| Pinto Mountains Bajada | |
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This photograph is level, as you can tell from the ridgeline of the Pinto Mountains. The foreground is part of the sloping bajada at the base of the range. A bajada is a wide apron of rock and debris that forms where many alluvial fans coalesce. Each of the small, steep valleys in those mountains opens out into its own fan, built by flash floods carrying large amounts of sediment weathered from the valley slopes.
The Pinto Mountains are made of dark gneiss rather than the light granite of the western part of the park. At the same time, the elevation and ecosystem have changed; we have left the Mojave Desert and entered the lower, hotter Sonoran Desert. Here the dominant plant is creosote bush.
(c) Copyright 2002 Andrew Alden, licensed to About.com, Inc.
