My lil space

In the past year, I have been rediscovering what I learnt from the books about 10 years back. I am going to spare the details of how these trips came to be and delve directly into Nature's beautiful landmarks and the impact of man's activities.

The first place, I went to last year was Mono Lake - the silent, sailless landlocked sea - paraphrasing Mark Twain (Roughing it. Chapter 38). Mono Lake was formed approximately 760,000 years and is 3 times more hyper saline than any of the oceans in the world. There is an unmistakable stench of the highly alkaline water even when you are about a 100 ft away from the water. Mono lake was formed by the Long Valley volcanic eruption and is dated to be the oldest lake in North America. Fed by glaciers in the Ice Age and various streams from the Sierra now, there is a continuous supply of salts flowing into the lake. With no outlet to the ocean, the dissolved salts from the streams stay in the lake and increase the pH. When the calcium bearing spring water mixes with the alkaline water, precipitation occurs and small calcite tufas were formed in Mono Lake. Also the alkanity is so high, that stained piece of cloth dipped in the lake will look as clean as it would be after a heavy laundry load. Mono lake sustains a very unique ecological niche. A pH of 10 makes the lake hostile to fishes. However, the lake sustains 4-6 trillion brine shrimp (Artemia monica). They definitely can't be used to cook the exquisite dishes in Asian restaurants. About the size of a thumb nail, brine shrimp is found only in Mono Lake. During the cold winter, there are no shrimp in the lake but plenty of dormant cysts which the female shrimp laid in the summer and fall. Simultaneously during this time, the microscopic planktonic algae reproduce rapidly feeding from the nutrients from the runoffs making the lake look like green pea soup in winter. As the water gets warmer in spring, the tiny shrimp begin to grow and start feeding on the algae. By summer and fall, the shrimp population rise to more than a trillion making the lake look like a thick shrimp soup. Though these shrimp have no culinary value to humans, they attract more than 2 million water birds, including shore birds which use Mono Lake en route to warmer waters. The California gulls also nest in Mono lake. It is difficult to miss the swarming alkali flies while visiting Mono lake especially in Summer. These scuba equipped flies that can swim in the water largely feed on the algae and are considered a delicacy by the Kutzadikas (The native Indian tribe in the area).

In 1941, the city of Los Angeles decided to divert water flowing into Mono basin to provide water for the growing LA population. This upset the delicate balance between the water inflow and water outlet (through evaporation) resulting in a 31% reduction in the surface area of the water. As the volume of the water halved, the pH of the water doubled. The islands in the lake which were once nesting grounds became accessible by mammals like coyotes forcing many birds to abandon the lake. The submerged tufas were exposed to the surface. With lesser water flowing into the lake, there were lesser algae in the river reducing the shrimp population too. The exposed alkali bed led to particulate matter in the air called alkali dust resulting in violation of the Clean Air Act. The lake and its diverse ecology was starting to die. Luckily for the brine shrimp and the small community of Lee Vining, David Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee in 1978. After years of struggle, the California State Water Resources Control Board issued an order to protect Mono Lake and its tributary streams in 1994. In 1996 the water level in Mono Lake rose up to 1,946 m (10m short of what it was in 1941).

If you plan a visit to the Mono Lake, I would also recommend going to Mammoth Lakes - a beautiful resort nestled in the Sierras.

The next place I visited more recently is Black Chasm - a National Natural Landmark located about 1.5 hours away from Sacramento. I have read a lot about stalactities and stalagmites in 7th grade and seen pictures of it but the experience of being in a cave was exhilirating. Black Chasm is a vertical cave which was discovered during the Gold Rush. When the entrance to the cave was first exploded with dynamite and opened, people were disappointed to find marble (a metamorphic rock) which indicated that there would be no gold ore (which is an igneous rock). How does a place in the middle of the land have metamorphic rocks? The reason for this dates back to formation of the Sierras which trapped the sedimentary rocks in the Pacific Ocean as the mountains rose from the North American plate. One determined miner decided to make his gold, by allowing tourists to get in the cave and take any pieces of stalactites they could find for an ounce of gold. After three years, when most of the stalactites were taken away in the first room, he abandoned the cave. A construction company that took over decided to blast this wondeful cave to extract marble for building roads. With the intervention of the local community and recommendation of the National Speleological Society, this cave was assigned a status of a National Natural Landmark in 1966. Currently the cave is owned by the Sierra Recreational Center and is maintained for the scientific studies and tourism.

