Caltech

ASB Owens Valley: Departure

We woke up early in the morning, packed up all of our stuff and got ready to head back home. However, on the way back we stopped off at fossil falls for some sight-seeing. Fossil falls is a massive field of volcanic rocks strewn everywhere. It's pretty impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

After hiking for a little while we got to a waterfall without water (hence the fossil falls or fossil of a falls I guess?). Back when the Owens River was in service it cut a channel through the rocks and made a waterfall. even though the water wasn't there it was still pretty awesome. Even the rainy day didn't dampen the experience.

 

 

 

 

Driving back home was pretty intense. We happened to get the one torrential downpour that hit Pasadena. Nevertheless, we got home safely. The trip was a lot of fun and was also a great learning experience. I hope that some of you guys can check out some of the different ASB's when you're at Caltech.

ASB Owens Valley: The Volunteering Continues

We got up early to pack our lunches and then set out again to the Alabama Hills for some vertical mulching. However, being proactive at getting distracted we decided to take a pre-break and visit a larger natural arch before getting down to work.

 

 

 

 

And, like many natural arches in the area, it suddenly became populated with tourists.

 

 

 

 

 

And, much like before, we again took a group shot (this time with matching T-shirts!) to commemorate the second day of work and the fact that arches are pretty cool. Fun side note: Mount Whitney is the right most mountain that you can see inside of the arch.

 

 

 

We returned to our vertical mulching site and proceeded where we had left off. Once again, my roommate and I got distracted and stumbled upon some really cool cave things.

 

 

 

 

At the end of the day we successfully vertically mulched our trail and took another group photo commemorating our completion of the job as well as receiving free BLM T-shirts and McDonalds coupons!

 

 

 

 

After we left the Alabama Hills we rendezvoused back at the hostel and took a trip out to Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp set up during World War 2. There we learned about the history of the area as well as many of the stories of the internees who were held there.

 

We finished up the night with a talk from Mike. He gave us a more in-depth discussion on the LA Water Wars and also the effect that it had on the birds and their habitats in Owens Lake (which was his area of expertise). While the lake was pretty much drained from diverting the water, through conservation efforts as well as the reintroduction of some water into the lake, it is starting to regain some of its former habitat.

ASB Owens Valley The Volunteering Begins

We woke up super early to pack our lunches before heading out to our work site in the Alabama Hills. In true tourist fashion, before getting to work we all lined up for a group photo commemorating our start of work and the productivity that was to ensue...

 

This is the whole group. Mike (the guy in the back row with the blue button-down shirt) was our contact in Lone Pine. He is a local resident that works with conservationists to protect bird habitats and was also our coordinator for the volunteering. I am the guy in the back row on the very right hand side with the red jacket. You can see a lot of the shrubbery in the near part of the background with some cool rocks a little bit farther back and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the waaayyyyy back.

 

 

 

This is a cool landscape shot. Does it look like Afghanistan? Compare:

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mike hooked us up with Dave from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) who took us to our site and organized the work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Alabama Hills there are trails that run up and around the hills to let people drive around without requiring a Jeep. However, since the area has minimal human disturbance, they like to keep those trails to a minimum and certainly don't want multiple trails going to and from the same places. Our volunteering was on one of these redundant trails. Our job was to plant various dead sticks and bushes that we found in the desert vertically in the path of the trail, known as "vertical mulching." This was for a few reasons. The first was aesthetic: this made the trail less visible from a distance and helped the look of the hill. The second was practical: when the sticks and shrubs decomposed they would provide nutrients for other plants to grow and repopulate the trail. The end result looked like this (too the right). Wow, I can't even see the trail!

 

 

 

 

Now, if at this point you are thinking, "Wow! That sounds really fun! How can I learn to vertical mulch?" you are in luck. I have put together a series of instructional pictures that will teach you how.

 

Step 1: Take your Polaski (an ax/pick combo tool) and prepare to strike the ground. Note the correct use of gloves to avoid splinters and the good hand placement and body position. Please also note that this much windup is completely unnecessary and ridiculous.

Step 2: Strike the ground with your Polaski to break up the soil. Note that if you actually look like this you will get tired really fast. It's better to just skip step 1, kneel down and strike the soil, but this looks a lot cooler.

 

Step 3: Shovel the softened dirt of to the side to make a fairly deep hole.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4: Place the dead stick in the hole, oriented vertically and support it by refilling the hold with dirt. Now you have successfully vertically mulched!

 

 

 

 

After a little while of vertical mulching we got lazy and decided to do some exploring. Mike told us that there was a natural arch about a five minute walk away so we took a break to check it out.

Look! It's a rock donut! Evidently these things form by the wind carrying dust and dirt particles that strike the rock and wear it away. Over time, some will develop a depression in the center which will eventually turn into an arch like this one. And... when there are tourists around, these arches will spontaneously become populated with people! :O 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After our arch escapade we got back to vertical mulching. However, when my roommate and I were off searching for more sticks we found a natural cave! So, we got sidetracked again and continued in unproductivity.

