 |
| Looking Forward To A Great New Year |
Lucky for me, I decided not to hike Mt. Tam in shorts on Monday. Cold! I'd hiked from Rock Spring half-way to Upper Cataract Falls before I finally started to warm up.
It's been so long since I took a hike up there that I felt a mix of familiarity and surprise. It looked a little different due to continued tree-thinning, as well as storm-related changes such as toppled trees and flood-scoured stream edges. Even the airplane engine that's been in the creek for decades seemed to have become re-buried beneath fallen trees. Near that same spot, a log that had spanned the creek and once sported a beautiful fruiting of lion's mane (photographed in this post) had been smashed by a falling tree and/or washed out.
The fetid adder's tongues (featured in the current issue of Bay Nature Magazine) were not yet showing any sprouts near the wooden bridge that links the Cataract Trail with the little Ray Murphy Trail. The "meadow" where they like to come up has also become a lot more cluttered with forest debris. One odd bit of trail maintenance near the bridge was the addition of three large sections of a cut-up Douglas fir that had been rested against the pull of gravity on fairly small rocks. I would not want to be downhill of one of those logs if it broke loose.
The only camera I brought on the hike was the Lumix FZ80D. I'd been looking forward to shooting along Cataract Creek to see if I could get hand-held exposures long enough to soften the look of the moving water. Again, the camera surprised me in a good way. After hiking to the falls I doubled back to pick up the Mickey O'Brien Trail to Barth's Retreat, then looped back via the Simmons Trail.
Although it was a pleasure to be carrying just one little camera and no tripod, I admit to feeling a little bit of guilt for trading the convenience of a point-and-shoot over the quality of a full-frame camera.
The pix in this post are from Tuesday morning. There was a flock of sanderlings feeding between two groups of fishers. I glanced up and down the coast and, seeing no dog-walkers closing in, walked down to photograph the birds. I was able to sit and observe them for several minutes, and at one point a long-billed curlew dropped in. The curlew never got comfortable with me though and soon flew south. A minute or two later, a few dog-walkers showed up and let their dogs chase off the wildlife.
 |
| The Cliff House yellow-rumper is still there (but I haven't seen the Say's phoebe at Balboa Natural Area in a while). |
 |
| Mt. Shasta Sunrise on New Year's Eve |
 |
| New Year's Day Sunrise from Golden Gate Heights |
* * *
