Steep Ravine Camping

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It's not often that I go to Mt. Tam and photograph striped shore crabs (Pachygrapsus crassipes). But, being low tide and all, and having our tent set up on the bluffs above the coast at Steep Ravine Campground, shore crabs were the main wildlife attraction down at water's edge.

We showed up at the locked gate just before our 2 p.m. check-in time. There are two locks on the gate, a combination lock and one which requires a key. The park concessionaire gives you the combination over the phone, but they hadn't said anything about a key lock, so we waited outside the gate expecting someone to show up with the key. When two o'clock passed with no one showing up, I opened the combination lock and tried the gate. It opened! We had passed the first test.

Arriving at the campground at the bottom of the hill, we found a small parking area and soon realized we'd have to park there and carry everything to our campsite. I spotted a couple of wheelbarrows next to some bundles of firewood ($8/each), so we carried and trundled most of our gear to campsite #5 (Kelp). 

All the tent sites were pretty nice. We left the cooler in the Jeep since there was no "bear box" at the campsite, just a small wooden cabinet with shelves. We kept our wine in there since mice can't chew through glass, at least not in one night. 

There are two flush toilets (with sinks) near the cabins and a pit toilet near the tent campers. You can expect to wait in a short line in the morning at the flushers. There was a single freshwater spigot where I often saw kids washing dishes, but we had brought our own drinking water.

Although a cabin certainly has its attractions, it was beautiful to stay in our tent and be closer to the sounds of chaparral birds, shorebirds and sea birds, the rhythmic surf and the harmonious chorus frogs. I really felt like I was spending a night not just on the mountain, but with the mountain. 

Although fog came and went our first day out, I stuck my head out the tent sometime after midnight to see the sky directly above us was absolutely clear. Nothing to see but stars -- and a total lunar eclipse, the planet Mars just a tad to the north.

We treated ourselves to dinner that night (and the next) at the Parkside Cafe in Stinson Beach. Good food, and Epiphany Amber Ale on tap. We spent most of the day Tuesday driving around Pt. Reyes National Seashore, heading out to Pierce Point Ranch to stretch our legs and take in the profusion of Douglas iris (and cow parsnip) blooming on the verdant hills. That's Tomales Point in the distance above. 

We also drove up Mt. Vision and stopped at North Beach and Drake's Beach, where it was so windy that we ate our lunches inside the Jeep. The Drake's Beach Cafe was closed, and a ranger at the Bear Valley Visitor Center later told us it isn't just closed for the season. The cafe folks pulled up stakes. (Even the Point Reyes Light newspaper seems to have nothing about this online.) 

After strolling up and down the main drag at Point Reyes Station, then hiking the short (1 kilometer) Earthquake Trail at Bear Valley, we drove back down the coast and paid a visit to the town of Bolinas. We parked at one end and walked through the commercial center until we spilled out onto the beach. Being a weekday, the museum was closed, which was too bad because they were showing work by Walter Kitundu, whose skillful artwork is always fun to check out -- imaginative and beautiful.

Whether driving the Panoramic Highway over Mt. Tam, or Hwy. 1 out to Point Reyes, or just hanging out in camp, we were treated to April's finest verdure. Hard to believe we woke up in such a beautiful place just this morning.

Steep Ravine was a great "staycation" spot. We could see the lights of Half Moon Bay in the distance at night, but we never felt like were just a few minutes away from home in the city. Yet when it was time to leave, the drive home was short and sweet. I will say that we were lucky to have such great weather. We made the reservation months ago, and I would generally choose to camp here in April, with October as my second choice for tent-camping.

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Stinky Spot

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The first frame was just the deer's nose.

The camera-trap spot stunk, but not because of the striped skunk. 

I was actually happy to see that I'd captured a skunk since it's my first on the mountain. The spot stunk because it caught so many hikers. Two four-legged animals and eight two-legged critters. One of the hikers obviously spotted the cam, but I'm not sure he knew what it was. He proceeded to squat right in front of the camera and fool around with something in his knapsack for ten minutes, setting off the camera many times.

