Looking East

I posted a video compilation of the views to the west showing the Chiricahua Mountains taken over time and now the reciprocal video, the views east over the Peloncillo Mountains.  Taken from the narrowest part of the San Simon Valley, about 9-10 miles wide and from the Painted Pony Resort, this video shows how the landscape and mountains of southern New Mexico are always in motion, always changing, always presenting something new to see with each glance.  The idea of landscapes in motion is not new.  Time lapse photography allows the compression of hours into minutes and the time scale can easily vary.  This compilation of images spans about 5 years and is by no means complete, but is representative of some of the scenes collected over time. Many are sunrise views taken throughout the year but some sunset and day time scenes are also included (especially if the clouds were interesting).  Another observation of how the landscape is always in flux for those willing to pay attention to their surroundings.

Keep Looking Up

It has been busy around the Painted Pony Resort with 5 groups, including a wedding and the owners quarterly week long visit, along with rain this spring.  Two sets of guests were here when it rained and the roads and parking areas required a great deal of work to get the vehicle packed gravel restored so everything looks nice.  As a consequence I have had little free time to pursue the blog and for this I apologize.  As a reminder of the beauty of the southwest and an invitation to come visit, here is a sunrise view of contrails over Antelope pass in the Peloncillo mountains at sunrise taken yesterday morning as I started work in the high desert of New Mexico.

Keep Looking Up.  Contrails over Antelope pass in the Peloncillo mountains at sunrise.  Click to enlarge and see the face in the lower right corner looking up.

Peloncillo Mimetolith

It has been staring at me in the face for a long time, but I missed it, another mimetolith (rock face) in the Peloncillo mountains.  There are a number of face profiles in the Chiricahua mountains, the most well know is Cochise Head visible from all around the Chiricahua mountains.  But others, watching over the landscape, are around like these 2 embedded mimetoliths on the Silver Peak trail.  It is amazing what you will find when you stop and look.

The First Winter Precipitation

With a good summer monsoon season, the Painted Pony Resort received 7.5" of rain, the winter precipitation started early.  The San Simon Valley and the surrounding mountain ranges received rain and snow this weekend before Thanksgiving.  PPR gained 0.9" of precipitation from the storm and the mountains received much more.  Sunday morning provided a nice view of the Peloncillo Mountains to the east covered in clouds and snow.  Below is a desaturated image of the Peloncillo mountains taken this morning from the Painted Pony Resort.  Gray mountain is just left of center and reaches a height of over 6000', about 2000' above the valley floor.

Sunday morning view from the Painted Pony Resort.

It's Better Than Fireworks During the Monsoons

Fireworks, though legal in New Mexico, are often banned on the 4th of July because of the danger of inadvertent fires during the pre-monsoon dry conditions.  But mother natures displays are always legal and frequently much more spectacular and interesting.  The local lore holds that the monsoon season begins on the 4th of July and this year was no different.  PPR has received about 1.5" of rain since the 4th and last nights monsoon brought an exceptional lightning display over the Peloncillo mountains bringing 0.42" of rain to the Painted Pony Resort.  Guests were out on the patio watching nature's display and the oohs and aahs were audible across the estate with each new lightening strike.  Although the estate, as well as the surrounding valley lost power for several hours, the lightning display was a worth while event to witness.  Several lightning photos were captured before the rain arrived at PPR and are shown below.  Of course all the really great lightning strikes occurred while the camera was cycling after each photograph, but out of about 75 images 3 caught some of the action.

A looping lightning bolt, coming down but going back up

A double hit in Antelope Pass

A single lightning bolt over the Peloncillo mountains

Hiking in the High New Mexico Desert

Thursday and it's hiking day and another trip with the Portal Rodeo Hiking Club.

