Walks with Moss: Dry Creek from the North, with the great scented liverwort

Dendroalsia abietina

Climacium dendroides moss taking over old lake bed

Rhytidiadelphus moss

Lunch / Dinner at the base of Mount Rose

Large beautiful crustose lichen with snowy mountains in the background

I left my home in at about 10:00am and arrived at the Dry Creek trailhead at about 11PM. Before I could leave my house I had to put two quarts of oil in my Jeep. While I was putting oil in my Jeep I noticed that exhaust smoke was coming out from under my Jeep, so looked under it to see what the problem is. I found that my muffler is cracked in half; I probably caught it on a rock when I was driving over a wash out on the way to the Mildred Lakes trails a few months ago. I’ll get the muffler fixed later, no big hurry, it’s kind of fun having a Jeep that sounds like a muscle car. It was a bright sunny winter day but the wind was blowing so the air in town was clean. The drive to the trail was uneventful other than the sighting of a Springer Spaniel in a car in front of me and a Sherriff jay walking across the freeway in Hoodsport.

Right at the start of my hike I began to recognize some mosses at least to genus. This is the first time I have hiked here since I started my moss class, and what a difference that class has made already. I found many of the same mosses that grow in Olympia, but the mosses here were bigger and prettier and better. The glittering wood moss, or step moss had huge fronds and covered very large areas. At the base of almost every stream I found the great-scented liverwort. I was looking for a different liverwort that I have never seen before and I did not find it, but I found many huge patches of the great scented liverwort. I also saw huge fluffy lumps of the Rhytidiadelphus moss and I think I saw some Dendroalisia moss. Badge moss was everywhere too along with huge patches of male and female Leucoleptis moss plants.

I saw all the usual lichens, peltigeras, fairy vomits, platismata glaucas, cladonias, ochrolechia and so on. In one spot the fairy vomit lichen was growing over the top of a porella liverwort. I found huge pretty crustose lichen on a rock near Lake Cushman; I took several pictures of it with snowy Mount Lincoln in the background. I also found a few little brown mushrooms and some winter oyster mushrooms that were still hanging on. I did not see any animal tracks in the snow, but I did see elk scat everywhere. The ice storm we had two weeks ago must have drove the elk down lower than usual.

The trail was free of snow until 1,500 feet and then there was enough snow to prompt me to put on my gaiters so I could keep the snow out of my boots. I walked for about 2.5 miles until I reached dry creek. The creek was low enough to ford today, but I did not cross it, instead I turned around and looked for a lunch spot. I decided not to eat lunch at the creek because the woods were dark and cold and I wanted to be in the sun.

I ended up hiking all the way back to Lake Cushman before I had lunch. The lake level is much lower than it used to be and now one can walk among the stumps of the trees that were cut down before they put in the damn, and mosses have started to colonize the silt and stumps. I collected two mosses from what used to be the lake bed. I’m sure that one of the mosses is an aquatic moss. I don’t know what the other moss is, but it is taking over the entire old lake bed and it is even growing on the old stumps. This moss does not look like any of the mosses in the nearby forest but I don’t have that good of an eye for moss yet, so this moss could have come from the nearby forest. I found two old roads under what used to be the lake. I saw these roads the last time I hiked here too and I thought they were old logging roads. But now I think they are too narrow to have been old logging roads. I think they may actually be traces of the original roads that went out to staircase the Mount Rose lodge before the damn was put in.

Some people had been camping on the lake bed when I started my hike but they had left before I got back to my Jeep. Two other people passed me on the trail, I think this was the first time I have ever seen someone else on this trail, but I don’t normally hike on Saturdays. The people who passed me were hiking up the trail when I was hiking back down the trail. I bet they wonder what happened to me since they did not see me on the way out but my Jeep was still at the trail head. They must have parked next to me at the start of their hike and they must have wondered why my car was still at the trail head when they were done hiking. I doubt they would have noticed me having my lunch way off the trail. When I got back to my Jeep there was no one parked next to me that is how I know that the people who passed me on the trail had finished their hike before I did.

On the drive out I stopped at Cushman falls to look for liverworts but all I found there was more of the great scented liverwort and not the liverwort I was looking for. The great scented liverwort only seems to live at the base of year round streams, while the peltigera lichen is happy to grow near seasonal streams or several feet away from year round streams. Whenever I saw a peltigeria I knew that I was looking in the wrong place to find a liverwort. The peltigera was a brown one and I think it was peltigera mebranacea, I saw a lot of it on this hike. I think I hiked about 5 miles, my GPS(r) batteries went dead so I don’t have a track log for my exact mileage, but I know that I put 18,884 steps on my daughter’s pokewalker. I don’t think that pokewalkers are very accurate though. I got back to my Jeep at about 4:30 and I got home right before it got dark.

8 miles 800 feet elevation gain