No time to hike this week

No hiking for me this week, there is no time, everyone else's needs come first... sigh..
Some microscopic pictures of the bryophyte Syntrichia  (Tortula) muralis , found in the city.

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

Someone's idea of a good place to camp, notice the American Flag

My Jeep

Stupid loud airplanes destroy the experience

Patches playing queen of the hill again but this time on moss

Peltigera membranacea

Isothecium moss with sporphytes and some sweet light

Conocephlum conicum  liverwort with males reproductive organ

Pioneer moss on stump and all over the ground

Hylocominum splendens moss grows very well here

Mystery jelly fungus growing on an alder tree

Menegazzia terabrata  lichen

Conocephalum conicom liverwort

Fairy vomit lichen growing on a liverwort

Lichens and fungus and moss.. OH MY!

Ochrolechia lichen on an Alder tree

Frullania liverwort growing on live alder bark

Road 2353

I almost go off the road at 3:25 in this vid.. Don't try this at home kids!

Last night I decided that I would fix the locks on my jeep and ride my bike today.  But when I woke up I changed my mind and decided to go hiking instead.  So I packed up real quick and told my husband I was going.  He very cheerfully said OK.  Yes!  Not telling him I am going hiking until I am headed out the door is working out very well for me. He’s cheerful about me heading out when I don’t tell him ahead of time.   But if I tell him a day or two before he starts grumbling..how strange..

I took my Jeep broken locks and all, because there was sure to be lots of snow in the Mountains.   I was not sure where to hike, I had several ideas but I ended up going up FS road 2353.  The kind of strange thing is that I parked at the Lower South Fork Skokomish trailhead but completely ignored the trail and headed up the locked logging road instead.   I guess I wanted to be out in the open and not in the claustrophobic forest today.  Also I was worried about keeping my footing on the trail in the snow.  I’ve hiked that trail in the snow but it was not real easy to tell where the trail was.

Winter has become my favorite hiking season.  All the roads that are behind wildlife gate become trails in the winter.  It is also much easier to find solitude in the winter.    Getting to the trail head was a bit tricky, the snow on the road was not too deep but it was wet and icy.  I stopped and let a hummer pass me in the hopes that it would flatten the snow that was hitting my front differential.   I know I dragged my front differential in the snow a few times.  I wonder how much dragging a differential can tolerate?

I parked my Jeep at about 11am and I  brought my snow shoes with me but I could tell that I was not going to need them so I left them in my Jeep.  The snow was very crusty and easy to walk on until I reached about 1,800 feet.  I wish I had thought to bring my gaiters.

My goal was an over look that I had seen only once before when I was headed down this road after doing a big loop.  I was not sure where the over look was.  I passed a couple overlooks and went about 4 miles and reached 2,000 feet before I decided to turn back.  The snow was starting to get into my boots and the going was getting tough and a big switch back loomed above me.

I was happy to find a thalliod liverwort on this hike.  This is my first discovery of  the “great scented liverwort”.  I had it pointed out to me last week, but this time I found it on my own.  I was keeping a sharp eye out for such a thing and had an idea of where to look for them.  I also found a new to me leafy liverwort and a semi aquatic moss.  The only fungal thing I found was a sneaky little lichen.

I thought I had found black moss then I looked at it under my hand lens and discovered that whatever it was looked rather fungal.  Was it a tiny complex thalloid liverwort or was it a fungus?  I looked around for more and soon found a well grown rosette of the same stuff and it looked a lot like lichen.  I took a micro photograph of it and in the photograph I saw apothecia.  Ah ha!  It was tiny lichen growing in the moss.   

 I took a bit home to key out and the key took me to Massalongia.  If this is massalongia I guess it is very well grown.  But that would not be surprising since fungi do grow very well in this area.

Massalongia with apothecia?

Massalongia

Look at the nearby moss, this is a very small fungus... Massalongia?

At my turn around spot I brewed a cup of tea and that is all I had to eat on my hike so I was pretty hungry on the hike back.  I had not packed an instant food and I did not feel like sitting and cooking in the cold.   But on the way back I got quite a surprise!  A cougar had crossed our tracks and walked down the road along side our tracks (but going in the opposite direction) for about 1/10^th of a mile while Patches and I were out hiking!  Oh my, this meant that there was a cougar on the road ahead of us.  Would we catch up to it or would it hide?  I’ve never seen a cougar in the Olympics but I often seen their tracks.   It was not surprising to see cougar tracks here as there were deer tracks ever where and we even saw a deer today.   Cougars eat deer so where there are deer, there are cougars.

I also saw some small canine track and some rabbit tracks.  Hiking in the snow is fun because I get to see  the tracks of all the animals that have passed the same way.

