Cache Transaction

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Heading up the Panoramic Highway this morning I had mixed feelings about the chaparral pea growing by the side of the road. Sure, I was glad to see the pretty blossoms. But I'm not a big fan of roadside photography. I like wild things, nature photography. Not pictures with roads in them. Nevertheless, I put my bias aside and hit the brakes to back up into a small turn-out. I've noticed that for a lot of photographers who visit Mt. Tam, the road itself is as much the subject as the landscape that surrounds it. And that's certainly the case for a lot of ad agencies marketing automobiles.

In any event, I was able to make a couple of pictures of the chaparral pea blossoms with only one car passing by, heading downhill, and I was glad I'd made the stop. I know the species grows higher up the mountain, but there was no guarantee it would be in bloom yet. 

When I finished with the pea flowers and continued driving up the mountain I soon spotted a significant bloom of western azalea, a species I'd particularly hoped to find today. I know it blooms along this south-facing roadside earlier than it does at my planned hiking destination of Potrero Meadow, but this time I decided not to stop. I guess I couldn't put aside my bias again quite that soon after my previous effort.

Once again I was waylaid by the simple beauty of Bolinas Ridge. This time it was easy to delay my hiking plans and stop for a little detour.

Springtime on Bolinas Ridge. What a great time of the year.

I finally got my hike under way and was surprised to find "fall color" in some fallen madrone leaves near the point where the Benstein Trail turns off the Lagunitas-Rock Spring fire road to drop down to Potrero Meadow.

There were a few azaleas blooming at Potrero Meadow, but I would say the full bloom of the northside azaleas (in their various locations) is still two or three weeks away. I probably wouldn't even have tried my luck this early, but I wanted to pick up the trail camera which I'd set out along the route to the meadow.

That there were so few flowers in bloom didn't really matter for my photographic purposes.

If I just wanted to photograph azaleas, and not "azaleas on Mt. Tam," I could have walked out my front door and found some growing in my neighborhood. It's funny, I guess, but I have no interest whatsoever in photographing azaleas in my neighborhood. But driving all the way up to Mt. Tam and hiking a few miles to find them growing on the edge of a meadow? Heck, yeah!

"Hmmm," I thought when I spotted something blue in the shrubbery. "An old beer bottle?"

A closer look revealed it was a geocache. When I got home, a quick google search revealed that it was this guy's geocache, set out almost three years ago, on August 9, 2011.

Here's what various geocache folks have left in the box since it's been out there. I'd have signed the log book, but the pen had dried out, so I left a calling card before placing it back where I found it. The logo on the gold foil packet is an Italian auto repair service, as near as I can tell. I guess it must be a gasket or seal of some kind.

Out in the meadow, my favorite orange-and-black plant bugs were having unprotected sex on the female plants of some meadow rue. (I'm thinking these are more likely to be Cosmopepla uhleri, actually.) I doubt the gold packet in the geocache would have been useful to them, however.

Wild rose.

Sitting out here with the iris in the middle of Potrero Meadow, the scent of onion was strong. All around me, wild onion plants were sprouting. They were probably a couple of weeks away from blooming. I also looked for the jimson weed that grows in the area but found no trace of it, outside of last year's stalks.

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Fawn Fest

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The camera trap has been out in this spot since mid-April, the same week Pam and I camped at Steep Ravine. Seems like a lifetime ago. The camera was just far enough from the trailhead that I haven't felt like making the hike to pick it up. I had put the camera in this spot once before, just for a day, and caught a buck. This time it was all doe deer -- the adults, that is.

Kind of funny to have caught a coyote out for a mid-day stroll on a Saturday. Every image from April 18 to the day I picked up the camera on May 3 was captured in daylight. This was an obvious animal trail, but I was surprised to see that it was used only in the daytime.

I only caught the coyote once, and I only caught the jackrabbit once -- on Easter Sunday.

Although the camera caught deer almost every day, it only captured the star attraction twice.

I don't believe I have ever been able to photograph spotted fawns on Mt. Tam in the usual way [oops, see below], and in fact I'm not sure I've gotten a good look at such a young fawn since I saw a bobcat pounce on one back in the early '90s. (The fawn screamed; its mother rushed to its aid and chased the bobcat up a nearby Douglas fir tree.)

The camera just barely caught one more fawn, in only one frame, as it leaped toward the safety of the nearby chaparral and forest.

I was going to place the camera in one last location (as far as this blog is concerned), but I finally got the "battery low" warning for the first time since I first put the camera out, back in October, so I brought the camera home.

Just looking over some older pix, I found this shot of spotted fawns from May 21, 2010.

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April Favorites

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The towering redwoods I see from my living room remind me of an ancient age when dinosaurs roamed here. And hiding among the grasses are subtle echoes of even earlier eras: spiders and snails, humble pioneers of life’s experimentation with an existence on land. I recognize them now, as I do myself, as separate strands of life, woven together by time into a tapestry of nature that is connected in the present as well as linked to the past.