This trip was scheduled to depart from the Paint Pony Resort, with hiking over to large outcrops at the base of the Peloncillo Mountains on the east side of the San Simon Valley just north of Rodeo.  Upon going outside around sunrise though the scene was one of snow.  The previous night the valley received snow and the mountains and landscape were blanketed with about 1-2 inches of water in its solid form, but with clear blue skies and rising temperatures it looked to be a nice day for winter desert hiking.  Twenty one hikers arrived at the Painted Pony Resort and the group then drove over to the edge of the riverbed to start their weekly cure for nature deficit disorder.  The group made its first stop at a small Mimbres hamlet discovered on the Painted Pony Resort property and after a short description it was onward onto BLM land.  Crossing the old El Paso and Southwestern railroad bed the group continued toward the goal of the outcrops.  These large outcrops show bedding planes of tuff, conglomerates, and some debris from earlier volcanic activity and differential weathering created wide ledges used by former inhabitants of the area for grinding seeds.  Pictographs and 30-40 grinding holes were found along one ledge and additional grinding holes were discovered on top of the outcrop by those daring enough to make the climb.  After a relaxing lunch in the winter sun the group headed back to the vehicles covering between 7 to 8 miles of easy high desert hiking out and back.  The map for this hike may be found here or in the side bar.

It is difficult to adequately demonstrate the scale of features in the high desert and things that look close frequently turn out to be miles away.  Below is a 360 degree photosynth created from below the outcrops in the small valley created by the surrounding rocks.  Hikers may be found in the image which give a sense of scale of this feature everyone locally sees while driving along highway 80.  Click on the image to interact and navigate around the panorama (it requires installation of Microsofts Silverlight and the photosynth should prompt you if you do not have it installed).  Below the photosynth is an additional panoramic view of the outcrop also with hikers for scale.

Outcrop at the base of the Peloncillo Mountains with tiny hikers

Ledge of grinding holes
 

Hiking with the Portal Rodeo Hiking Club

With winter snows at the higher elevations in the Chiricahua mountains the location for the weekly Portal Rodeo hike was at lower elevations in the Pelocillo mountains.  Twenty three hikers, including a number of visitors to the area gathered at the Chiricahua Desert Museum for the drive north.  After reshuffling hikers into 6 vehicles the group headed out.

Just south of I-10 on the east side of the San Simon Valley in the Peloncillo mountains lie several faults with old mines and prospects.  One of these, the Johnny Bull mine, "produced an unknown amount of copper, mostly before 1905" (1).  The site sits below McGee Peak on the west side of the Peloncillo mountains just across the ridge from the Carbonate Hill mine, another mine which produced lead, zinc, and silver.  Parking at the turnoff to the mine the group headed up hill.

The area is characterized by Mississippian aged Escabrosa limestone
with an intrusive band of volcanic rock.  Along the contact between these 2 groups and near the visible fault lines mineralization occurred and the mines and prospects are found along this interface.  Vertically oriented bands of mineralization may be seen at the surface and in the old adits and shafts, see below.  In the mine dump outside of one of the adits turquoise may be found.  Small pieces, light to medium blue in color, dot the dump that spills down the hillside.

The groups first stop was an old stone 3 room building.  Perhaps the mine headquarters, this building shows some interesting architectural details including arched windows and doors.  Continuing uphill the group came to 2 adits.  Above this were several vertical shafts with a headframe, and 2 ore shoots leading down to the level of the adits.  After some exploration, the group scattered with some heading south at the elevation of the headframe while others wandered back down hill before heading south across the exposed limestone slope of the Peloncillo mountains to other adits and prospects.  Passing a number of dugouts along the walls of the arroyos, these may have served as simple miners sleeping quarters.  Arriving at another major working the group took a break and ate lunch while looking for small chips of turquoise.  Similar to the other workings, this site was composed of 2 horizontal adits with a vertical shaft leading to the surface above the adits.  A bird, perhaps a raven, had built a large nest on a ledge in the vertical shaft next to an ore vein, see image below.  Sheltered from the wind and predators this nest still has a nice view of the greenery but in this case it is exposed copper mineralization.

