Sunny and warm. Temperatures into the lower 60s. A sea breeze developed in the afternoon.
A Hairy Woodpecker visited the suet feeder this morning while I was watching. Moments after it left, a junco cleaned up crumbs below the suet feeder. I’m not sure if the junco is feeding young, but it might be.
I spent time doing microscope work so I could clear space tackle boxes before heading out for a hike.
I’ve been meaning to get up into the Beaver Lake uplands (aka the Ooompa Loompas), an upland area between Beaver Lake and Silver Bay. I thought I would try a more direct route than I had previously gone.
This route did not turn out to be so direct. I got into some brushy areas, needed to skirt cliffs and ended up climbing up through a steep gully between two cliffy areas. I’m not sure if I could have made it if I had been more committed to going direct.
On the way up at the base of cliffs, I noticed some species off mosses and liverworts that caught my eye, so it worked out okay.
I also found erratic boulders where I came into clearings, which I otherwise would have missed had I not gone this route.
I came into the more open areas higher up than I expected. While finding my way down to the lower bench area, I flushed a junco. It seemed to fly up from the ground, and I wondered if it might have been on a nest. I poked around briefly, but didn’t spot one. Later I had another similar experience, but didn’t find a nest then either.
Today I took more time and made a more extensive exploration of some of the open areas than previous trips. I overlapped with where I had been before, but definitely covered new (though nearby) ground.
Along the way, I took an alternate route from lower bench up to the higher areas.
From where I came out, could see other boulders scattered across the rolling landscape. I had never noticed them on prior trips, but now that I was looking specifically for them, they easily stood out.
Before going to look more closely at the boulders, I crossed a patch of forest to visit the northeast lobe. I’ve been wondering about it, but hadn’t previously made it over there.
I expected to be similar to the main area I’ve visited, but the terrain there had more elevation variation. Basically there was very little relatively flat area.
I was surprised to see deer trails and plenty of scat in this area. Both because it seemed open, but also because it didn’t seem like great habitat for food and such. The deer didn’t ask me, though. I did see one deer when it climbed up a away from a pond I was poking around. I had been there several minutes by this point, and I guess the deer just got uncomfortable enough that it abandoned the concealed place it was hanging out in the bushes.
I did wading in a couple of ponds. The bottom was quite soft. Despite its small size, one of the ponds was deep enough that I probably would have been over my waist had I gone all the way in. The deep, soft sediment on the bottom made me feel a little unstable on my feet, and I wasn’t interested in swimming, so backed out of that one.
On three humps with views down to Herring Cove and Silver Bay I found rock piles on top. I’m reasonably confident the rocks were piled by humans, and not recently. It’s hard to say how old they were, but I’m pretty sure it’s at least on the order of decades, and it could be more like centuries.
At the time I was on the northeast lobe, I was thinking I may not visit it again. It didn’t seem quite as rich as the main area, and was a little bit of a pain to get to. Looking back now, it seems more intriguing to revisit. Time will tell if I ever make it, but I do feel a tug of curiosity (as I often do).
Once back to the main area, I walked over for a closer look at at least a couple of the boulders I had seen. To my eyes, they look granitic. That’s bodes well for the possibility of collecting samples for exposure dating. If it works out, I’ll be interested to learn when the glaciers retreated from this area. Interestingly, I didn’t notice any erratic boulders on the northeast lobe.
Before heading down, I checked for long-leaf sundew (Drosera anglica) at the pond where Paul and Brooke had discovered it last year. I found only one plant that was still just putting out leaves. I’m not sure if they just get started later, or I didn’t happen to look in the right place.
I went back down the electrical department route, taking around 40 minutes to get back to the road.
In hindsight, water would have been good to have, or at least the water filter – which I thought about bringing, but forgot to grab before heading out. I didn’t really expect to be gone for so long, and I was fine. I just would likely have felt better with some water.
My choice to wear shorts had consequences as well. In my younger years I hiked in shorts almost all the time. I just accepted that my legs would get beat up when I was going off trail. These days I prefer not to have my legs scraped and scratched so much. I tolerate it, but next time I expect I’ll wear pants.
I’ve now at least circumnavigated much of the area up there. Looking at the map with my tracks, I see plenty of sections and pockets I’ve missed and would like to poke around in at some point.
I’m motivated in part by a liverwort that Worley reported from up there which I’m still hoping to refind.
I did a fair bit of collecting today. I nearly filled the two tackle boxes I had with me.
This evening after getting my radio show ready, I noticed the snow on Bear Mountain showed signs of recent avalanches. Presumably the warm day triggered snow to melt and avalanche off some of the rocky areas or remaining cornices. I think it was a good day not to be up on the snow.
I also saw what looked like they could be tracks roughly where I crossed the slow on my trip up there 10 days ago. At the time I wondered if they were my tracks (melted out a bit), or maybe a bear wandered across that way later. Reviewing the photo more closely, I saw the tracks continued on beyond where I had been, so I suspect it was a bear.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