--Frans Lanting, from Life: A Journey Through Time

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Lupine Sunrise

Frog in the Moss

End of the Line

Partners

Lizard Man

Steep Ravine

Emergence

Spring Greens

Duskywing & Clover

March Flies

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An Old Map's Trail

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I don't always stop to photograph wild turkeys when I see them, but every now and then I can't resist, and I've been seeing them a lot lately. Courtship displays started back in November or December, but they are still going on. I have yet to see any turkey chicks, but I imagine there's more than one brood per year. From what I read, a hen might lay nearly a dozen eggs at a time, and they take only 28 days to hatch.

You'd think with that many chicks potentially running around, I couldn't miss seeing them. But I don't believe I ever have. Wild things have their ways.

The jackrabbits are out and acting frisky in all the fresh green grass. I watched two meet up and chase around like squirrels before settling back down to keep an eye on an encroaching photographer.

The big surprise when I got out of the Jeep to photograph the turkeys was how cold it was! I saw the sun shining and went up in short pants. Thankfully I at least had a windbreaker because I believe it was the wind chill that was really getting to me. My fingers were almost numb in minutes, and I was glad to finally get back to the warm Jeep. Even though I knew it was going to be cold out, I still couldn't resist making a stop here for the beautiful light. I'd stop here again on the way home a few hours later and watch several turkeys in a courtship ritual on one of the near ridges. They must never quit.

The gate out to West Ridgecrest was open early, so I headed on out to my trailhead destination. If the gate had been closed, the plan was to check out the trail camera before starting the day's hike. In the end I decided to leave the trail camera alone until next week.

The light was kind of nice as I drove out along Bolinas Ridge, so I kept my eyes peeled for wildlife. These two deer were resting right at the edge between a meadow and the woods, maybe fifty feet apart from each other. The deer below the lichen-crusted branch is a young buck, with very tentative yet velveted antlers. I'm proud to say that I took my pictures and was on my way without either deer rising from its bed.

Despite yesterday's cloudy, rainy weather, or maybe because of it, the air today was clear as a bell. I thought it might even be clear enough to see the newly snow-covered Sierras again, but it was not. Here you can just make out Pt. Reyes' Chimney Rock in the distance. A group of hikers is taking a confab near the center of the frame. The hikers are near the junction of the Coastal Trail and the Willow Camp Fire Trail, which is where I expected to be in a few hours (after beginning my hike a little farther north).

After having no luck spotting bobcats in the nice light, I finally got under way with the hike I'd planned for the day, which was to drop down the McKinnon Trail toward Stinson Beach, then hike south along the bottom of the ridge, pick up the Willow Camp Trail to hike back up to the Coastal Trail and finally get back to the Jeep. The sign at the trailhead said the McKinnon Trail was only 0.12 miles long. But that only gets you as far as a stone bench with a nice view.

I'd never before hiked the route I was attempting today, but I'd been on forays part-way down. So I knew the trail was lightly used and I was not perturbed by the lack of signs beyond the stone bench. My old 1989 Olmsted map shows not just a trail, but a fire road, that leads down the hill. I think you can still see a trace of the old fire road near the top of the hike, but it peters out into a faint trail with little more sign of any passage than a few bobcat and coyotes scats, as well as some deep deer tracks probably made when the ground was soft after a rain.

I was happily surprised to find this weird member of the mustard family growing along the trail. I've never seen this species before, and there were only three plants growing in a small area. I imagined I'd found one of the most rare plants on the entire mountain. I tried to look it up when I got home to no avail. Instead of being the last remaining stronghold of a nearly extinct Mt. Tam endemic, though, it's probably either something that grows in huge fields somewhere else, or it's some sort of Mediterranean weed.

The spotted coral root are still in bloom. I can't remember if I mentioned already that these plants, which lack chlorophyll and do not photosynthesize, get their food by parasitizing fungi. And not just any fungi, but fungi in the Russula family.

Following the trail down past the first meadow and into the woods, you soon run into the old pig fence. Feral pigs used to root around Mt. Tam and were considered to be something of an ecological nightmare. The pigs were chased into the fence, then herded toward waiting riflemen. The only wild pig up here now is the Wild Boar Half Marathon. 

This is not a member of the Russula family and has nothing to fear from parasitic orchids.

I kept looking at my back-trail as I descended what I presumed to be the steep remnant of the McKenna Trail, thinking that I sure didn't want to have to hike back up that way. Here I've recently emerged from the woods into an expansive meadow. You can just make out the trail near the center of the frame. When I finally reached the woods you see farther down the hill, even this modest game trail petered out. To continue would have required bushwhacking down to the cross-trail that would take me south to the Willow Camp Trail junction. Maybe I will try that sometime when I'm not carrying so much camera gear, but on this occasion I decided to turn around and head back up. Sometimes an exploration goes that way. I'm reading a book right now about early polar exploration, and my little trip on Mt. Tam turned out a whole lot better.

