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Published: April 25th 2008
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After the extreme virtual time travel from yesterday at the Valley of Fire, visiting this site that started forming only about one million years ago should have felt somewhat different, but I found that it also contrasted the timelessness of our planet against the short human experience in it. Cathedral Gorge showcases abstract landscapes that are extremely unusual. Within its bounds, you find geological features that appear to range between the totally surreal and what you would normally see in science-fiction movies.
The geological history of the site is not as full of random events as that of
Valley of Fire, but the ultimate outcome is not by any measure less spectacular. During the Pliocene era, a large fresh-water lake covered this valley in central Nevada. Rains in the nearby mountains washed sands and clays into the lake, forming sediments up to a depth of 1400 feet (427 m). Because of changes in climate, uplifts and other geological events, the lake eventually drained, exposing the extensive sedimentary layers to the elements. Over millennia, water from torrential rainfalls in the mountains carved small brooks, which eventually eroded the sediments and created the canyons and the amazing formations that now exist all over the
park.
I realized that visiting Cathedral Gorge was in my near future as soon as I saw a few photos depicting these unusual rock formations, but because of the park’s distance from Las Vegas, I knew that I would need an entire day for the visit. Fortunately, I still had today Thursday, before my dive into full-time work related to the NAB Conference.
One of my colleagues, Nelson Sanchez, was already in Las Vegas attending an earlier event for my company. When I invited him, he agreed to join me on my expedition. As an added bonus, he had with him a company asset (a Panasonic AG HVX200 HD P2 camera) that we could use to capture video footage of the park for our NAB event… Unfortunately, needed camera supports would arrive a day too late (on Friday) and we would have to handhold the shots or improvise with my still camera’s Gitzo sticks for some of the takes… A less than ideal arrangement, but it would have to do. Otherwise, we were set!
Reaching the park from Las Vegas is very simple: you follow interstate highway 15 north for about 64 miles (103 km) until it
junctions with state highway 93. From there, you turn north and continue on highway 93 for about 142 miles (228.5 km) until you run onto the entrance to the park on the left.
Most people would have considered our 4:45 AM departure from Las Vegas extreme, but Nelson knows very well my interest for photography and videography and about the importance of being on location at sunrise to get the best light, so he did not complain. We actually arrived at Cathedral Gorge State Park at about 7:30 AM but discovered that because of the north-south orientation of the main geological features of the park, actual sunrise would not have contributed any additional interest to our photos or video. So much for getting there so early!
When Nelson and I arrived, our first incursion was along the south-to-north track parallel to the park’s east canyon wall. Though the sun was still behind it, the spires and other unusual erosion patterns gave us a quick preview of what was in store for us for the rest of the day. Low temperature is not something that neither of us had anticipated and because of strong gusts of wind (and our
inappropriate clothing), we felt like we were in subfreezing weather as we were walking around the grounds. We hoped that we would warm up later in the day or our visit would not be very enjoyable.
Anticipating that the sun would later expose the rock formations’ amazing texture where we were, we decided to leave this main area of Cathedral Gorge and drive north for a couple of miles on highway 93 to Miller’s Point, on the extreme north side of the park. Miller Point sits directly on the rim of the park’s main canyon and provides the best vantage point to view the rock formations below. We would leave our car there and hike the park trails to see the rest.
From Miller’s Point, we descended into the canyon and continued on the path that would lead us to the area where we had been earlier, but instead of returning there directly, we followed the trail that forked west as the canyon widened into the valley that covers the largest area of the park.
Park volunteers had marked the trails with two flanking rows of small rocks to prevent visitors from walking everywhere and damaging the
delicate ecosystem. Nelson and I tried to estimate the long days that it took for a large number of volunteers to complete the work… There are miles and miles of trails carefully marked in the park!
We enjoyed very much our visit to the area; including a short trip north to the town of Pioche, Nevada where for lunch we had one of the best pizzas that either of us had ever tasted. We particularly enjoyed our conversations with the locals who were very friendly and did not mind answering our questions about what was the main economical activity in town. We were just very curious about how people could make a living in such a quaint (and very beautiful) place.
On closing, I would like to comment on this best kept secret place in Nevada: whenever I travel, I tend to find two kinds of destinations in the World, those where taking pictures takes some extra effort to find the unusual or extraordinary angles on ordinary scenes and those where the scenes are so spectacular that it is impossible to stop taking pictures. Cathedral Gorge State Park definitely falls in the second category. Nelson and I spent
a lot of our time there filling up our cameras’ digital storage. Unfortunately, aside from a few people within the campground areas of the park, he and I appeared to be the only park visitors around. Our photos and video tend to look a bit empty for that reason!
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capsfan2002
capsfan
Gorgeous Photos!
Looks like you had a great day for photography.