More from Mink Creek

I took a lot of pictures up there, partially because I was experimenting and trying to figure out what made a photograph "wow" vs. "eh". I got a few "wows", and have decided that there is an element of luck. For instance, in the picture at left, I was only trying to get the Indian Paintbrush. I had no idea the spider was even there until I got the pictures off my camera and looked at them on my computer. You'll probably have to click on the picture and embiggenate it to see the spider. It's on the stem just below the flower. Four more nice shots below the fold.





Then this dragonfly just hung out on a blade of grass while I took shot after shot of him (?). I got surprisingly close without scaring him off, and was able to get many good shots. The picture here was at the best angle, imo. It's hard to tell in the picture, but he was at least 2.5 inches long, maybe 3.




This is only the second time I've seen monkshood, which is in the larkspur family. There were two large clusters of it, both in relatively swampy areas. I suspect I usually don't make it out until the swamps have dried up, but the extra rain this year made swamp-loving plants last longer.





And this one I've never seen before, though there was quite a bit of it in the highest meadow I hiked to. It looks vaguely like a larkspur, but I've never seen a larkspur with that coloration. I'll probably look it up eventually, but it was nice to see a new flower for the first time in a while.





Lastly, we again have a strong element of luck. I just happened across this seed, most likely from a goatsbeard aka salsify plant, stuck to a head of grass. It was awesome, and I got a surprisingly good picture of it.

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Lucky Shot

Have you ever seen a hummingbird swim? I sure hadn't. This is at the wood-plank bridge over West Mink Creek. I stopped there to rehydrate and had my camera out when hummingbirds just started flying all over the place. At first I thought it was just one, showing up repeatedly, but then I saw several in a group and realized I'd lucked into a hummingbird free-for-all. If my camera were quicker on the uptake, I'd have a massive amount of pictures from it. As is, I wound up with several awesome ones. This is from my favorite shot. I trimmed it down to emphasize the hummer. It didn't stay in the water long. As far as I can tell, it dipped down into the stream as a bird-bath, splashed around a bit, then flew off and started shaking the water out of its feathers. Awesome to see; even better to get a decent shot of it.

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Lightning, or Something...

I may have more to say about the rest of the trip later, but we just got back. We drove something like 640 miles today. I expected my mom would want to stop in Rock Springs; she didn't. Then I figured she'd give out at Kemmerer: nope. We made it back at about 9:30 pm, just as it was starting to get dark. I think we were both sick of hotels and wanted to be in our own beds.

Anyway, that has little to do with this post, other than the events occurred on the trip. I suspect that if it weren't for the ruddy "terminal" notification, the only result would have been a wave of regretful nostalgia, which would have been over almost instantly. But being under stress already, something just snapped inside me when we were in Grand Lake. The moment itself was more one of shock (mixed in with other stuff), but afterwards it felt as if something had broken loose, snapped, inside me.

There was a little bit of buildup to it: nothing major, nothing that one might expect to lead to someone snapping: my mom hates miniature golf, and I've always loved it. There's a miniature golf course in Grand Lake, and we walked by it, and I jokingly suggested we could play. It would have been better, I think, if she'd just said "no." Instead, she came up with all sorts of convoluted garbage suggestions, including that I "adopt" one of the little kids already playing to play with. At that moment, I was annoyed, but otherwise fine.

Then we finished walking down the one major street of Grand Lake, and drove down to the lake itself. There were kids out learning to sail, people in rented pedal-boats, kids building sand castles: pretty typical of the place. What wasn't typical was that I was suddenly angry. Not with the people there, not even with my mom in particular, but just angry. It took me a while to figure out why. I have always, always, wanted to rent one of those pedal-boats, or take a sail-boat out, or...or any number of things, and I've never had an actual opportunity. My mom won't consider any activity even remotely physical, and, when my dad was saner, he just thought it was a waste of time.

