OUTDOORS

"The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it..."   Psalm 24:1 Welcome to Casey Luskin's outdoors page! Here are a few snapshots I've managed to take of God's creation over the years: Yosemite... Here's a view looking up Yosemite Valley as you enter the park from the west side. From this view, Halfdome is the small bald peak in the distance just above the very center of the valley. Don't accredit the beauty of this picture to any skills I have. It's impossible to take a bad picture from here.

...and a couple closer shots of Halfdome:

Here's a view looking back down Yosemite Valley towards the west from the top of Halfdome. That's me on the top. The hike took 16 hours, and a lot of water bottles. I recommend this hike to anyone--it is long, but overall it is rarely steep and isn't overly strenuous. If you go, overestimate the amount of water you'll need, and then double it. I didn't underestimate the amount of water I needed, but some of my hiking companions did, and it made the hike much more difficult. But if you bring enough water, the hike is very do-able! There were many people of all ages along the trail.

This shot peers straight down on to the valley floor over edge of the lip of the top of Halfdome. This was a fun picture to take--laying flat, peeking over the ledge, looking down a very long drop!

Yosemite is a haven for studying the geological effects of glaciers. Glaciers leave various tell-tale signs that they were there, including "erratic" boulders which are large boulders carried along by the glacier and are then set down in their final "erratic" resting places as the glacier melts. Here are some nice shots of erratic boulders near Tuolumne Meadows toward the eastern edge of Yosemite National Park:

Yet another sign that a glacier was present is the presence of glacial striae. Glacial striae are parallel scratches on rock surfaces that were rubbed smooth as a glacier scrapes against a rock surface. The glacial striae run in the direction of glacial motion. Though the striae are difficult to see in the pictures below, the patches of rock surfaces that were scraped extremely smooth leave no doubt about glacial action. These were also taken near Tuolumne Meadows:

And finally a characteristic dome and another peak near Tuolumne Meadows:

The Grand Canyon... Here's another place where it is almost impossible to take a bad picture, the Grand Canyon. This shot was taken about 1 mile down into the canyon during a short hike I took.

Catalina Island... This is a picture of me and some friends looking back on an incredibly stupid decision we had just made: we walked through a herd of essentially wild buffalo that live on Catalina Island. We didn't have much choice as we were hiking across the island and the herd was right next to the trail. I suppose we could have gone around them but they seemed like nice, friendly buffalo. Again, probably a stupid decision.

Craters of the Moon National Park... Here I am at Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho. This is one of the lesser-known national parks, but it has its own special beauty. From the top of this cinder cone is an amazing view. In one direction all you see is unweathered jagged lava flows as far as the eye can see. In another direction you see green hills. And in yet another you see the snowcapped Sawtooth Mountains. Astronauts apparently trained here for going to the moon--and it does look like the moon--it is covered with different types of basalt flows, and in some places like this there isn't any vegetation covering the buttes. Parts of this park are reminiscent of what a post-World-War-III earth might look like. If you're driving through Idaho, take the time to see this fascinating but obscure National Park.

Death Valley... It was from this exact point (more or less) that Obi Wan Kenobi made his famous statement to Luke: "Mos Eisley Space Port. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." In the real world, this is a view of Death Valley, California, looking northwestward from the mountains on the east side. The white valley floor is primarily a giant salt flat. In the original Star Wars movie, George Lucas used effects to make the salt flat appear as the perilous town of Mos Eisley.

This is a closeup of a Pre-Cambrian stromatolite fossil in Death Valley. Stromatolites are basically bacterial mats which grow in shallow lagoons. A colony of bacteria or other microorganisms form on the shallow lagoon-bottom, and then new bacteria grow on top of the old ones, feeding off the dead bacteria underneath. Eventually, a layered structure grows upwards towards the water's surface, which may become fossilized. Stromatolite fossils are recognizable by their layering, and they are fairly common in the Pre-Cambrian record. They are not considered to be true multicullular life because they are generally composed of colonies of one-celled microorganisms. From what I am told, stromatolites do exist today in lagoons in Baja California and Australia. It's illegal to take rocks or fossils from National Parks, and plus outcrops of rare fossils like this should be preserved for the sake of natural conservation and scientific study. But it's fun to take pictures!

Southern California Deserts... Devil's Punchbowl is an odd geological formation in Southern California, near Wrightwood. The San Andreas fault is nearby, and the tectonics have shoved up some underlying strata which have weathered into these giant mounds which are easy to climb and cool to look at (with some great examples of crossbedding in the strata).

This next shot is a rather random picture of a small but spectacular anticlinal fold in strata near Fishrock Mountain in the Anza-Borrego Desert:

These next two shots are from Fossil Canyon, near Ocotillo about 100 miles east of San Diego. This geology of this area is fascinating but complex. It is riddled with faults from the San Jacinto and Elsinore Fault complexes, and exposed in this canyon are many shell fossils and shimmering coral reefs from the proto-Gulf of California.

The morning sun on the hills around Fossil Canyon...

The Anza Borrego Desert in Bloom:

Switzerland... Below are some pictures of the Alps, near the Schilthorn in Switzerland. The Alps were pushed up due to the collision between the African and Eurasian plates. They are well known for their tightly folded sedimentary and metasedimentary layers. The second shot provides a striking example of such a fold:

Alpine fold:

...and a meltwater lake near the Schilthorn:

If you've been to the real Matterhorn in Switzerland after having visited Disneyland's fake "Matterhorn," you come to appreciate how pathetic are man's attempts to imitate nature. I kept waiting for the clouds to clear but they refused to do so. So here are the best shots I was able to take when hiking near the famous Matterhorn in southern Switzerland:

These are shots from the Jungfrau. The first looks down the Jungfrau glacier, and the second is taken from inside a man-made ice cave inside the glacier. The final picture is a plaque from the observatory that speaks for itself:

Some beautiful alpine flowers:

Hawaii... Another beautiful corner of the Earth is Hawaii. Below are pictures of the Io Needle on Maui, and some shots of the rainforest fairly deep in a hike back into the Io Valley:

This shot captures the Pacific ocean crashing on to the waterfront in Keanae, a small out-of-the-way village on the northeastern shore of Maui along the road to Hana:

And finally, some outdoorsy links... Ocean kayak (probably the only thing with holes in it so it won't sink) National Park Service ("take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints") The Naples Sabot (it's a boat, not a bathtub) Laser II Homepage (if I could afford it, I'd own one) US Sailing (I was a member when I raced competitively) Yosemite National Park (one of my favorite places on earth) Fossil Canyon (a great place to do a geology field trip / desert hike)

Contact: e-mail Casey at "casey@ideacenter.org"