I set the camera out on April 4, attaching it to an oak limb that was covered with lush green moss. When I picked it up this morning, April 16, the moss was already dried out, its color faded (and the cam stood out like a sore thumb). I caught the hikers on April 6, 7, 10 and 13. The set was on the edge of the woods next to a meadow, just off the Coastal Trail.

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The Magic Mountain

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I recently learned that a co-worker was a poet after I asked her about the book she was reading, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. I made a half-hearted attempt to read it once, maybe 20 years ago, after learning that it was one of Joseph Campbell's favorites. Joseph Campbell is one of my favorites, but he reigns beyond my capacity to emulate. Finnegans Wake was another of Campbell's favorites (Campbell studied the book for years and wrote A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake). I knew a Harvard English graduate who couldn't read it, and the Skeleton Key is about as far as I ever got. Who knows, though. One of these days I might find the right speed of life to be able to enjoy and comprehend the art of Mann and Joyce. Until then, I'll savor the more visceral art of Mt. Tam.

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Return to Rocky Ridge

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With the circumannuation just seven weeks from completion, I'm trying to make sure I don't leave anything out -- any part of the mountain, that is. Probably not possible. My biggest disappointment has been going all year without a good bobcat encounter. There's still time to get lucky, but the most likely time of year for sightings has passed.

Today I enjoyed a beautiful spring hike, heading up the Rocky Ridge fire road and turning off at the Stocking Trail to pick up the Kent Trail down to Alpine Lake and closing the loop back where I'd parked at Bon Tempe Lake.

The Douglas iris were still going pretty strong, so I thought I'd create a theme for the day of showing the iris in various beautiful settings, but these first two settings were unmatched the rest of the way.

Hiking up Rocky Ridge, my thoughts kept turning to Magdalena Glinkowski, the young woman who was reported missing a week after she'd come up for a hike. Since so much time had passed before anyone started looking for her, it seemed certain she was either nowhere near the mountain, or was beyond help. According to the Marin IJ, a body was found this morning south of the Bootjack parking area where Magdalena's car had been found, and where she'd been photographed by security cameras.

A trail runner reported having seen Magdalena the day she disappeared, giving searchers a place to focus on. The authorities say there's no obvious sign of foul play. Hopefully they'll be able to figure out what happened. To die in such a beautiful place, a place whose dangers seem so benign -- a touch of poison oak or stinging nettle, or maybe a tick bite. Though the trails are many, it's hardly conceivable that someone could become so lost that they'd never again be found. 

But it sounds like she was found close to where she started. So sad. My prayers go out to Magdalena and her family.

This is Hidden Lake, along the Stocking Trail.

I couldn't resist photographing this gorgeous Amanita right along the Kent Trail. A couple of botanizers passed me here as they were heading uphill and the woman told me I should send the picture to the BioBlitz folks at iNaturalist. I actually knew what she was talking about.

Once upon a time I had more interest in collecting species photos, like this Redwood Sideband Snail, Monadenia infumata. I put a lot of energy into getting IDs and uploading pictures to Calphotos. But somewhere along the way I lost interest in the enterprise. You never know about these things. The interest could return.

Or I could get sucked into using a 4x5 view camera exclusively and being much more selective about the subjects I photograph. I shot 94 frames today (including frames combined for exposure blending and focus-stacking), which is not a lot, even for me, although I usually shoot less when I'm actually hiking as opposed to just poking around somewhere. But 4x5 shooters sometimes come back from an outing having shot nothing at all. The whole process is so different from 35mm work.

For a project like the circumannuation, a project where exploring the biodiversity of a place is a large part of the work, the relative ease of 35mm is just right.

I was surprisingly tired by the time I reached Alpine Lake. Tough week, I guess. I'd planned to just enjoy the hike back to the Jeep without stopping to set up the camera again, but I couldn't resist when I spotted this red waxy cap mushroom growing at the base of a hollowed-out redwood trunk. In a normal, wet winter, we'd have seen these guys by the dozen already, but this might be the first and only one I've seen this season. People on the trails around Mt. Tam have often approached me when I'm photographing mushrooms. "I saw this bright red mushroom. Do you know what it was?"

