Skokomish Lower South Fork in the rain

I really wanted to hike on Monday, but I had to wait until Tuesday because my spouse insisted that I stay home to watch the bathroom floor being repaired..  really???  He had the day off, he was home all day.   I saw no reason for me to have to stay home on the only day predicted to be dry this week. 

Well, he got his way, but I made sure he knew I was not pleased about it.  When I got home from hiking on Tuesday I made a point of showing him all my soaking wet gear and just how heavy wet gear is and just how cold poor Patches was. My soaking wet bandanna just might of landed on his face while he was snoozing on the couch.

So for my trip report:

I drove my little car to the trail head in the rain and I parked my little car in the rain and then I hiked in the rain and had lunch in the rain and hiked out in the dark and rain and then drove home in the dark and the rain.

Here is a 15 second video trip report:

Now it's Wednesday and the sun is shining but I'm too tired to hike because I hiked yesterday and I have a dial-a-ride hike planned for Friday.  The weather forecast for Friday is 100% chance of... you guessed it.. RAIN.. sigh..

I only packed my point and shoot camera for this hike so my pictures are not the best and my lens was wet most of the time.  At least that means I don't have to watermark my photos. (no pun intended)

 I'll probably go ahead and take my big camera on Friday though.  My raincoat kept me dry on Tuesday so it should be able to keep my camera dry.

I picked two pounds of yellow chanterelles with a few whites mixed in and one pound of winter chanterelles, one small bears head, two small Reshi and a bunch of honey mushrooms.

I stashed my bags as I hiked in so I could pick them up on the way out.  But I was unable to find my final bag of honey mushroom caps.  Maybe someone else found it for me, I don't know.  All I knew for sure was that my pack was 1/10th of a mile away from me on the trail and my headlamp was in my pack and the sun was going to set in 20 minutes.  I did not want to get caught in the dark without my pack or headlamp, so I did not put too much effort into finding that last bag.

Mushroom season is starting to wind down.  This trail is no good at all for mushroom hunting until you get out of the range of Evergreen State College Field trips.  Luckily the students don't hike very far, so I can get out of that range on a typical day hike.  I know that this trail is well picked over by other mushroom hunters, so I don't go there for the mushrooms.

My feet were soaking wet in my stupid Solomon "waterproof" boots.  My new boots should come today.  If they leak at all in the first six months they are going right back, I can't afford to waste money on poor boots anymore.

7 miles with 300 feet elevation gain

Honey mushrooms

Bears Head

Yellow jacket nest

Huge hedgehog mushroom

This is acutally a white chanterelle
Cantharellus subalbidus
sometimes they are yellow

All white chanterelles

Cortinarious voiolaciea (spelled wrong)

Amanita vaginata

underside of same giant hedghog

Tea time in the rain

My lunchtime shelter

new signs

A stalked slime mold I think

Some clay in the river

hand written sign warning of 30 yellow jacket stings in one group

The haul



My Temperate Rainforests class found a
cauliflower mushroom here in 2007.  I've
checked back every year and it has never returned.

Big Creek, Lower Ellinor, first trip with dial-a-ride

My camera was on a bad setting for the first 30 pictures that I took, so I don’t have a lot of photos that I can post from this trip.  But I did make a video.

A side stream

This was my first trip utilizing Mason Transit dial-a-ride.  In Mason County anyone can ride on the dial-a-ride, there are no eligibility requirements.   But I think scheduling priority is given to those with physical disabilities.  Everyone else is just allowed to tag along if a bus happens to be going that way.

Using the regular bus service there are only two trails that I can get to and those are both Jefferson County.  Using dial-a-ride opens up a whole new hiking universe for me!  For my first dial-a-ride I decided to go to the Big Creek Trail.  This trail is right off of a major paved road and it is about 50 miles from home.  I scheduled this ride two weeks in advance and I had to spend about fifeteen minutes on the phone to get it done.

The plan was for me to catch the bus between 8:00 and 8:30 leaving town and between 2:45 and 3:15 going back to town.  My morning bus arrived promptly at 8:00 and the driver (Scott) asked for me by name and then whisked me up to Big Creek, picking up one other passenger along the way.  I was dropped off at Big Creek at 8:40am.  Since bus service within the county is free, the ride cost me nothing.

Just after the bus dropped me off a man arrived in a white truck, at first I thought he might be a forest ranger so I was frightened of him.  But I saw that his truck was not marked and when he got out of his truck he was wearing and orange vest.  Ah, a hunter.. well I was dressed in blaze orange because it’s elk hunting season, so I was not too worried, so I turned my back on the man and started to hike.  

But the man yelled me down, he wanted to know where I was going and what I was doing.   This made me a little nervous because maybe he was just an elk hunter, or maybe he was an armed and dangerous rapist who was going to stalk me!   I told the guy I was hiking up the trail and left it at that. 

But something told me that this guy was probably okay, so I waited for him to catch up to me.  When he caught up he handed me his coffee cup and for some reason, I took it and asked him what it was.  He said it was tea.  Then he started to load giant bullets into his rifle.  It turned out that he simply wanted me to hold his cup so he could load his gun, but it never entered his mind to ask if I actually wanted to hold his cup.  How very odd!

