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Bakersfield Breakaway: Mono Lake, Glass Mountain and the Valleys of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
Topics: Summer, Bakersfield, Education, Travel, Geology, Cal State Bakersfield
Posted by lakessler1 Mon Aug 28, 2006 14:03:55 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Have you ever eaten fly eggs? Sounds like caviar, doesn’t it? (Okay, maybe it doesn’t sound that tasty). However, the Paiute Native Americans who once lived at Mono Lake considered it a delicacy.

Bending down to the gently lapping waters of the salty lake, our tour guide scooped up a handful of fly pupae and ate some. Unbelievable.

And there we stood, 10 high school students, seven CSUB college students and six Kern County teachers, looking either stupefied or totally grossed out. We all felt lucky to participate in a four-week Geology grant project through CSU Bakersfield and even more fortunate to travel up the east side of California marveling over the terrain, but eating fly eggs was not on our itinerary — we thought we were there to view the many “tufa towers” [pronounced too-fa towers] that jutted out of the briny waters like sentinels on a million-year watch.

However, one of the Stockdale High School students on my lab team, Neil Mathur, boldly stepped forward and popped some pupae into his mouth. Everyone held their breath and waited for Neil to gag. “Tastes like crunchy oatmeal,” he finally said. After that, it was a done deal: we all dove in for a late morning snack.

Mono Lake is a great success story. Thirty years ago, a group of highly committed activists saved the dying lake from Los Angeles — the city was diverting most of the water down south. Owens Valley was already a wretched wasteland because of such diversions, but happily, Mono Lake was rescued from a similar fate.

After our guided tour, we hopped into our vans and headed to Glass Mountain. Under the shade of pine trees, we ate our sack lunches and then crawled around the mountain side picking up samples of obsidian, scoria and pumice, compliments of a long-gone volcanic eruption.

Throughout our trip, I was amazed to learn that California had such powerful volcanic activity in its past. I only knew of Mt. Lassen, the one active volcano in the northern part of our state. But Dr. Baron and Dr. Negrini, the two CSUB Geologists who were with us on our trip, revealed a darker side of California: 760,000 years ago, there was a massive eruption near Mammoth Lakes. So spectacular was this event that ash has been detected half way across the United States. We drove through what remains of that horrific event, called the Long Valley Caldera: it was eerie to look at the mountains that surrounded our vans and realize that we were actually in the mouth of a deadly volcano that could erupt again. Chilling.

As we caravanned home, our two professor guides made two more stops along the edges of the Sierra Nevadas. Once all valleys and peaks to me, they pointed out that the U-shaped valleys were carved by glaciers, the V-shaped ones by water. I was thrilled to be able to differentiate between the two on our way back to Bakersfield.

If you think Highway 395 is nothing but a long stretch of mountains, hills and boring fields on your way to Mammoth, look again. Those black chunks of rock along the road are basalt; the red pile of gravel nearby, a cinder cone volcano. And do you see that burned out side of a hill? It’s really an ancient lava flow. If you know what you’re looking for, the east side of California is truly a geological wonderland.

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