcrops are all sorts of picturesque. There are grizzly-bear-prickly-pears sprawling low to the ground, and stony hills rising on three sides. 

We could buy it. Look! It has a wall!

On the way out from the canyon, we saw 20 acres for sale and had to be quite stern with each other. We already own an ample number of tumbledown out-of-the-way properties. (Surely just one more couldn't hurt?)

Our drive home took us along the Mojave Road, a 500-year old trail westwards through the desert. In many places it is sunken six feet or more below the level of the surrounding desert, and you have the feeling of being immersed, or of tunneling through sand. And my word, but the Mojave is astounding in bloom this year. Hillsides purple with sage or golden with - eh, IDK, yellow flowers, I guess. Lots of globe mallow making fields of orange, and splashes of day-glo cactus blooms and paintbrush.

There's something soul-cleansing about being out in the middle of that rich dense everything, all calmly going about its normal occasions. Sometimes it's even enough to last me all week.   

Ozymandias and the Zzyzx dancing girls (Desert Studies Center, Mojave National Preserve)

I could only see them as plumptious dancers, green fan hands high and modestly wrapped to to the ankles. Try un-seeing that now. Eh, you're welcome.

Zzyzx dancing girls

Cima Dome / Teutonia Peaks (a Mojave desert hike)

One of our favourite desert spots is the Cima Dome / Teutonia Peaks walk in the Mojave National Preserve. Simon went there in the winter and saw animal tracks in the snow. I've so far only been in the spring, but I've been trying to make up for lost time by taking visitors out to enjoy the cactus in flower, Joshua tree forest, other wildflower blooms in great profusion (especially desert sage) - and of course, the solitude.

The Evening Star Mine - a mountain bike jaunt in the Mojave desert

One of our favourite desert spots is the Cima Dome / Teutonia Peaks walk in the Mojave National Preserve. We generally park at the Mojave Cross in the shade of a grand juniper tree, and there are graded dirt roads that stretch invitingly north and west towards Kessler Peak and the Ivanpah Mountains. We've looked at them on a number of occasions and wondered to each other what might be up there. Then, at the Kelso depot visitor centre, we bought Michel Digonnet's excellent Hiking the Mojave Desert - and it showed what looked like a pretty do-able mountain bike loop, a few miles up to Copper Cove, rich with old mines from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

So when a comparatively cool day came along, we thought we'd take our bikes out, ride up the Kessler Peak road, and see what we could find. We loaded up with plenty of water and a White Knight's pannier full of necessities from spare innertubes to a thermos of iced coffee ... and put the feet to the pedals.

Pancake prickly pear

The road was certainly not 2WD suitable, with a high crown that would have more than tickled Harry's belly, besides loose sandy patches and momentum-swallowing gravel. There had been a big storm through a few days before; the surface is quite possibly usually better than this. (Or then again, possibly not ... the National Parks Service has a budget backlog longer than the Teen's Thinkgeek wishlist and this is a wilderness preserve, not Grand Canyon South Rim.)

Anyhow, it was an interesting road. One of the things about this region is the vast variety of rock exposed by the upthrust and erosion as the crustal plate was alternately stretched, squeezed and twisted. Riding or walking through alluvial fan, you see just all kinds of things. Lovely glittering quartz and its friends are over-represented here. When I could drag my attention away from just surviving the next few seconds, or luckily was off the bike to walk it through some especially rocky or washed patch of road, the contrast of colours and textures were striking. The vegetation is lush this summer, Joshua tree 'forest' and all sorts of cholla and prickly pear cactus among other things.

Does this pic make me look intrepid? Nah.

And, disclosure: I'm a 'fraidy-cat. I wish I had Simon's gung-ho confidence on a bike, but I have to substitute grit, and walking the hard parts. I kept just locking up when the wheels started dragging in sticky, stop-you-instantly sand or washed out mini canyons interspersed with fist-sized chunks of rock. Embarrassing. Stressful. (It wasn't the terrain as much as the terror. Last time I came off my mountain bike I was off it for a year with a rotator cuff injury and my body still remembers this, since that year was only up a few months ago.) But I finished the ride, did not fall, did not die of heart failure, and did not swear at my long-suffering companion. Proud of self.

I was somewhat consoled for my timidity when we met a party in a big 4WD ute/flatbed. They were stopped in the roadway so we, necessarily, stopped behind them, and we chatted a few minutes ... they had been out playing in the desert too. And they thought we were "hardcore," riding bikes. Well - maybe. I don't feel very hardcore.

They headed away back towards the paved road, and we continued on our way. We didn't have a large scale topo map, so we were pretty careful to stick to the main road. As it rose up the hill we started to spot old mine workings, including a large wooden headframe. We kept on until we found roads heading up towards that wooden structure, which literally has bits swinging in the breeze.

This is the Evening Star Mine, where tin, copper, and tungsten were extracted. You can look down through the picturesquely rusting safety cap and see the vertical extent of the number 2 shaft - as well as get down into the trench between it and number 1. We saw the old powder house, the ruins of a metal cabin, and traces of several other buildings up on the plateau westward of the main workings.

 

Headframe for hauling and milling tin	Any old iron
The powder house	75 feet or more down #2 shaft
Safety cap, thx NPS!	Spot the turquoise blue pebbles, e.g. at lower RH

I was fascinated by the tailings - copper having been mined here, there are pretty blue and green pebbles, some with green crystalline layers. Many of the stone and rock pieces underfoot are a handsome olive green; others are white and glitter with tiny crystals. I even saw one pebble that was striped in four colours: ochre, deep grey, cream, and bright turquoise blue.

Before starting back, we stopped in the shade of a Joshua tree for iced coffee and fresh dates. And observed a fire ring nearby ... which means we can come back and camp some time!

As we came back down the rough road, the early evening saw the rabbits and other skitterers coming out to play. Mat time on the blanket next to Harry, and then we re-packed the car full of bikes and headed home through another sublime southwest evening.