Since the Black Chasm is a vertical cave, the entry into it unbelievably narrow. This also keeps bats away from the cave because the bats sonar hits the cave walls very quickly and they don't realize that it is more space inside. Currently the Black Chasm has 9 rooms and 5 lakes in it and is a continually growing cave. A hairline thin crack in the marble is sufficient to form stalactites. When rainwater containing carbon dioxide seeps through this crack, it dissolves the limestone. The water droplet that reaches the edge of a rock (ceiling of the cave) drips down due to gravity and the precipitate calcium carbonate is left behind. This forms a tiny ring of calcite. Every subsequent drop will result in more rings elongating the first one to form a soda straw. As deposits collect around the soda straw, water flows on its sides and precipitates leading to a stalactite in a conical shape. When water flows along the edge of the rock before dripping, flowstones are formed which look like curtains in the cave. The first room at the very beginning has all traces of human activities where the stalactites have been touched or chopped off. Touching a stalactite causes the oil from the hands to stick to the stalactite. Since evaporation of water is crucial to the formation of a stalactite and water and oil don't mix, touching a stalactite should be strictly avoided. Moreover acids from the hand could react with the stalactites (which is limestone) and erode them. As I moved to the second room, I noticed how deep the cave was. About a 140 ft below where I was standing, I could see a small portion of Lake Reflection - one of the 5 lakes in the cave formed by dripping water. The lakes in the cave supported life forms like plankton and shrimp. Spiders were also seen on a few occassions in the cave. The cave was wet and I held tight to the railings while walking down the paths. As I entered the third room, I noticed a themometer which showed a temperature of 57 F. The temperature in the cave stayed at 57F throughout the year as caves tend to maintain the average median temperature of the surface above them throughout the year. Caves are also resilient to earthquakes which only affect the surface of the earth. The only problem might be that the outlet to the cave would get shut by the quake. The third room was eeriely silent because there was no water flow. This meant that no more stalactites or stalagmites would ever grow there again. How did the holes that once dripped water seal? I was shown what appeared to be a false floor on the wall and a line that led from it around the room. Below me, I saw a huge stalagmite weighing a few tonnes. Geologists speculate that the false floor was the orginal floor level containing the stalagmite. The earth below consisted of loose sediments which were washed away during the Sierras formation. The false floor crumbled under the weight of the stalagmite and this created a lot of dust in the air. The sand in the air combined with limestone and dripping water forming a key ingredient of modern day construction - cement - sealing all the pores in the room - the wonders of Nature. However, the third room was the reason Black Chasm was designated as a National Natural Landmark. Though the room shut itself to stalactites and stalagmites - it fostered the growth of a third speothem - helectites. Unlike the regularity of stalactites and flow stones, helectites can be found in different shapes - branching off vertical crystals, looping around, tying a knot, and resembling your favorite animals - deer, cobra, dragons etc. Capillary forces and wind are two of the possible explanations for how helectites are formed. Tiny fragile helectites in this cave is the densest growth found in the west coast and saved this beautiful chasm. Unfortunately the other rooms were not accessible by easy paths but we could peak into the dragon room which had the largest number of stalactites.

As we came out of Black Chasm, I turned behind to look at the unsuspecting dark entry that had held some of the earth's best kept secrets for centuries.

I would like to thank Naren for suggesting Black Chasm.