A short winter hike of only about 3 miles, everyone seemed to enjoy a day out on the landscape.  The map for this hike may be found here or on the hiking page.

1.  Mining Districts of Hidalgo County, New Mexico

Old house at the Johnny Bull mine.

Headframe at the Johnny Bull mine.

The last load, an ore shoot below the headframe.

The nest egg.  Bird nest next to ore vein.

Mineralization in a vertical shaft.

The Christmas Bird Count

The Friends of Cave Creek Canyon have posted information on the Christmas Bird Count for Portal and the Peloncillo Mountains.  The bird count in the Chiricahua Mountains will be on the 29th of December, while the Peloncillo count will take place on the 30th.  Additional information may be found at this link.

Rock Art Interpretation

Interpreting images created by a person from another culture and from a different time is fraught with problems.  The cultural threads become thinner and thinner as the time span between the creation of an image and the interpreter becomes larger.  This inverse relationship makes interpretation of pictographs and petroglyphs left by the former inhabitants of the southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona a best guess.  One approach to the problem is through the use of ethnographic studies where modern descendents maintain a stronger cultural link with the past than an interested observer.  But without direct cultural and lineal descendents this approach can at best only provide a rough guide as to the possible meaning of rock art.  Cultural materials associated with rock art may provide clues to the cultural affinity of the original creator but this requires careful excavation and recovery of associated materials and does not help the interested observer in drawing conclusions about the meaning of particular rock art found in the field.  We are left then to fall back on personal views about the meaning and these are a function of an individuals world view which may or may not coincide with those around them.

As an example the image below is a pictograph panel in Antelope Pass in the Peloncillo mountains.  The panel is 8-10 ft in length, 3-4 ft in width, and is on a large piece of breakdown which was originally part of the ceiling of a shelter cave which at some point collapsed.  Faint pictographs may still be seen on the lower surface of the exposed shelter cave wall indicating the original location of the breakdown blocks.  The collapse occurred sometime during the period of occupation as evidenced by shallow grinding holes on the broken upper surface of the breakdown.  This panel is protected from the elements by the the breakdown and the colors remain bright and the overall pattern easily observed.

At first glance the panel appears to contain connected straight lines and squiggles with the only identifiable feature being an element in the lower right that would appear to be a sun representation. One professional Biologist viewing the panel commented they observed a millipede with legs and segments. But by comparing the view from this shelter cave towards the west across the San Simon Valley to the silhouette of the Chiricahua mountains with the panel several features coincide.  Compare the pictograph panel image with the screenshot from Google Earth captured from the same location.  The squiggly line at the top may be interpreted as the silhouette of the Chiricahuas seen from the shelter cave.  The riverbed is then represented by the series of rectangles from left to right across the panel.  The riverbed would have been the most intensively farmed area in the valley and drainage from Horseshoe, Sulphur, and Cave Creek once met in this area.  The four serpentine vertical lines coincide with drainages from the Peloncillo Mountains around Antelope Pass.  The single short squiggle coincides with a short drainage that abruptly widens found just downstream (north) along the San Simon Riverbed where there are a number of recorded archeological sites.  Based on these correlations, the large blob of red pigment would be representative of the location of the shelter cave and view.  Below these are 2 additional linear features which, if a map, would coincide with the Animas and Hatchett mountains.  Below this lie 2 parallel lines of dots perhaps representing a north/south road or trail similar to the one proposed connecting Paquime with Chaco Canyon or a trail headed into the Mimbres Valley.

The only unidentified feature on this presumptive map is the hatched feature in the middle right on the panel.  It is unclear what this feature may represent but it is perhaps worth a look sometime to look for a corollary.  While evidence of landscape representations (maps) in pictographs and petroglyphs seems to be lacking, perhaps this is the first example of a landscape rendered in a pictograph or alternatively a just a lot of hand waving.  To rise to the level of a scientific hypothesis testable predictions must arise from the hypothesis otherwise it is just a good story.