It was like the day just died before my eyes, right then and there. I turned around and walked back to the car without saying a word, and, more unusually, without even taking any pictures of or around the lake. It took me the better part of two days to get over that feeling of emptiness and isolation. For whatever reason, the drive back home helped quite a bit, as did a hike later in the same day. On the hike, it occurred to me that there might be a career option open to me that would let me do things that I love while maintaining most of my freedom. I don't know if a year is enough to establish myself sufficiently to make a living at it, but I'd like to try: photography. Most of the later events that helped clear the angry fog revolved around light and color and imagery, too, so I think there may actually be something there. I might also just be going insane, but it's better than feeling like a rather large chunk of scar tissue has been ripped out of my heart and a piece of leather nailed in its place.

So that was my last two days. Time will tell if that was a useful thought I had after having my heart ripped open or just a desperate grab for something to hold onto.

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West Mink Creek

I'd decided that since I finally had the garden all planted, I was going to go hiking this morning. My mom reminded me last night that I had to drive her to be "tortured" in the afternoon (1:20 pm; appointment to get two more posts put in in place of teeth), so I wasn't going to have as much time as I had hoped. I decided on West Mink Creek, mainly because it occurred to me that I hadn't been there since my very snowy visit last year. Since I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it all the way up to where it meets the Elk Meadows trail, I took the opportunity to explore most of the side-trails that I saw, including one that went straight up the side of a rather steep hill.

I had several reasons for following that particular "trail" (which mostly vanished less than a quarter of the way up): (1) It was there; (2) Spectacular view; (3) To find out if my cell phone got reception if I got up high enough (it did; there's precisely none down in the valley where the trail is); (4) It opened itself as an opportunity before my mind (last year at this time, my breathing was so bad that I couldn't have climbed that thing if I'd wanted to, and I wouldn't have wanted to); (5) Because when I told my mom I was going hiking, she immediately said, "Don't get lost!" and I responded, "Oh, I'll just climb a mountain that no one's heard of." Okay, it was a hill, not a mountain, but I have no clue what its name is if it has one, and I'd bet most of the hikers up there have no clue what its name is.

Still, I'm in much much better shape than I was last year. It's hard to keep in shape when you can't breathe, for some strange reason. I made it all the way up and did not need my inhaler at all. I was mildly tempted at the place where I turned around, but by the time I got back down to the trail the temptation was gone. Yay for bromelain.

The timing, however, turned out to be very fortuitous. As I was descending on a mostly nonexistent trail, I thought I heard something crashing through the underbrush of the valley. I had no idea what it was, but I'd made similar noises when I'd tried to climb down to a beaver pond (There's a trail most of the way; if you're up there, I don't recommend trying to go past where the trail ends; I almost slid into the beaver pond), so I figured maybe it was just another hiker. Then as I started following the trail back, I saw a rather large shape ahead of me. My first thought was, "Horse?" People do often ride horses up and down the trails in the area, so that's not as strange as it might seem, but it wasn't a horse. It was a moose.

Usually when I see moose, they're too far away for me to have any real sense of scale. I hadn't realized exactly how big they are, until I confused this one with a horse. This one was close enough that I was a bit nervous. If he'd decided to charge me, there wasn't much I could have done. However, my "following" him, since we were both following the same trail, seemed to make him equally nervous, so that he finally broke into a gallop ahead of me and vanished. I caught up with him once more, and he frantically galloped away again. Eventually, he must have left the trail or else crossed Bannock Highway to the next trail over. Here's a picture of him looking back at me, probably wondering if I was a threat:

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Ice and Snow at City Creek

More pictures!

I don't think I'd ever seen branches that were simply encased in ice. Presumably the flow from the creek generates a bit of spray, and, if it's cold enough, the spray then freezes onto the branch.

Three more below:

It almost looks like the water was trying to form giant snowflakes as it froze.


I just like the peaceful feeling of this one. I may have to print out a large version of it.



And here we have an itty-bitty waterfall coming from underneath the ice.