Anyway the man recognized me from my hike to Snow lake and once I knew the guy was a hiker (and he did seem like a reasonable guy at Snow lake) I felt safe enough to tell him my hiking plans.  My plan was to take the Big Creek Loop anti-clockwise, hike up to the look out and then return and finish the loop in the anti-clockwise direction.  Unfortunately he also intended to hike counter clock wise and I like my solitude, so I changed plans and hiked in the clock wise direction.  

 I was a bit discombobulated by my encounter with him and I started to head for the location of the old bridge that washed away years ago rather than heading up the road to the new bridge.  When I realized my mistake I went ahead and crossed the creek on a log jam rather that walk out of my way to the new bridge.  By crossing on the log jam I got about a ¼ of a mile head start and knew I would be well away from the hunter for the rest of the loop.

I had my tea at the overlook as usual and I saw that they are doing a lot of logging on saddle mountain. 

It took me about two hours to hike to the overlook  so  I still  had 4 hours left before my bus would return, with that in mind I headed up into the beautiful forest on the Lower Ellinor trail.  I bushwacked straight up to the trail from the overlook and then I went to about 3,100 feet before I turned around.

  I found Peltigera venosa on the  trail up there, I had never noticed it on all my trips up there in the past,  I must have only developed an eye for it after seeing it on Mount Walker a few weeks ago.

At about 12:30 I turned around and headed back down for the bus stop.  I picked a load of honey mushrooms (caps only) and a few chanterelles on the way down.  It made me happy to think that these were free mushrooms since it did not cost me any gas money to go out there and pick them.   Free mushrooms?!  Dial-a-ride is bomb diggity!

 It turns out that I cut it a bit too close for the trip back down to the bus stop, because I took a wrong turn on the way down.  I ended up on the campground trail instead of on the loop trail and that took me a couple of extra minutes.  Also I had some rather serious intestinal issues right at the end, so I had to run down to the outhouse. 

 I was afraid I would not have time to both use the outhouse and catch the bus on time, and not making it to the outhouse would have been a disaster.  Yeah, so the end of my hike was not very pleasant at all!

I took care of my issue and made it back to the bus stop at 2:42, which was just 3 minutes before the earliest time that my bus might depart.  But my bus did not actually arrive until 3:11 so I did not need to run to catch the bus, I only needed to run to catch the outhouse.

My bus made a stop on Web hill to pick up one other city bound passenger before it dropped me off at my front door at 4:05pm.    

It was so nice to not have to drive myself down the twisty 119 road. I was very pleased with this bus trip and I can see myself utilizing the service quite a bit.   I’m going to make a reservation right now to have them take me out to Staircase next week.  Staircase is in the national park so I won’t have to contend with any hunters out there.  I'll only have the mean rangers to worry about.

Both bus drivers asked if I carry a weapon while I hike and if I have a cell phone.  I guess the idea of my hiking solo made them a bit nervous.  Of course I took my AK-47 on the bus with me.

This was my first trip with my SPOT 3.  I don’t like SPOT, but it’s cheap, so I bought another one anyway.  My camera was on a bad setting for the first 30 pictures that I took, so I don’t have a lot of photos that I can post from this trip.  But did I make a video.

7.5 miles with 2,100 feet elevation gain.

 

 

Honey mushrooms that went home with me

Mount Washington

Tea time

Peltigera venosa

Old growth
 

Bus stop

Tiny cauliflower mushroom

What if you have no vehicle?

Campground will be closed all of
next year for construction

Unknown fungi

Red belted conk Fomitopsis pinacola

Riding the bus home

 

Chaetomium Fungi growing in my bathroom

Happy Halloween!

This blog is partly about fungi, so here goes.  I noticed a black discoloration coming up through the vinyl in my bathroom and I suspected mold.  So I pulled up the flooring and my suspicions were confirmed (I'll be contacted my insurance company about this) there is indeed mold in my bathroom.

The culprit is the wax ring on the toilet.  This is very disappointing as the floor was redone and the toilet was lifted up just 8 years ago.  They should have replaced the wax ring when they lifted up the toilet. I suspect that they did not replace the $4.00 ring.  Worse yet is the OSB  floorboard that the previous homeowner though would make a good underlayment for vinyl.. NOT!  But hey, he only floored the house so he could sell it.

Anyway thanks to my college education I have been able to ID the mold in my bathrooms.  It is Chaetomium species.  It is not the scary black death mold that mold is Stachybotrys.  Still it can cause health problems for humans.  Here are some pictures of it that I took.

The presence of septate hyphea immediately told me that
I was looking at a higher fungi.  Either an Ascomycete or Basidiomycete

Dessicated spores have grooves, this was key to me figuring out the Genus

With some Cello tape I was able to lift up the whole structures for observation.
The hairy round glob is a Cliestothecia, it contains asci.

Hydrated spores do not have groove
They are elliptical and 5-7 microns long

Curled tip of hyphea in center  could be the start of a new cliestothecia

 Now I would like to find a key to Chaetomium so I can try to get this down to species.

Elbow Creek by Bus Bushwacking Loop with Patches

 5.5 miles with 2,500 feet elvation gain