Although blue sky was breaking out farther inland, heavy fog was still blowing thick and cold up on Bolinas Ridge. I was going to drive home that way to check up on the trail camera, but I was too tired to make the hike so I headed back the way I came, through Fairfax, San Anselmo, Kentfield and so on. Hopefully the trail camera will keep. I'm still running the same set of batteries I started with back in September.

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More 4x5'n

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Here are some pictures of the 4x5 slides I shot of Cascade Falls and such last week. I was glad to see they weren't completely terrible!

For one thing, the shutter's slowest speed is one second, so I was making exposures using the Bulb and Time settings of 4 seconds to 10 seconds and counting, "one one-thousand, two one-thousand," etc. since I didn't even have a watch with me.

Maybe it's because I used to shoot 35mm color slides and have feelings about it that go way back, but it just feels magical to get these nice big transparencies in the mail, to put them on the light table and view them from corner to corner with a 10X loupe while muttering "Wow!" to myself. 

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Cascade Falls

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I've been trying to get a Friday off for several weeks -- I sure miss my old 4-day workweek -- and finally got a chance today. I've been wanting to take the borrowed 4x5 view camera out to expose the rest of the sheets of film I bought a few months ago. 

The view camera is quite a handful. It's heavy and its case is bulky (case, camera + one lens and film holders = 25.8 lbs.), so I was glad to be able to practically drive right up to Cascade Falls in Mill Valley. This is the same waterfall that was dry when Pam and I stumbled on it way back near the start of the circumannuation, at the bottom of the Zig Zag Trail.

I fired off a few frames with my D800E, then switched gears to the 4x5. I have to say, I fall in love with using a view camera right away, even the huge, heavy monorail that a friend was kind enough to let me borrow. I think I'm going to get one of my own, and I've been looking at a lightweight Chamonix 4x5 field camera.

I exposed all the remaining sheets of film I had in short order and felt a touch of disappointment over being out of film when the day was still so young. It would have been tough to keep going, though, because the storm blowing through was creating fairly windy conditions on the mountain. Wind blowing into a bulky view camera can make it impossible to get sharp pictures.

After shooting Cascade Falls and using up my remaining sheets of film, I headed up the mountain to check on the camera trap and to move the camera to a new location. I stopped by the Serpentine Power Point area to look for wildflowers, but most were still closed up due to lack of sunshine, and many others were well past their prime.

A covey of quail was feeding along the road very near the pull-out near my trail camera, so I parked and walked back to see if they'd let me get close enough to make a few photographs.

Unfortunately, the quail on Mt. Tam aren't as accommodating as they are in, say, Tennessee Valley. They view a human in much the same way they'd view most other animals -- something to be avoided.

Before checking on the camera, which was close to the road, I poked around in the woods and found these interesting little Amanita pantherina mushrooms.

There were still numerous calypso orchids in bloom, but they're already starting to fade. 

The spotted coral roots, another of our native orchids, are just getting started for the most part, at least up here near Bolinas Ridge. I believe they start blooming earlier near the base of the mountain. The bright orange stuff in the background is fungus, probably incipient turkey tails.

I snapped this frame on the way back to the Jeep after setting the trail camera out in its new location. I'm a little concerned that people will trip the motion sensor in this location, and probably even spot the camera, but we'll see. I've been thinking about setting out in this spot for quite a while. It's near a tree where a bobcat that I had photographed a few years ago lay down to die. Another photographer who'd been with me was looking for it again a couple of weeks after we'd seen it and found the cat peacefully laid out at the base of a huge old oak tree.

There was a little bit of rain off and on, but nothing really significant. I dozed for a while in the Jeep with the sound of light rain tapping the roof and windows. Beautiful.

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Coyote Trail

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I left the trail camera in the same spot for another week.

Instead of catching another bobcat, the camera caught a passing coyote who appears to have caught an interesting scent.

But not too interesting. The camera fires three frames then waits five seconds before the motion sensor becomes active again. These three frames are all we got. Interesting to note that the coyote passed by just this morning. 

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March Favorites

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Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

--Chuck Close, from the documentary film Chuck Close

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Slim Solomon

Millipede Nursery

Hide-and-Seek

Trillium in the Redwoods

Orchard Remnant

The Moss Abides

Merry-Go-Round

California Lilac

Lupine Meadow

Calypso

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