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Hiking Oddities

Okay, I didn't make it to Salt Lake this week. The day I felt up to driving was miserable weather. Today would have been good weather, but I wasn't up to a two and a half hour drive. Then I thought maybe I'd go to Idaho Falls instead, only I'll be going up there tomorrow anyway, so then I decided to go hiking up at City Creek. It's not the ideal time of year for it, as the snow is just melting in many places, and the mud is nearly ankle deep in some of those places—usually just tread deep, but occasionally ankle deep. Still, it was well worth it. For now, I just want to post the two strange sitessights I came across, but I've got lots of other ice and scenery pictures that I'd like to put up eventually.

This one looks an awful lot like a skeletal foot, give or take a few digits, but it's really just a branch. This was on the upper part of the path, which is now labelled the "Bench" trail.



There were a bunch of new signs up, labeling paths and such, but this one had me puzzled. It's very definitely not marking a call box. My best guess is that it's where the 911 people would like you to wait for them if there's an emergency. Presumably the person who is not injured would climb up to the sign, wait for the 911 people, and then lead them to whomever is injured.

On the one hand, all the new signs are rather nice, so that it's easy to tell which part of the trail(s) you're headed for (they criss-cross back and forth a lot up there). On the other, I find them a bit irritating, as I rather like the wilderness feel of the place.

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Bugs at Bruneau

I found myself wondering if I would have seen as many bugs up there if there hadn't been a lake at the bottom of the dune. Certainly, there wouldn't have been dragonflies. Either way, they made for some nice pictures:


That plant looks for all the world like a spindly juniper, except I don't think that there are any junipers with pink flowers. Also, I didn't get a rash when I brushed against some that were a bit close around part of the trail at the lake. So... I'll call it a juniper-like-shrub-with-pink-flowers. Rather Quirmish name, innit.




Beautiful dragonfly. Most of the ones up there were huge black ones, maybe with white markings.



I nearly walked right into this guy's web. It was near the lake, built between two tall stems of grass. I didn't see the web until after I was nearly nose to nose with the spider. From behind, he actually looked a lot like the spiderman logo. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the camera to focus on him from that angle.

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Bruneau Dunes

On Thursday, my mom had an Excel workshop in Twin Falls. I tagged along, because that got me most of the way to Bruneau Dunes State Park, and I've been wanting to go there ever since I heard of it. It's about another hour and a half from Twin to the park. Overall impression: HOT. Admittedly, I was there at the worst possible time of day (10:00 am to 2:00 pm). If I go there again, I think I'll plan on going down in the evening, camping overnight, and then going up the dunes the following morning. Still, it was enjoyable to play on a giant sand dune. This has to be my favorite picture:

Explanation and more pics below the fold.

Those are the impressions left in the sand from my hat. It fell off when I stopped to rest on my way up the dune. ^/^




It's that way! This was when I finally cleared all the shrubs and things around the lake below the dune and could see the main path up to the top. It doesn't look that bad, does it? Probably wouldn't be at, say, 7:00 am.




Here is the view from just below the top. It took me roughly an hour from the previous picture to get to this one. Walking/climbing in that thick sand is rather interesting. It's a lot like walking in deep snow. I already knew that the trick for going down was to act like I was walking down a staircase and dig in my heels at roughly a ninety degree angle. That works beautifully in sand. For walking up, I tried the inverse of that: digging in the toes at a ninety degree angle as if going up a staircase. That does work if you get your toes dug in far enough. Unlike going downhill, gravity doesn't help you out. It's an exhausting way to walk, particularly in full sun.




And here's the view down the other side of the dune. Some interesting features that I might have been interested in exploring...had going down there not necessitated climbing back up.




I fell in love with these little grass-sand-circles. It looks like, when the wind blows, the grass tips contact the sand and make arcs as they go back and forth. There were lots of these where there was grass growing in the sand. Absolutely beautiful. Random fact: the sand where there were plants growing tended to be more solid, harder to dig my feet into, than sand elsewhere. I don't know if that's because there was more water in it, or more of a certain type of sand/soil, or what.




