falls

In the foothills of the Sacramento mountains the alluvial soils can get complicated. The colors of the soils are grey, black, and red. In most places the soil is pretty thin and rocky.

While the land is pretty expansive with gentle rolling hills, there is actually a lot of variety in what looks pretty boring.

The moisture allows plants like this "mountain mahogany" to grow. This plant is eaten by deer and the wood is very dense if it gets the chance to grow.

The creek runs at the bottom of bridal falls and lets prairie grasses grow. The extra moisture supports a thriving ecosystem.

Up on the dry sides of the hill are many cacti. These are hedgehog cactus.

Prickly pear cactus do very well in dry, drained soils with full sun. They are Opuntia genus. The large nopila tend to spread out close to the ground.

This is a different Opuntia genus, but the cholla cactus specializes in height and uses a woody skeleton as a scaffolding.

This plant is the sotol. The tall central stalk is the flower.

The leaves are serrated and form a protective canopy around the central taproot that holds the plant's reserves.

The low temperatures are starting to rise to where the bee flies are coming out. This insect is a parasite of parasitic wasps; a so called hyperparasitoid.

This clump is pampas grass, an invasive grass from  the Argentinian prairies.

Native prairie grass in the creek bottoms uses deep roots to stabilize the usually friable soil. This often means the grass it on a hillock high above the surrounding ground.

The monsoons can wash soils down side creeks down quickly during flash floods. The trails are protected with drains like these and still have to be rebuilt often.

The gullies have run impressive flash floods, but only once every few years. The rocks are mostly sandstone, with well rounded edges from fast flowing water. Most are dry the rest of the year.

Bridal veil falls is a local trail with a very different environment because of the high moisture in the air and the good protection from the heat.

The moss grows well in the cracks and crevices. Still no salamander, though.

The white stains are the dissolved solids that make most of New Mexico water so hard. The well jointed sedimentary stone let's water flow horizontally out and forms the waterfall.

It was surprising to see cherry and apple trees blossoming in the canyon. 

This is a wild rose species with a few rose hips still hanging on.

This is half of the shell from a wild walnut. The actual tree could have been pretty far away.

The hard minerals in the water precipitate out into desert roses and also have algae communities growing in the recesses to form the rocky accretion at the base of the falls.

This concretion is some sort of slag formed in the boiler of a steam train under very hot temperatures.

The coal used in trains had a certain portion of clinker, or non burnable parts that were made into the bed that is now the base of the trail down to the falls. The timber the rails once rested on are still on the trail now, used to reduce erosion.