Post-fire Regrowth

We joined some friends for an outing up Lexington Canyon, where the Black Fire burned last year. The weather wasn't exactly promising when we started out, but we decided to go anyway. I'm glad we did, because the contrast of the newly sprouting plants with the charred trees and white snow was stunning.

Desert Girl was happy to hike because her friend Rose was along.

The diversity of species was interesting. American vetch (Vicia americana) dominated much of the ground cover where we were, but we also saw lots of other plants, like lupine, this yellow violet (below), Packera multilobata, Indian paintbrush (Castilleja chromosa), Descurainia sp., heartleaf twistflower (Streptanthus cordatus), phlox,  and much more.

The American vetch was like a carpet in places, with its purple blooms livening up the forest floor.

I find burned areas fascinating. You can see how the fire progressed and ponder why one area burned and another different. The resulting patterns of burned areas have a strange appeal.

Despite the high intensity of the fire in this area, many of the plants are regrowing, including these chokecherries.

A gate is supposed to go in here now, but for now a sign warns people to be careful of falling snags and other hazards. A flood that came after the fire washed out this road.

Even in areas that had both burned and flooded, plants grew.

Gradually the clouds floated away, allowing the sun to warm the charbroiled land.

Desert Girl was fascinated with all the flowers.

Hopefully more people will get to experience the rejuvenation of the land after a forest fire. It is truly amazing.

Spring Birds

 I've been having a dilemma: when I go for a run, I get distracted by the birds and want to stop and look at them. Exercise or bird watching? Argh, I don't know!

So I've been doing some of both. The birds are singing all the time (starting about 4:30 a.m., although the owls may hoot before then). Sometimes it can be overwhelming trying to sort out all the songs! Above is a house finch, one of the noisiest songsters of them all!

A distinctive song is that of the red-winged blackbird, which also happens to be quite easy to identify and remember its name.

Another house finch!

The western kingbirds look like they live a good life. They're either chasing insects around with their mates or relaxing on a perch.

We have a lot of robins around here, but I still love watching them.

While I was looking at birds a couple weeks ago, I noticed a bird dart out from the end of a clothesline pole. I took a closer look this week and saw a little blue egg in it.

House sparrows were seen in the nearby trees, but this doesn't look like a house sparrow egg. I didn't get a good enough look at the other nearby birds to figure out what kind of egg this is.

I continue to find bird photography very challenging. The lens I use only goes up to 200 mm, and I generally don't have a tripod with me. So I delete many more photos than I use. Nevertheless, I can't help but try! I learn the birds better when I examine the photos.

Some of the really colorful ones I've seen lately are lazuli buntings, evening grosbeaks, and yellow warblers. What cool birds are you seeing?

Preschool Days

 I see the biggest changes in kids the younger they are, so seeing photos from preschool from year to year are often a bit shocking. Those kids sure develop fast! It's so neat watching them find their likes and dislikes and become little people with distinct personalities.

Here are a few photos from recess this spring.

Kind of makes you want to go and play, doesn't it?

Under a Moonlit Sky

 It's springtime on the ranch, which means my husband is spending a lot of time irrigating. He usually can't get everything done he wants to during the day, which means that the kids and I spend some time in the evenings going out to various places so he can move water. If I have my camera and binoculars, I'm a happy camper, because I enjoy photography and bird watching so much.

On this particular evening I asked my husband to just let me walk around. I found a cool sign with an almost full moon just above it.

I am fascinated by the moon, and keep trying to figure out good ways to get photos with it. I still have a bit to learn, but hopefully practice really will make perfect!

We moved to a different part of the meadow. The orange irrigating dams really stood out in the fading light.

The wind is often blowing, so it was nice to have a calm evening. It was taking awhile to move the dams, so I started wandering again.

I came across the gravesite of "Hockman Hand, Rest in Peace."

Not much further down the road is the Hockman Cemetery. I can't remember the whole story (it's in Graham Quate's book), but I think the Hockman hand shot at someone in the Hockman family, so he wasn't allowed into the family cemetery.

These old family cemeteries are found all over the area, little time capsules of what life was like and who used to live out under the vast open skies. I bet the moon looked the same to them back then, too.

Snow Survey 2014

We woke up yesterday to fresh snow in the mountains, and it reminded me of the snow survey I did the end of March that I never posted.

Snow surveys are conducted throughout the western U.S. to help predict stream flows. The Natural Resource Conservation Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, runs the program. In Great Basin National Park, three snow courses are found along Baker Creek. They were established in 1942 (when the land was managed by the U.S. Forest Service), and almost every year a snow survey is conducted at the end of February and the end of March.

Mark and I started near the Baker Creek campground on a snowy morning on April 1, the last day we could do it to be in time for the April 1 forecast.

By the time we walked/skiied up to the trailhead at 8,000 feet, the precipitation had stopped. But there was barely enough snow to ski on, and soon we were walking again.

Fortunately after the first site at 8250 ft, we found some nice snow. The sun came out, making a beautiful day. When I first started doing the snow survey about three years ago, it seemed so long. Now it just seems like a pleasant outing. (I still am sore at the end of the day, though!)

A smile from Mark, despite the skis picking up too much snow. It was right around freezing, and the snow was sticky.

The second site is usually cold because it's shady and down near the creek. This year it didn't seem too bad. At each snow course we took five measurements.

Here's Mark getting the tube ready to push into the snow. How far down will it go?

We measured the snow depth, how much snow was in the tube, and then weighed the tube to get the snow water equivalent, or how much water is in the snow. That's the most important measurement for forecasting.

I couldn't help but snap a few photos on the way up to the third site. The snow was deep enough to make some interesting patterns right near the creek.

It's a really cool feeling making fresh tracks in fresh snow. It had snowed the night before, and the trees still had lots of snow on them.

This slope had a huge avalanche in 2005 that went all the way down the side of the mountain, across the creek, and part way up the other side. I'm always fascinated to see who the vegetation is growing.

Finally we made it to the third site. This is the prettiest site, a large meadow. I could hang out here for a couple hours.

This site has an extra orange marker, which is an aerial marker. In the old days, a plane would fly by and an observer would get an estimate of snow depth by how much snow covered the marker. Today the NRCS has installed a network of Snotel sites that give them much more accurate information than the fly-by method.

Once we completed all the measurements, we headed back down the trail. The snow was melting faster, and we had some extra rocks to traverse. It was not the easy downhill we were hoping for.

And then the snow ran out. We had to take off our skis and hike. Boo.

We were really hoping that someone would have opened the gate and driven our vehicle for us up to the trailhead, but no such luck. We still had more hiking to do.

The silver lining is that we got to see a couple marmots! They were actually seen in late February this year.

It's cool to have such a long dataset to see how the snow depths and snow water equivalents have fluctuated over the years. Over the whole period, there is a slight downward trend, even though the overall precipitation record shows a slight increase. This indicates that we are getting more snow as rain than snow, which changes the timing for peak stream flow and how much water is stored as snow into later into the summer. Looks like times are a'changing!

Here's what the snow survey looked like in 2013 and 2012.