Those are my footsteps coming down the side of the dune, criss-crossed by another set of prints that look hoofed to me. Deer, maybe.




And here we have something that reminds me of crop circles. Clearly aliens have been using these dunes as a landing strip and the government is covering it up. Or, more likely, something about the wind flow and the shape of the dune and landscape results in oddly flowing air currents... `/^

EDIT: For more on treating sand as snow, and the presence of aliens and flamingos, click here. (Lots more pictures!)

RE-EDIT: Another good gallery here.

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Puzzled

Okay, I know I'm out of shape. I should be walking everyday, not just the three or four times a week I manage. I was reasonably certain that some of my breathing problems stemmed from being out of shape as well. Only, I made an 8.5 mile hike with 2200 foot elevation gain yesterday, and only the blister on my right heel is sore. My calves are a tiny bit stiff, and my hips twinged once or twice last night, but that's it. So I'm confused. Best guess? The breathing problems have made me feel more out of shape than I actually am. Which is good, I suppose.

The way down seemed shorter to me, as well, but my memories of that may be colored by the time that I got lost and wandered 6-8 miles extra. Then again, I managed to find the "shortcut trail" at the end that bypasses several of the switchbacks. I don't recommend it for going up, but it's useful for getting down. Also, what I've taken to calling the "nightmare pass" (a rather nasty climb to get from the non-motorized side to the motorized side of the trail) didn't seem quite so nightmarish. Unpleasant and tiring, but no where near as bad as I remembered. Again, I suspect my memories are being influenced by the time I had to climb the thing after wandering 6-8 extra miles.

A guide to avoiding that is below the fold.

The Right Way:

The Wrong Way:

The Sign:

The Confusion

Now if the sign were actually upright, it probably wouldn't be an issue. As is, it's a bit difficult to tell if the Gibson Jack arrow is pointing towards the small trail that climbs up or towards the wider, road trail.

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Valvehouse Trail[sic]

This "trail" still looks mostly like a road, and there's a gate that could be unlocked to allow vehicles through, so I suspect it may still get some use as a road. Once again, I wound up where the cattle had been let loose to graze, but unlike the last stop, the hills around this "trail" didn't look overgrazed. I didn't make it all the way up the trail because it looked like the entire herd was up just past where I turned around, and I wasn't in the mood for working through them. The thing with large herbivores is that, roughly, 99.9%* of the time, they'll leave you alone if you leave them alone. It's that 0.1% of the time when you accidentally annoy them, or something already has them spooked, etc., that is problematic. Two cows had already startled me earlier on the trail. I heard a sort of snort and almost growl come from the bush and slowly backed off...only to realize that it was just a cow passing through.

Still, the hike was well worth it for one single plant that I got to see in bloom. Pink prickly pear! It may be Mojave cactus, as that's the only identified prickly pear I found with pink blossoms. Pretty whether that's what it is or not.



There were bunches of these blooming. Gorgeous little plants. I first saw them on a rather nasty, rocky slope, and dutifully scrambled up it to get some pics. Then I had to get down. The taiji walk came in handy for this, as the rocks were not particularly stable. Naturally, I later saw some that were much more accessible, so the scramble was completely unnecessary. ^/^



*[AM ADDENDUM] Completely made-up percentages. Not for use in calculating.

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The Other Side of the Slate Mountain Trail, With Turn-Off

Yesterday I went up to Gibson Jack and took a turn-off at the Slate Mountain trail, then another turn-off at the Dry Creek Ridge trail. I didn't go all the way along the ridge, as it was starting to go downhill and I really didn't feel like doing too much climbing-back-up at that point, but it was quite a lovely hike, and there are some awesome views from the Ridge. Anyway, an estimate of my route (pinkish dots) is below. I'm not sure where, exactly, I turned around, but it did require some altitude gain. Below the fold are a few scenery shots.



