The first winter storm...

dropped more than 20 inches of snow in the high country, and 1.1 inches (2.8 cm) of rain in my gauge in Castle Valley. More, please.

Round Mountain (foreground) and the La Sal Mountains lit by alpenglow. (Click image to embiggen.)

Liberating a prisoner...

from 300 million years of being entombed within the Permian-age Cutler Formation. Now that’s cause for a holiday celebration!

This quartz pebble was buried in the bed of a braided stream during deep geologic time, only to feel the warmth of the Sun’s rays for the last decade or so as erosion slowly lowered the surface, waiting with infinite patience for this day to arrive when I plucked it from its long slumber from the rocky outcrop, setting it free to roam upon the surface of the Earth once again!

Oh, the joy. Be free! Enjoy your travel through the watershed and into the Colorado River. Eventually this grain will abrade and break into smaller particles, only to be buried again centuries from now and incorporated into the rock record once again.

The geologic clock grinds on, whether we are here or not.

Massacre of old juniper trees...

on BLM land near Round Mountain, ostensibly in the name of “fire suppression and mitigation,” occurred last week by a contract crew Yet the selection of downed trees is random and indiscriminate, and all the fuel has been left on the ground as seen in the images below. I intend to call the local BLM Field Office to learn more about this tree felling folly.

I estimate this tree is between 65 and 80 years old based on careful examination of the original high-res image. Many of the downed trees are likely more than a century old.

The prow of Adobe Mesa...

looms more than 1,700 feet (580 meters) above my vantage point where I captured this image. I’m scouting a scrambling route to access the light-colored spot about mid-slope below the prow, at the base of the Chinle/Moenkopi Formation contact, where I suspect carbonate deposits exist from a former spring.

Side note: I established a geocache at the very tip of the mesa top seen in this image in April 2012. Only two other determined explorers have claimed the cache to date! (Click image to enlarge.)