Exploring the Black Rock Desert

One of the great things about Ting's work is the opportunity for volunteer work in the outdoors. This past weekend we had a chance to head up to the Black Rock Desert to work with the BLM. The goal was to get together with some Americorp volunteers and work to close off some bootleg ORV and truck trails to keep from further scarring up the desert. The Black Rock Desert is an amazing place worth saving. There are many many historically significant sites from recent history back over 10,000 years. The cryptobiotic soil takes hundreds of years to develop and can easily be destroyed by a vehicle or even a footstep. Our goal was to camoflage some of these trails so that they might have a chance to regenerate.

I left my camera in the car during the work sessions but here are some picts from our playtime. The playa is a giant dry lake bed most famous for the yearly Burning Man festival.



Tent camping on the playa. No animals, no trees, no mosquitos, miles of flat, baked mud.

Zoe enjoying a tangy grapefruit in the morning sun

The playa is up to 30 miles across and 5 to 10 miles wide. The silt from this ancient lake is said to be close to 10,000 ft deep in places

Here's what the surface looks like up close. The cracks in the mud can go down 3 to 4 inches in some places. Every winter and spring the playa remakes itself.

Zoe can run for miles.... But she's never out of view

You can drive freely on the playa. Here we are chasing the BLM guys heading out to do some work on some bootleg trails. We're going about 80 mph with the hands off the wheel taking picts. There's nothing to crash into!

This pilot stopped by our encampment to say hello.

You can also ride around for miles. At night you can close your eyes and pedal for minutes at a time, floating over the surface.

Here's where things get gory. Sunday we went hking near the black rock mountains. I put Zoe on my shoulders but the off-balance feeling of 30 lbs of kid combined with loose scree and steep hiking caused me to have a bad bail. Zoe banged her noggin' and I sliced my finger open rather badly. Volcanic rocks are sharp!

Zoe examines the very rocks that caused all the damage.

The fault line that runs through the black rock desert creates lots of geothermal activity. Here is a natural hot spring in the middle of the desert.

Part of the old Emigrant trail from the 1849 gold rush goes through the black rock on the way to California and Oregon. This guy stopped at the hot springs and never made it much further.