This is the view not too long after turning off of the Gibson Jack trail onto the Slate Mountain trail. To get there, go up the motorized side (to the left; the one that crosses the stream immediately), and right around where the third switchback begins, there's a sign.



Here's the view at the turn-off for Dry Creek Ridge, looking toward the Slate Mountain side. The Dry Creek trail doesn't seem to get as much use, but it's still in pretty good shape. Incidentally, I was pretty tired on the way down, saw the turn-off back to Gibson Jack and didn't take it... Flax saved me from too much back tracking. I hadn't seen any flax on the way in, but I was seeing tons of it on my little detour. Suddenly it dawned on me that, hey, that turn-off I saw a ways back must be my turn-off to get back to Gibson Jack. I had gone less than 500 feet in the wrong direction, thankfully.



Gorgeous view not very far down the Dry Creek Ridge trail at all. On the one hand, the haze made it difficult to make out details; on the other, I love the way the back-most mountain just shades into blue. The haze may be from the California fires. There's a weather service statement warning that some of it may be in the area.



Lastly, a feather that I saw when I stopped for a picnic at a convenient rock. Oh, and my hand. And some junipers and mountains in the background. Not too long after I sat down to my picnic, a white-tail deer came bounding out of the juniper. I went to see if I could get a better look, and either a second deer bounded out or the first one had chosen different cover and bounded clear out. Either way, they/it were gone too quickly for me to get my camera out.

Now at some point I suppose I should take the Slate Mountain side of the trail...

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When the Lava Fields Bloom

Tons of pictures below the fold, and I even left out a few! I didn't get a picture of the hot-rock-penstemon, and I'm not posting pics of the blue penstemon or the cinquefoil, mainly because the ones I had weren't very good. But plenty of others below the fold. Some of them I already knew from prior trips, some were identified by Brina, the ranger who guided the morning hike, and some I found in a little 94-cent booklet of flowers that grow in Craters, found in the visitor's center.

The ranger called this one "blue-eyed mary". Interestingly, it's not in the little pamphlet. But it is in my Falcon Guide to Great Basin Wildflowers(FGGBW)*. Apparently it's in the snapdragon family, but the usual third lower lobe (with the blue petals) gets folded in and hidden.
*I somehow wound up with two of these... Anyone in need of one?



Desert Parsley, according to both the ranger and the pamphlet. The leaves are edible, and Native Americans ate them as "salad greens." As with any member of the parsley family, do not eat it unless you are absobloodylutely certain of what it is. They're easier to distinguish in bloom, but never get careless.

I'm not sure about this one, but I'm pretty certain it's in the mustard family and most likely a rock cress. The closest match I've found is the elegant rock cress, which has a similar plant structure and is described as having a "pink-purple" color (FGGBW). The picture is much pinker than this one. *shrugs*



Sulphur buckwheat, according to the ranger. I'm not sure that the flowers have opened all the way yet on these... It doesn't look like it in the picture, and the ones pictured here seem to be a bit fuller.



Dwarf buckwheat, according to both the ranger and the pamphlet. Wow. According to Idaho Mountain Wildflowers, there are about a dozen varieties referred to as "dwarf buckwheat". Assuming that the park's pamphlet is accurate (and that only one variety by that name grows in the park), this one should be Eriogonum ovalifolium.



Scorpionweed, aka Silverleaf Phacelia (pamphlet and ranger). Apparently the shape of the leaves were thought to resemble the profile of a scorpion's stinger. I'd say that's a bit of a stretch.



Ferns in the desert! I have almost no info on ferns, so I'm not going to try to identify them. There seem to be places where enough moisture collects for them to grow, especially in and around the caves. This one, though, was practically out in the open. It is wedged into a crevice, so presumably there's enough water in the crevice to keep it alive.



I think this one is a Syringa, Idaho's state flower. I know the ranger mentioned Syringa, and the couple who were on the tour with me commented that it was more of a shrub than a flower. ^/^



Two for the space of one! The reddish one, of course, is Indian paintbrush. The smaller one is some sort of aster or fleabane. If it's the one in the pamphlet, it's Fernleaf Fleabane aka Erigeron compositus.