This picture was really uncomfortable to take. Looks pretty weird too. The cave was about 8 ft. in diameter so, as you can see, it could fit quite a few people inside. There was another one right next to it that wasn't completely hollowed out so it wasn't as fun to take pictures in.

 

 

After we were done with the cave it was time for lunch. So, before we walked down the hill to the cars and food I decided to do a little mountaintop break-dancing.

Note: not everything you see in pictures is real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch we head out to Owens Lake were we met with Jeff from the Department of Water and Power (DWP). Jeff told us about the different conservation efforts that they're using to mitigate the dust problem created by the drying of Owens lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See that dust in the background? That is a problem. However, it used to be a super-huge problem. Now only the least dusty 10% of Owens Lake has uncontrolled dust problems. So, if you imagine that dust, but everywhere, that's what it used to be like a few years ago. The dust is cause by wind stirring up the sediments left behind in the dry lake bed.

 

 

 

This is not snow. This is the left over sediments that used to be in the lake and is what is causing the dust problem. There is a lot of it. Pretty crazy huh?

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned before, the DWP is using three different methods of controlling the dust. The first two are by using gravel and by planting vegetation.

This used to be a lake. Now it's a field?

 

 

 

 

The third way is by reintroducing water.

Yay! This is a lake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After taking a tour of the lake we stopped by an old Mining (and now Ghost) town called Keeler. It literally seemed like only 20 people lived there. Sorry I don't have any pictures, check the other blog for that. Then we headed back to the hostel, grabbed some pizza and slept!

Alternative Spring Break (ASB) Owens Valley: The Beginning

The alternative spring break trips are organized yearly by the Caltech Y. If you want to get more information on them you can go to their website www.caltechy.edu and also learn about other fun volunteering opportunities on campus. Basically, we get to go to different cool places and volunteer there for around 4 days during our spring vacation. This year there were three opportunities: one went out to Yosemite, one to Glendale and one to Owens Valley. I didn't go on the Yosemite or Glendale trips so I can't really say too much about them but I can talk about the Owens Valley trip!

I personally had a pretty crazy start to the ASB trip. I had signed up as a driver for one of the cars so I went to the Caltech Y early to register with the rental car company. Unfortunately, when I got to the rental place they saw that my drivers license had expired two days before! Since I wasn't able to drive, one of the other members of the Caltech Y staff volunteered to drive us up instead. So, I got to sleep during the ride up there and he was able to go up to Mammoth ski resort for the weekend and enjoy the 4 ft. of power they got over the course of the previous week and during his stay there. (Mammoth is about 6 hours drive away. If you're interested in skiing or snowboarding, each house generally has 1 house ski trip during winter term. It's a lot of fun). So it worked out for everyone. After about a full day of waiting in the Pasadena DMV when we got back from Owens Valley I received my new California drivers license! They say that on every trip at least one thing will go wrong so I guess we got our one problem out of the way early since the rest of the trip went really smoothly.

The trip up to Owens Valley took about 4 hours. On the way we talked about crazy stories to keep us entertained as well as saw different parts of the LA aqueduct along various points on the route. For those of you who are not familiar with Owens Valley or the LA Water Wars story (like I was until I took this trip) LA decided to solve their water problems in the early 1900's by building a huge aqueduct that collected water from the Sierra Nevada mountains. This water used to flow into Owens Lake and Owens River but was instead diverted to LA (and accounts for around half of LA's water supply). As a result, Owens Lake and Owens River dried up leaving behind a lot of sediments that were dissolved in the water as well as causing a lot of other problems. These problems got so bad that local farmers and citizens started putting dynamite in the aqueduct to blow it up, which is known as the LA Water Wars. In addition, until a few years ago when they started taking preventative measures, the sediments from the dried up lake caused huge dust storms in the valley. Now, with the introduction of a little bit of water and the use of strategic grass growing they are starting to recover a bit of the previous ecosystem as well as control the dust problem. If you're particularly interested in learning more you can wiki Owens Valley or LA Water Wars.

Anyways, we arrived at our hostel which was located in Lone Pine, a town nearby that is used mostly to lodge hikers trying to climb Mount Whitney. The hostel was pretty sweet. Our room had two old school bunk beds and its own bathroom and shower (which is pretty luxurious for a hostel I am told). After unpacking we grabbed some dinner and went down the street to the Lone Pine Movie Museum. It turns out that Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills (where we would be working the next day) were pretty famous. Many cowboy movies such as The Lone Ranger were filmed there because the hills and local shrubbery looked like places where... cowboys were?... and it even posed for locations such as India since it looked like what Americans thought India looked like. More recent movies that were filmed there include Tremors and ... Iron Man (one). Lone Pine was used for the Afghanistan scenes including the cool scene with the Jericho Missiles and the big explosions. Pretty cool. We checked around the museum which had a bunch of movie stuff, watched Gold Diggers of 1933, an old movie from the depression, and then went back to the Hostel to get a good night sleep before our hard day of work the next day. (Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post, there will be plenty to make up for it tomorrow!)