ZZYZX, CALIFORNIA–It is officially now a Wooster Geology tradition: every other year we take a Spring Break field trip with students, faculty and staff. So far all of our trips have been to the Mojave Desert, for reasons that will be apparent in the following posts. This expedition is the highlight of our Desert Geology course this spring. This year we have the largest group yet: eleven students, three faculty (Meagen Pollock, Shelley Judge and me — Greg Wiles could not join us because of his leave activities) and two staff (Administrative Coordinator Patrice Reeder and Geological Technician Nick Wiesenberg). We are delighted to also have with us Yoav Avni, a desert geomorphologist with the Geological Survey of Israel (and my good colleague and friend). Four vans of enthusiastic geologists!
We left Wooster very early this morning (5:30 a.m.) to catch a non-stop flight to Las Vegas from Cleveland. After picking up our vehicles at the Las Vegas airport, we drove to the Desert Studies Center (DSC) in delightfully named Zzyzx, California. We’ve stayed here many times before. The station is shown above from the mountain just to its west. Astute observers who visited this little paradise before may notice on the far right side a new solar array to supply electricity to the facility. It is all off the grid and self-contained. It feels in some ways like being on a ship at sea. On the far side of the station you can see the expanse of Soda Lake and some of the mountain ranges in the Mojave National Preserve.
This year we arrived a bit earlier than usual, so we got a chance to explore the neighborhood around the DSC. Here you can see Nick Wiesenberg and Kyle Burden checking out some nearby outcrops of deformed carbonates (probably the upper part of the Bird Springs Formation, which is Permian in age). This was a chance to break in our boots and stretch our legs before settling into our quarters. The weather is overcast right now, but will dramatically improve tomorrow for the rest of the week.
The weather promises to be excellent for the week we are in the Mojave. All is well as the adventure begins!