When I got back to my Jeep I cooked my lunch on the hood.  Maybe not the smartest thing to do but it did not hurt the paint and the hood was just warm to the touch when I moved my stove.  My lunch was dehydrated chicken soup with parsnips and onions.  Yes you can dehydrate soup.  It was actually more of a stew than a soup when I put it in the dehydrator. I finished my hike at about 4:30

On the drive out I saw all kinds of activity.  The guy who had been cutting fire wood near where I parked was parked down the road with his truck so full that I wonder if his springs broke. 

I saw a pickup truck that had been hauling snowmobiles blocking the road.  The driver had to get in his truck and move for me.  He had chains on his truck but his tires were spinning like crazy.  He looked angry as I passed him.  I wonder if he was angry at having to move or angry with his truck and jealous of my snow tires? 

Further down the road I saw two men in orange ball caps, one with a Christmas tree in his hand.  As I got closer I saw he was actually carrying a load of brush.  He was Guatemalan and he seemed really surprised when I gave him a friendly wave.  Guatemalans are at the very bottom of the pecking order, despised by both rednecks and Mexicans they have to spend the day in knee deep snow cutting salal for a living.  They are tribal people who have been pushed off their ancestral lands by the force of capitalism.  It must be really bad in Guatemala for them to want to come here to pick brush in the snow from dawn until dusk.  They are mostly Mayan Indians and they don't speak much Spanish but everyone but the Mexicans call them "Mexicans".  The Mexicans have a special racial slur for them, Mexicans derisively call them "Guats".  They are a very long way from home…  Last year a Guatemalan brush picked was shot and killed by a bear hunter and the bear hunter fled the scene.  He was later caught and no charges were pressed against him.  I guess it’s ok to murder Guatemalans.   The only repercussion of the entire ordeal was that Guatemalan brush pickers now wear orange hats so they won’t be mistaken for bears.

Even further down the road I had to pass a van that was going way to slow and sliding all over the place.  I also saw two cars parked at the road that goes to the high steel bridge. Then when I got down to the fish hatchery I saw a big convoy of 4 wheelers.  One of them had a Jeep like mine except that it was lifted way up.

While I was gone my husband worried about me because there was a scanner call on the 23 line for someone in a red jeep that was having a medical emergency.  I sent my husband lots of SPOT messages today but that seemed to worry him even more…. Or so he said.  When I got home he was sound asleep and the house was a mess.  I woke him up by putting the dog in the bedroom after I had given her a bath.

I guess he did not understand the maps well enough to see that I was not even in the search area.  The search area was the pass betweent the Skok and the Wynoochee.  That spot just past spider lake is a bit scary in the snow.  I've never drove over the pass in the winter.

I only brought my point and shoot camera today so I don’t having any stunning landscape photos but I took some nice Macros and an underwater shot.  My pack felt so light without my DSLR in it that I thought I must have forgotten something at home.

7 miles with 1,600 feet elevation gain left the house at about 9:45 and got home at about 5:30, just before it got dark.

Lobaria oregana

Cougar Track

Cougar tracks

This is an underwater picture of moss.  I put my hand underwater, the surface of the water
is at the top of the picture.  This was the first time I put my camera underwater.

Great scented liverwort

Conocephalum conicum

Patches surpirsed my by laying down and playing king of the hill  while I
was trying to decide if I wanted to turn around or not.  Clearly she was ready for a rest

I think this is a leafy liverwort, it seems to have 3 ranks of leaves,
 one on each side and one on top of the stem

Maybe this was the view point, I think the backside of Grisdale hill and the Oxbow are in view

After hike lunch cooked on hood

Fire wood harvest from trees that fell in the windstorm

Same possible leafy liverwort

Very pretty moss

Pilophorus acicularis

Deer in the distance

Snow storm

Breaking the trail in a church parking lot with my snowtires

two days later snow plow with scary teeth

Breaking the trail to the taco truck as well

I'm still a little bit sick but this morning was the first morning in two weeks that I have woken up WITHOUT a headache, so I think I am getting better.   There is snow at sea-level so hiking in the mountains in out for me for now.  I can hike and go 4-wheeling in town this week!

I tested out my new snowshoes in town.  So far I don't think they float any better than my old snowshoes but they are less awkward.  They are more narrow and it will be easier for me to crawl over logs and brush in these shoes.  I walked around town for about a mile and the shoes helped for sure.  Everyone else who was walking around town at that hour looked miserable.  This was when the snow was fresh I was breaking the trail on the sidewalks.

testing out my shoes and my waterproof camera

I don't have the lens to do this with my DLSR so I did it with a point and shoot

He's a lumber jack and he's banannas!

I did some trail breaking in my Jeep too.  The snow was very powdery when it finally arrived and Jeeping around in it was fun.   With my snow tires I go driving for fun when it snows.  Without my snow tires I'm not going anywhere near my car.  Even my Jeep would stay home if it did not have snow tires.

Most of the moss is under snow right now butI can still find plenty of moss to collect for my class, I'm not at all worried about that.  The only thing I worry about is getting enough time in the microscopes to ID the stuff.

Too late to take the lights down now!