The return trip was ridiculously steep but not crazy-difficult. One foot in front of the other, and eventually you get there. I hadn't even paid attention to this chert outcrop on the way down, so I took the opportunity to rest and photograph it on the way back up. I wondered what the explanation is for those layers. I mean, it's pretty obvious there are layers, right? It's not just one continuous slab. These rocks are believed to have formed on the Jurassic seabed. Presumably, the creatures that lived in the oceans died and sank to the bottom. So what's the explanation for the layers? Are they composed of different organisms? And if so, I have follow-up questions!

Finally back at the top of the hill near the trailhead, I take in one last view before heading home. One nice thing about having hiked back up the hill -- I was no longer the least bit cold.

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Ode To A Rainy Day

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It was still pouring rain when I arrived at the trailhead at the end of Lagunitas Road. I normally don't like to do photography in the rain, but in a year in which there's been so little rain it doesn't seem so bad. There are limits to the kinds of things you can reasonably photograph while fumbling with an umbrella, a tripod, and a backpack full of camera gear. It's not like I'm out there in the rain every weekend, so for one day, the trouble was no trouble at all. 

I started off by shooting a few video clips which I turned into the Mt. Tam Blog's first and only video presentation. I don't know why I didn't shoot any video for this project before now. I really wish I'd thought of doing so during February's big flood, although that was an especially pugnacious rain, and I didn't even attempt to bring along my tripod or umbrella. This April rain was a friendly spring shower with very little wind, much easier to contend with.

I've got to thank Jane Huber for suggesting this hike. I'd never been on the Yolanda Trail before, and it is gorgeous! I love how different the various parts of the mountain can be. The west side has Bolinas Ridge and the grassy Coastal Trail; the south side has the sun-drenched chaparral, perhaps the most popular trails, and West Point Inn; the north side is thickly forested with wet meadows, relatively lonely trails, and Cataract Falls; and the east side has a great mix of broadleaf woodlands and soft chaparral, plus the "Lake District."

Coastal sage and flowering California buckeye -- two great scents -- share a beautiful view of Mt. Tam's East Peak along the Yolanda Trail.

From the parking lot, you hike up the Yolanda Trail to reach the Hidden Valley Trail and return via the Shaver Grade fire road, a total trip of about 3.5 miles.

This incredible black oak was in the middle of lovely Hidden Valley. The trail down was so overgrown with yellow broom in one section that I literally couldn't see the trail beneath my feet. Fortunately I was wearing rain pants in addition to carrying an umbrella since passing through the broom was a very wet experience.

The hike back to the Jeep was enjoyable, but it wasn't the kind of trail that held a lot of photo opportunities, especially in the rain. I left the town of Ross, bought some gas near Red Hill, and headed out around the north side of Mt. Tam where I stopped at the Lily Pond and ran into this spotted banana slug on a tree just outside my door.

It's interesting to visit my favorite mountain haunts from year to year and find them different every time. Lily Pond is one of those places. Just because the plants grew a certain way one year, doesn't mean they'll be that way again the following year. Things shift a little or a lot. A fungus sprouts one year on a certain log and maybe never again. The horsetail grows thick as horsehair around the base of a group of young bay laurel one year, but never again. For a few years there are bullfrogs, then none.

But one thing you can sort of count on is the profusion of horsetail in general around the pond. In another month these will be significantly higher. Maybe I'll remember to get back and shoot this viewpoint again.

Meanwhile, in the Lily Pond itself, the non-native yellow lily flowers are coming into bloom. They never open up beyond a bunched-up, fist-shaped ball.

After a brief stop at the Lily Pond I continued to Cataract Creek to check out the lower falls and was happily surprised to find a whole troop of Clintonia andrewsiana along the trail.

I've been inspired by the bases of trees lately. Not sure why, but these mossy bay laurel trunks seemed striking to me, surrounded by sword ferns.

I also found a nice little patch of five-finger ferns, which remind me a little of maidenhair ferns.

Speaking of places that change, I had planned to photograph one of my favorite waterfall sections of Cataract Creek, but a number of trees had fallen into it! I have a waterfall in this section hanging on my wall at home, and it would be impossible now -- short of bringing in a chainsaw -- to reproduce it. Some logs get washed out. Others tumble in. With so many people photographing these waterfalls over many years, you could figure out the date range of the images by what sorts of tree-falls were jammed into the rocks.

I'm not sure why such things interest me. Of course things change. Everybody knows that. Still, there's something about experiencing the change for oneself that is profound.

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