Friday, February 12, 2010

More Desert Adventures

Fox terriers in tan-colored desert landscape.

DSL thinks that I'm just putting the same photo up over and over--"fox terriers in tan-colored desert landscape"! She says she can't tell the difference. I thought this was funny because this had occurred to me too.

But I assure you, every photo is new. And in this post, you will be entertained by even more pictures of dogs in the desert!

Harry leading the way up to the jebels.

I have found a new place to take the dogs for weekend and evening walks. It's an area of perhaps a dozen jebels separated by deep wadis located to the northwest of my house. It is accessed by a parking lot next to a soccer field. I can even get in an hour's walk/run with the dogs after work. The topography provides a considerable cardio challenge for all three of us. I guesstimate there may be a couple of hundred feet of elevation difference between the top of the highest jebel and the deepest wadi. Doesn't sound like much but when you scramble up and down that half a dozen times in an hour, well, it can be fairly challenging.

GoogleEarth image. Pins mark my house and the jebels to the NNW. Click on the image to expand it.

The rocks exposed in Dhahran are part of the Dammam Dome, an anticlinal fold with four-way closure. Every rock you can see is some sort of sabkha carbonate deposited in a restricted marine setting. Sabkha carbonates later exposed in desert environments erode into interesting but quite jagged surfaces that are related to their original depositional environment...but this isn't supposed to be a geology lecture. After our first trip into the jebels, I learned that I needed to wear my boots (trail shoes were simply not up to the task). The dogs' feet are quickly toughening up on the exposed rock.

Investigating interesting cracks.

The jebels are now our preferred exercise location. I can exhaust the dogs with a good hour of scrambling several times a week and stay out there for a couple of hours on weekend mornings. The vistas across camp are interesting, there are plenty of holes and crevices for the dogs to sniff about, we've only seen one other person out there so far (quite a change from the crowds walking around the golf course in the evenings), and it has never been a primary trash dump for camp so it is just nicer to walk around there than in the trash tip and the spray fields.

Looking SSE towards Khobar and the Arabian Gulf.

Yesterday, we had another desert adventure when we went out with the hash again. This particular run wasn't all that great (it was far too long) but the scenery was nice and the company around the fire afterwards was entertaining.

My little social butterfly Harry at the start of the hash.

This hash was an open desert run with a lot of soft sand/dune scrambling. Most people dropped to a walk after the first few dunes.

I took a quick break to take this photo. Mimi had been pulling me along and she was wondering why we were stopping.

The red circle marks the halfway point of the route. If you enlarge the pic, you might be able to see some people on the top of that hill. Very few of us made it out that far. This is a great photo of the open desert though.

3 comments:

Carol G. said...

wow! opening up the photos to see the full view is just amazing.
The Hash runs bring back memories of our time in England. Bob ran the Hash. I handed out water and helped cook some meals. We always met the nicest folks and loved that the dogs were always invited. My old dog Ace put in many miles on those Hash runs..good fun.. really enjoy your blog and pictures.

Rover Mom said...

very cool! first photos of the open desert you've posted. nice being able to enlarge the images - thank goodness for your new internet connection!!!

BC Insanity said...

WOW, awesome pics. I kinda like the google earth shot too, puts it all in perspective.