Addendum:
If this interpretation is correct, a map based on the view from the rock shelter, it contains elements from 2 sources.
1.  A direct view of the landscape from the shelter cave.
2.  Information about the landscape that was in the artists mind.  Painted features on the right side of the panel (starting at the short wide drainage) are not visible from shelter cave, the view is blocked by the Peloncillo mountains, so the information represented could only be held in the mind of the artist and added from memory.

Addendum:
It was pointed out that the "map" as currently viewed is upside down and that when on the ceiling, as originally painted, the silhouette of the Chiricahua mountains would be at the bottom.  This observation is correct but the orientation of the pictograph with respect to north is the same.   When viewed by an observer in the past north was to the left (currently north is to the right in the photograph because of the rock fall).  The position of the sun feature currently in the lower right of the photograph would have orientated a viewer.  Also of note is the location of the sun feature.  It is in the northern part of the sky suggesting the painting is during the summer months and not the winter when sunrise is further south.

Addendum:
Another pictograph with a "sun" feature and "mountains" is found about 4.5 miles further south in the Peloncillo Mountains at the base of Gray Mountain, view here.

pictograph panel

Google Earth screen shot view from shelter cave

Owl Canyon

Back to Owl Canyon was the mantra this week for the Portal Rodeo Hiking club.  Lower elevation hikes in the Pelocillo Mountains are especially attractive in the winter with hiking at warmer elevations and it was another sunny day in the valley as 13 hikers and a single dog began the trip up Owl Canyon.  About 1.5 miles in the group stopped at the dam for a break and group photograph.  Lunch was below a large spire in the canyon with the group scattered up the hillside eating and enjoying the views.  The trip covered 6.6 miles and the map for the hike may be found in the sidebar or through this link.

North ridge line in Owl Canyon

Photograph of Portal Rodeo Hiking Club at the dam in Owl Canyon by Pat Owens

Lunch in Owl Canyon

A Finished Photograph

Since posting this image of the poppies east of the Painted Pony Resort work has continued on the post production processing of the image.  The goal was to create an image that simultaneously reflected the bright colors of the blooming poppies which appear in the spring all along the valley on a background that was monochromatic reflecting the stark high desert of New Mexico with rugged views of the mountains.  By creating a series of layers (some of which were desaturated) and masking both vertically and horizontally it was possible to create the bright color in foreground where the poppies are the largest while grading off into a monochromatic background of the Peloncillo Mountains.  The highest point in the Peloncillo Mountains, Gray Mountain, is the high point on the left side image.

Poppies at the base of the Peloncillo Mountains

Layers of Mountains

Headed into Rodeo the other morning to meet with Chiricahua Sky Island Rodeo for the weekly hike when this view presented itself.  Rounding the curve by the old bridge north of town the combination of location and the early morning sun were just right creating a layered effect of the series of ridges in the Peloncillo Mountains to the southeast.  Stopping on the road and backing up to find the best location the image below was captured.

Of course the camera never records the exact image I see (the result of either the camera software or the operator), so the image was processed in Gimp.  The contrast was increased, the image partially desaturated, and the color curve adjusted slightly.  This highlighted the layering effect of the various hills and ridges from the foreground to the background.  The real trick was to achieve some differentiation between the clouds and the most distant ridge line in the photograph without overexposing the areas of clear sky and areas of the image where the sun was particularly strong.

The camera used was a Canon SX110 IS I purchased at Wallmart.  Nothing fancy, but is small and works well.