And here we have the dwarf monkeyflower, carpeting a section of the lava. There were many such carpets throughout the park.



This one I only saw at Devil's Orchard, but it is in the pamphlet as Cryptantha, or Cryptantha torreyana. It's in the borage family, which explains the resemblance to stickseed.



Last, a larkspur. The ranger on the morning tour seemed to have larkspur mixed up with blue penstemon, but, as she freely admitted, she's a geologist not a biologist. ^/^ Assuming that it's the larkspur in the pamphlet, it should be Anderson Larkspur aka Delphinium andersonii. I've seen a lot of larkspur this year. I don't know if it's because I got out earlier or if the weird spring we had encouraged it to grow more prolifically than usual.

Anyway, those were most of the flowers I saw at the park. And I saw on the way back from IF yesterday that the prickly pears at Hell's Half Acre are now blooming, so maybe the ones at Craters will soon follow suit.

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Mistletoe: The Water-sucking Vampire of the Desert

The dominant (and in many places only) tree at Craters of the Moon is the limber pine. No, not lumber: limber. Its smaller branches are extremely, even ridiculously, flexible. You can bend them just about any which way without hurting the tree, and even tie them in a knot. This is a tree that usually grows near the tree line in alpine environments, not in lava-encased deserts. According to the guide on the morning hike, the seeds were deposited in the area by glaciation during one of the ice ages, and found loess in which they could germinate. Almost all of the soil in Craters of the Moon gets blown in as loess. The rocks haven't deteriorated enough yet to produce soil locally.


However, the limber pines have a parasite: the dwarf mistletoe. It doesn't look like much to start with, but it is rather hard on the trees. What happens is that it sends chemical messages into the host tree, telling it to send more nutrients down towards where the mistletoe is growing. In turn, this causes the tree to sprout massive amounts of small branches around the mistletoe. The collection of branches is known as witch's broom, as it tends to resemble the rough bristly shape of a classic witch's broom. Additionally, the mistletoe draws water, sucrose and other nutrients out of its host. This can sometimes kill the tree, but I saw at least one tree where the infected part had died while the rest of the tree was still viable.


Early in the park's history, the powers-that-be decided that witch's broom should be eradicated. To that end, they cut down or poisoned thousands of infected trees, many of whose carcasses are still standing. Here it suggests that the purpose was "to 'control' a dwarf mistletoe outbreak," but the signs in Devil's Orchard imply that it was more of an aesthetic decision. They didn't think the trees were as pretty with the mistletoe on them. Nowadays, there seems to be more of a live-and-let-live attitude, and an acknowledgement that the mistletoe is a part of the ecosystem, too.

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Craters of the Moon

Wow. Any place with enough dirt to support plants is blooming up a storm! From the sounds of things, this is one of the most spectacular blooms in nearly ten years. I'm too exhausted to post too much about it, but I would highly recommend going on one of the guided 9:00 am tours. I got a lot of good info there. Not so much in the 1:00 pm tour, as a lot of it was repeat, and there were more people in the group. Smaller groups are better for these things. Also, the first ranger had her master's in geology, so she was able to add more info to a lot of things. Anyway, two pictures below the fold.

These are monkey flowers. Purple dwarf monkey flower and, er, dwarf suk-something monkey flower. The purplish one is about the size of most snapdragon blooms, roughly the size of the tip of my index finger. The yellow one is almost impossible to see unless you kneel down in the lava. There were areas just carpeted with the purple ones. Possibly the yellow ones, too, but harder to tell if so.



Just to give you an idea how extensive the bloom is, see that yellow patch that seems to be at the base of the hill at the back there? Those are buckwheat, probably dwarf buckwheat going by the color. Gorgeous plant. I'll have to see if any of my close-ups turned out when I'm less exhausted.



At any rate, if you're in the area, this is a very good time to head up there.

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