By Jaime Lopez Wolters
On Friday-Sunday May 19-21, 2023 Friends of the Inyo organized its Spring Dark Desert Skies event, inviting attendees to participate in an in-depth experience of Conglomerate Mesa and the surrounding landscapes. More than two dozen people enjoyed three days of activities. The kickoff on Friday evening was at the Lone Pine Museum of Western Film History, where we showed three short environmental films and enjoyed freshly baked pizza from a local, mobile pizza oven.
The first film was “Last Call of the Nightingales.” In it, Bernie Krause, the legendary pioneer of Acoustic Ecology, took us on an immersive journey to understand the roadmap that natural soundscapes can offer for overcoming the climate crisis. This film opened our minds to the beauty of natural sounds. Several people commented throughout the weekend that their ears were more tuned to hearing the soundscapes of Conglomerate Mesa and Centennial Flat thanks to watching the film. The sadness that “Last Call of the Nightingales” evokes by confronting us with the landscapes and soundscapes that are disappearing in front of our very eyes and ears, gave way to a sense of purpose at the realization that we have ecologically intact landscapes, such as Conglomerate Mesa, in the Eastern Sierra that we can strive to protect from development and destruction.
The second film, “6000 Miles,” tells the story of CalWild’s effort to protect 6000 miles of free-flowing rivers in California under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act by 2028. We meet Kayla Lopez, a young river activist, and Steve Evans (aka The River Guy), who has lobbied for wild rivers in Congress his whole life. Both are on a journey into the spirit of the California rivers they hold dear.
The third film “Island in the Sky” brought us home to Conglomerate Mesa and the mining threat posed to it by K2 Gold, a mining company looking to explore and eventually exploit the gold dust in the soil. Beautifully shot and well narrated, this film introduced us to the landscape we were about to see and people fighting to protect it. It helped us better understand the extent of the area under threat and the potential effects an open-pit cyanide heap leach gold mine would have on the area.
On Saturday morning we gathered at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center and caravanned out to Conglomerate Mesa in the most capable vehicles. Once we left the pavement of Hwy 190, Saline Valley Road led us through Santa Rosa Flat, where we caught our first glimpse of Conglomerate Mesa towering in the distance. We then traveled along White Talc Mountain Road through the Joshua Tree forest of Lee Flat, which lies within the western boundary of Death Valley National Park.
During our final approach, Conglomerate Mesa loomed large to the west as we traveled a rugged jeep trail through a mixed Pinyon Pine and Joshua Tree forest. At the end of the trail is a small camp we call Tom’s Camp in honor of Tom Budlong, a man whose love for the desert propelled his efforts to protect the area as far back as the 1990’s.
At the double arc rock formation near the camp, we encountered several healthy Inyo Rock Daisies, a plant that is endemic to the Southern Inyo Mountains and a candidate species under the California Endangered Species Act, as well as the Federal Endangered Species Act.
We then hiked up a trail to the saddle, where we had expansive views of Conglomerate Mesa, its vast Joshua Tree forest and the cumulus clouds from an early summer thunderstorm. A group hiked to the top of the Mesa while some of us explored around the saddle.
While hiking back we looked at the remains of charcoal burn pits which dotted this landscape in the late 19th century. Small-scale charcoliers cut down, piled up and slow-burned pinyon pine trees to make some of the charcoal that fueled the smelters in the nearby mining town of Cerro Gordo. In some small way these rugged individuals contributed to the growth of Los Angeles through the boom brought to it by Cerro Gordo’s silver. Thankfully for us they operated on a very small scale and were not around for very long, allowing the landscape to recover.
For our campout that Saturday evening we had chosen to stay at an old corral on Centennial Flat, in a dense Joshua Tree forest south of Hwy 190 and west of Darwin. As luck would have it, the wildflower bloom was close to its peak at that elevation, and we got to enjoy the bounty of the desert.
The weather had clouds and thunder, rainbows and an occasional rain shower in store for us. It didn’t allow for much stargazing but we did experience an epic sunset that’ll be forever etched into our memories.
On Sunday we hiked from camp to explore the surrounding area, before packing up and returning to Lone Pine in the early afternoon. It was a great weekend spent with interesting, like-minded people, exploring the desert lands of the Eastern Sierra.
