In late 2020, my son Colby, best friend John, and I pieced together a last-minute desert camping trip toward the end of August to bring some normalcy back to the end of our pandemic Summer.
With the Tacoma packed, we headed out in the early afternoon up Hwy 50, then Hwy 89 through Markleeville, CA, and then over Monitor Pass. We had just crested the top of the mountain when a rogue late summer cloud let loose into a significant downpour that continued for the next few minutes. We pulled over for a few minutes to let it end. My windshield wiper blades were rough at the end of the season, and all we could see was smeared rain. When I hopped out of the truck, I was presented with this timeless scene to capture. The road ahead with the ancient Nevada landscape. HWY 395, where the desert meets the mountains at the California-Nevada state line.
We got back on the road and were soon on Hwy 395. Our original plan to camp at June Lake would not be once we realized no available sites were left. That led us on an after-hours adventure down an unknown dirt road, searching for a place to camp for the night near water. By some gift from the angel of adventure, we ended up in a high desert forest oasis near a little creek a few miles down the road. It was late, so we had a quick snack, set up our sleeping gear, and bunked down for the night.
The following day, we awoke to see where we had landed in the previous night's darkness. Little did we know we were at the base and main trailhead of Obsidian Dome. This Obsidian Dome south of June Lake was formed about 600 years ago during a phreatic blast when magma hit water on its way to the surface. The heat turns the water into steam, and the magma cools into rock. The explosion led to the creation of a gigantic pile of obsidian boulders. The dome is less one giant rock than a massive pile of those boulders, most with beautiful striations of different consistencies of obsidian and pumice.
After a quick breakfast, the boys decided to head up to the trailhead to check out the view. I grabbed my camera and headed to the small creek below (Glass Creek). This high desert creek was a beautiful hidden gem with a surprising mixture of grasses and wildflowers that ran along the edges of the creek. We all met back up at camp a bit later, and the boys were fired up about what they viewed on the trailhead. We decided to get our packs together, head out on an early afternoon hike up to the dome, and explore further into the fold.
When we reached the upper trailed head, it felt like we had stepped onto the set of an early Star Trek episode: a planet made of nothing but shards of obsidian beneath our feet and strange mounded formations around us. The path was less of a trail and more of a road that a company had previously used for mining operations or gathering.
The trail eventually ended, and we progressed a bit further to a small lower peak with a small grove of trees that miraculously existed in the barrenness of this harsh environment.
We sat and ate a small power snack, and I grabbed a quick portrait of Colby along with some other frames before we headed back down the Obsidian trail to pack up and head on to the following location on our adventure. To be continued...
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