Glen Canyon During High Flow

Images from my first day in the new job!

Launch site Lees Ferry at dawn, looking towards the Paria riffle west towards Marble Canyon. You can just about see a USGS cableway used for sampling the river stage (height), discharge, and sediment:

Lees Ferry is the only place where you can drive to the waters edge in the whole of the Colorado River in canyon country, therefore it is used to launch craft looking to go upriver (east through Glen Canyon towards Glen Canyon Dam), or downriver through Marble Canyon and Grand Canyon. It is so-called because it was once the site of a ferry which allowed people to cross the Colorado, named after a Mormon settler John Lee.

We went upstream in a small rib (inflatable boat) towards Glen Canyon Dam (picture below is as close as we dare to get!) during a high flow experiment:

 

 The high flow experiment (controlled flood) is designed to build sandbars. Since the construction of the dam in 1963 the sandbars (beaches at the river edge) in Glen, Marble and Grand Canyons have undergone massive erosion. Halting this trend is a key goal for a number of reasons: for example, sandbars provide habitat, shelter and spawning ground for fish, and also sites for campers rafting or canoeing downstream.

Our task was to surveying the water level during this controlled flood where the water level is much higher than normal, in order to update and expand the stage-(dam)discharge relationship. These controlled floods only come about every 4 years so it's a rare and exciting opportunity to do so.

 View of one of the larger sandbars at one of the important archaeological sites (you can just about make out my colleagues if you click on the image to expand it):

Anyway, a really really brief tiny taste of what I do now, for anyone who was wondering!

Pueblo Ruins in Wupatki National Monument

Yesterday I visited the Wupatki National Monument, about an hour north of Flagstaff (marked by the A below):

It will be the first visit of many visits. Situated between the San Francisco Peaks and the Coconino National Forest to the west and south, dominated by volcanoes and Ponderosa pine trees, and the Little Colorado River and Navajo Nation to the east, Wupatki is a transitional landscape between volcanic and desert. It is managed by the National Parks service because of its exceptional beauty and because of its cultural heritage.

Wupatki (pronounced Woo-Pot-Kee) National Monument protects the ancient dwellings of puebloan peoples. I found the remains of brick pueblos (villages) utterly captivating.

Below is a ruined Wupatki pueblo community hall, which is evidence of a large farming community which dates back to the 1100s:

This structure is seriously cool. It consists of tens of individual rooms, some which would have been at least 2 storeys supported by wooden beams. It is build from little bricks and clay mortar very similar to those used today:

It's much larger than other dwellings found nearby, so it was probably an important meeting and trading place, which is also evidenced by 2 large open-air walled meeting rooms nearby. It is thought that the puebloan peoples migrated here from even more arid regions on the Colorado Plateau, before moving on and establishing other communities by about 1250. What's interesting is that this huge community was established and obviously thriving in a time of volcanic activity (just south and west is Sunset Crater Volcano which was active around that time). Perhaps all the volcanic activity promoted rainfall which aided crop growing.

A few miles away are remains of the Lomaki Pueblo ("pretty village"):

When building this 9-room, 2 storey dwelling in the 1190s, the Pueblo people used existing rock outcrops as structural support and to cut down the amount of labour required to build the homes. It is immediately adjacent to a 3/4 mile long earth crack in the Kaibab limestone which was probably created during the volcanic eruptions, possibly because it acted temporarily as a water conduit?

Fascinating stuff, and wonderfully preserved and accessible. The descendents of the people who built these pueblos still live nearby, and include the Hopi, Zuni and Navajo people. I'm looking forward to learning more about these people and their history whilst I'm here.

Raising Arizona

I now live in Flagstaff, Coconino County, Northern Arizona.

It is the second largest county in the U.S. and is also physically larger than many European nation-states. I find this staggering.

It is home to, among others, Grand Canyon National Park, Coconino National Forest, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Walnut Canyon National Monument, and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. That I live and work here I find staggering.

This blog is about my capers in this part of the world, in between staggers, and I promise I'll be as darn-tootin' as I can!