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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Matt Davis-Dipsea-Steep Ravine Loop

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I've been wanting to get around to this ever since a friend at work told me this is her favorite hike. I'd never hiked it before today, and in fact had never hiked down from Bolinas Ridge to Stinson Beach. It seemed insane, really -- too far and too steep. But I left the Jeep near Pantoll Campground at 7:30 in the morning and was back by 11:50 even though I stopped for a few photo ops. It didn't take much longer than a hike to High Marsh. 

If I was going to do this hike, I figured I'd better get to it while there was still some water running in the canyons. I found this little cascade not too far down the trail. While I worked I was passed by the first of several groups of trail runners I'd encounter.

After about a mile of fairly dark forest, the trail emerges into the open along Bolinas Ridge. I doubt it will get more beautiful than this until maybe next year. Everything is green and fresh, the grass is still short enough that the California poppies and other wildflowers aren't overpowered, and the ugly, spiky bull thistle that will soon cover much of the hillsides is only just getting started. It had been a chilly 44 degrees in the forest when I started, but it warmed up to 50 as soon as I reached the sunshine.

I recently tried jogging again but quit before a year was out. My route took me along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, out past Pac Bell Park to Mission Bay and back. It wasn't a bad route, but it was all on concrete and surrounded by motor vehicle traffic. I'll bet I could have lasted longer if my route had been more like this.

Eventually, the Matt Davis Trail makes good on its promise to get you on your way down to Stinson Beach. It leaves the open ridge and switchbacks like crazy down the hill, passing through some interesting parts of the mountain. I enjoyed the park-like feel of this area where the Douglas firs were spread out, with some gnarled old grandfather firs mixed in.

Forget-Me-Not.

In another spot along the steep trail down, the vista opened up across a stream canyon. I just love the way the woods look here. If I ever get a lightweight large-format camera, I'll make a point of returning to this spot to photograph these woods in a way to capture the incredible detail.

There were several nice patches of Slim Solomon along the trail.

I finally reached Table Rock, which was being guarded by a superb California buckeye that was freshly leafed out. I know some hikers pass right by this spot, unaware of the nearby vista point.

Once you duck through the vegetation and come out the other side, you're taking in the views from Table Rock. This is the top of the huge rock formation that's cut by the stream canyon. Off to the right is a vertiginous drop-off to the stream far below.

I found this nice little waterfall just below the vista point. I hadn't run into anyone on the way down the trail until I reached Table Rock. I think a lot of people hike up from Stinson Beach, but a couple of ladies who'd done so were unaware of Table Rock's existence. I hiked the rest of the way down to the small town of Stinson Beach and easily found my way onto the Dipsea Trail after a very short walk along the Shoreline Highway. The trail crossed the bottom of Panoramic Highway and rose through an open area of coyote brush chaparral with nice views back along the coast and up the steep flanks of Mt. Tam.

As I hiked up the Dipsea Trail I thought about the incredible runners who race from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach every year. I knew a guy at work who runs it, and when he gets to Stinson Beach, he often turns around and runs back to Mill Valley -- a Double Dipsea. 

In any event, that little stretch of the Dipsea Trail was okay, but it wasn't until I reached Steep Ravine that I fully understood why this loop was someone's favorite route. You enter the redwood forest with the sweet little creek and all the fresh wildflowers, from fairy bells to Clintonia to redwood violets, plus five-finger ferns, coast elderberry, you name it. It's like Shangri-La.

The name "Steep Ravine" is not a misnomer, but I don't believe it's as steep as the steepest parts of the Matt Davis Trail. My knees were glad to finally be heading uphill after that long descent.

Yesterday's rain probably didn't add much to the flow of Mt. Tam's creeks, but there's still enough water to make for some pretty falls.

There'd been a sign at the bottom of the trail warning of this ladder eight-tenths of a mile farther up. This family was just coming down from Pantoll. The little girl was completely fearless, but she wasn't rushing anything either, as you can tell by this eight-second exposure.

P.S. A nice alternative would be to hike the Matt Davis to Stinson Beach, do some exploring in town and at the beach, have a picnic or get some late lunch at a local eatery, then take the $2 shuttle back up to Pantoll.

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