Looking southeast into the Peloncillo Mountains

Owl Canyon, Peloncillo Mountains with the Portal Rodeo Hiking Club

A beautiful winter hike in the Peloncillo Mountains is Owl Canyon and was this weeks excursion with Portal Rodeo Hiking Club. After crossing private land with the owners permission a group of 17 hikers reached public land and continued up canyon.  The canyon narrows significantly, twisting and turning as one gains elevation.  After about 1.5 miles an old silted in concrete dam is reached which provided a nice rest stop with views of the steep canyon rising up on either side.  Continuing up canyon past several forks in the stream bed with volcanic tuff walls rising on each side the hike finished at an interesting stone spire just above the stream bed.  Total distance traveled, about 6 miles and total elevation change, approximately 1000 ft.  The map may be found in the sidebar or here.

Echinocereus rigidissimus (rainbow cactus) in Owl Canyon

Juniper with a single surviving limb

Volcanic tuff spire along the trail

Gray Mountain, the highest point in the Peloncillo Mountains with the Portal Rodeo Hiking Club

The Portal Rodeo Hiking Club climbed Gray Mountain, the highest point in the Peloncillo Mountains, this week.  Access was through a locked gate on from the north but the maps show other roads from the west that might be accessible.  The route was up one draw and scree slope to a saddle and then staying on the ridge tops the group traversed to the peak of Gray Mountain.  The total round trip was between 5 and 6 miles depending upon the route and included 2000' of elevation gain.  While no trail exists, plenty of cattle paths make route finding easy.  The views from the top of Gray Mountain include the Chiricahua, Animas, Big and Little Hatchets, and the Florida Mountains.  The map of the hike is in the sidebar or here, and a 360 degree panorama from atop Gray Mountain is at Microsoft's Photosynth site.  At the top everyone broke for lunch and signed the register.  On the way down the group divided up and several hikers came down a drainage and intersected the road on the west side of the Peloncillos. This is a fun hike though some of the rarely seen Peloncillo Mountains.

Google Earth screenshot of route up Gray Mountain.

Pine Tree atop Gray Mountain.

A view of Portal Peak and the Chiricahua Mountains from the hike up Gray Mountain.

Skeleton Canyon Panorama, Making the Big Picture

On each hike with the Portal Rodeo Hiking Club, time is spent gathering photographs for a large format panorama as part of the documentation process.  The idea is to create a "big picture" view from an overlook or other scenic vista somewhere along the hike that can be translated to a reader.  In the 1500 square miles of the bootheel the views and vistas are immense and it is not difficult to find vistas where a person can easily see over 50 miles.  Coupled with the fact that humans have an approximately 180 degree field of view capturing an image that adequately presents this information can be quite a task.  Fortunately, Microsoft has a tool that helps create such an image.  Photosynth, allows the creation of large multi-image panoramas or Photosynths that translate what was seen on the hike into a format that can be enjoyed by others.




Here is another example of an aerial photosynth of Paramore Crater in southeastern Arizona created from a light sport weight shift control aircraft.

Skeleton Canyon in the Peloncillo Mountains, December 16, 2010

Skeleton Canyon has a rich history with stories ranging from massacres and treasure to the site of Geronimo's final surrender to the United States government.  It is a natural corridor between the Animas and the San Bernardino Valleys and has been used over time to move cattle and other goods.  Twenty two members of the  Portal Rodeo Hiking Club visited the canyon and hiked in along the dirt road for 5 miles.  Starting in Arizona at the western mouth of the canyon the hikers crossed the state line into New Mexico somewhere in the canyon. Half of the group opted for lunch on the road and half continued on, eventually stopping for lunch on a ridge on the north side of the canyon.  It was easy going along the bottom of the canyon with spectacular views of outcrops and wildlife along the route.  And of course no report on Skeleton Canyon would be complete without a photograph of Devil's Kitchen near the mouth of the canyon.  The map of the hike in Skeleton Canyon is in the sidebar.

Google Earth screen shot of Skeleton Canyon Hike

Portal Rodeo Hiking Club at Devil's kitchen

Friendly Javelina at the start of the hike.

Shelter Cave along Skeleton Canyon