A Merry Buster Mountain Christmas – 12/25/2018

Light on the top of Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Light on the top of Buster Mountain. December 2018.

Buster Mountain – if it didn’t have a name I wonder how often this spot on the map would be visited – just one of many protrusions on the ribs running west and down from Pusch Ridge. But the question is irrelevant, this rolling hilltop is named for Buster Bailey – probably best know thru Charles Bowden’s Frog Mountain Blues – and the summit register is filled with signatures.

Leviathan Dome, Wilderness Dome and Solitude Pinnacle from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Leviathan Dome, Wilderness Dome and Solitude Pinnacle from Buster Mountain. December 2018.

From Frog Mountain Blues, p. 46-47:

He has become a footnote. Up on the mountain, there is a Buster Spring and above Buster Spring rolls Buster Mountain. For the old man this seems a trifle strange. He is Buster Bailey, seventy some years old, a man living in a junkyard with a household bagged at the bump. In a city of half-a-million, he is a ghost. And now they’ve gone and made him into some kind of landmark.

A new bridge over Canada del Oro on the Oracle highway swallowed the land he settled as a boy in 1927. The new Catalina State Park spreading against the north side of the range has entombed the ranches he worked and built in the thirties. Mesquite roots chew the soil of his old corrals, hackberry spreads over the spot where he once put his still, and a bulldozer has sliced off his old house lest it blemish the natural setting.

Frog Mountain Blues was published in 1987 and the details are aging – the city of half-a-million has added hundreds of thousands, nearly double depending on what you consider ‘the city’, and Catalina State Park as anything but new.

A few pages later a Jack Dykinga photograph shows bulldozers under curving utility lines, Buster Mountain in the distance on the left and Leviathan Dome rising out of Alamo Canyon on the right. Giant machines plowing thru the desert is a sort of sad ageless classic, but the 77 corridor thru Oro Valley has had so much construction and development for so long that it is hard to muster any deep emotion for a bit more or less asphalt.

Looking south along Pusch Ridge from Buster Mountain - Table Mountain, Bighorn Mountain and Pusch Peak. December 2018.
Looking south along Pusch Ridge from Buster Mountain – Table Mountain, Bighorn Mountain and Pusch Peak. December 2018.

The storm has given us a gift today – clouds and light all around, rain mostly in the distance. In a few more days this area will be legally closed until May, but it will be practically closed until next winter when the summer heat recedes. It is a privilege to be on this landmark, unseen ghosts on the empty mountain side, alone above the city of just-over-a-million.

Watching the clouds and storm on the way down from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Watching the clouds and storm on the way down from Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Samaniego Peak from the trail up to Buster Mountain. December 2018.
Samaniego Peak from the trail up to Buster Mountain. December 2018.

Flowers and Rock, Catalina State Park and Alamo Canyon – 5/7/2016

Saguaro Flower in Catalina State Park. May 2016.
Saguaro Flower in Catalina State Park. May 2016.
More Saguaro Flowers in Catalina State Park. May 2016.
More Saguaro Flowers in Catalina State Park. May 2016.

The pictures above are from Catalina State Park but Doug Kreutz’s recent article Saguaros on a blooming binge in Sabino Canyon still seems relevant – and on the subject of Saguaros perhaps some photographic inspiration from Jack Dykinga

Leviathan Dome from Alamo Canyon. May 2016.
Leviathan Dome from Alamo Canyon. May 2016.

I was recently reminded of John V. Bezy’s A Guide to the Geology of Catalina State Park and the Western Santa Catalina Mountains (available as a free PDF file) – the guide is accessible to readers without any formal training in geology and has been interesting to read again because it contains information on so many familiar sights.  From a section titled Granite Pinnacles (p.15):

Catalina State Park is best known for the dramatic granite pinnacles that have developed in the upper, cliff-forming unit of the Wilderness Suite granite in this part of the Santa Catalina Mountains. These towering spires are the products of surface weathering and erosion by running water guided by deep joints in the rock.

The Wilderness Suite granite differs from the Oracle and Catalina granites that make up the western face of the range in that it is dominated by widely spaced, vertical joints. These fractures serve as avenues along which chemical and physical weathering and erosion penetrate the granite. Rock shattering, caused by ice expansion, wedging by plant roots, and chemical decomposition, enlarges the joints. Water from rain and snowmelt is channeled into the joints, cutting them into ravines and canyons. Joints actually control the location of most streams crossing bedrock. This concentrated action of weathering and erosion eventually widens and deepens the ravines and canyons, leaving the massive granite in between standing as towering pinnacles.

Table Tooth from Catalina State Park - Table Mountain is just to the right. May 2016.
Table Tooth from Catalina State Park – Table Mountain is just to the right. May 2016.

A Guide to the Geology of Catalina State Park and the Western Santa Catalina Mountains – p.10:

The bedrock of this part of the Santa Catalina Mountains is mainly the Oracle, Catalina, and Wilderness Suite granites. These granites were injected deep within the Earth’s crust as great molten masses. They were emplaced at different times: the Oracle Granite 1.45 billion years ago, and the Wilderness Suite Granite 45-50 million years ago, and the Catalina Granite 26 million years ago. The molten rock, which cooled and solidified over millions of years and miles below the Earth’s surface, has since been exposed by erosion.

Beautiful Flowers, Beautiful Views, Catalina State Park – 3/12/2016

Lupine and Poppies in Catalina State Park. March 2016.
Lupine and Poppies in Catalina State Park. March 2016.
Penstemon  just off the Canyon Loop Trail in Catalina State Park. March 2016.
Penstemon just off the Canyon Loop Trail in Catalina State Park. March 2016.
Romero Canyon - marked by the shadow in the middle of the picture - exiting the mountains and heading into Catalina State Park. March 2016.
Romero Canyon – marked by the shadow in the middle of the picture – exiting the mountains and heading into Catalina State Park. March 2016.
Leviathan and Wilderness Domes. March 2016.
Leviathan and Wilderness Domes. March 2016.