Through Slide Canyon

Our next day was spent hiking up Slide Canyon to the benches below Mule Pass. This was a beautiful and lonely area. We didn't see anybody all day, and it was a bit like having Yosemite Valley to one's self.

It was a pretty easy day of hiking because we were walking through gentle terrain.  It started out in these big green meadows as you can see in the picture, before the canyon narrowed and we ended up strolling through forests, avalanche meadows strewn with tree trunks or willow thickets.

When we took lunch, it was very warm, so Dad and I jumped into Piute Creek to clean up a little.  We didn't stay very long, though, as it was viciously cold!  We also engineered a bridge to cross a creek coming in from the east, and Dad took a dip that time, too.  Unintentionally.

The unique feature of Slide Canyon is, of course, The Slide.  The Slide is an enormous rock-fall.  Apparently a big piece of Slide Mountain just collapsed and slide down into the valley.  The power of the fall is demonstrated by the fact that huge boulders actually continued travelling hundred of yards up the opposite side.  I'd never seen anything like it.

Piute Creek disappears for a while below the Slide, and forms a little pool on the uphill side.  After the Slide, it was meadows again until we decided to cross the creek.  When we did decide to cross the creek, we did it where it was deep and fast.  We used a rope to be safe as there were cataracts above and below the spot.  The water was running well above our knees on this one!

While we had hoped to find the trail, it turned out we couldn't find an easy ford of the creek coming down from the benches we were heading for, so we just went straight up the side of the canyon.  Thankfully, our route had no snow, and we just toiled our way up and up.

The reward for our effort was the most spectacular view from our campsite of the whole trip.

Of course, the camp was surrounded by a lot of snow.  We weren't really sure where the trail went, as it was buried, and as it got darker the snow started firming up and that made it hard to get water.  In fact, that night I had my worst slip on the snow of the whole trip.  I was carrying a bear can completely full of water and fell.  I may have landed flat on my face, but at least I barely spilled any water!

More pictures from the day are at Flickr.

Doe Lake

The next day of our backpack trip was our layover day, except it wasn't a real layover day.  Instead, we hiked from Sister Lake cross-country to Doe Lake.

We did get a late start, though.  When we woke up in the morning, it was cold.  The little ponds of melt water nestled among the rocky slopes around our camp had frozen over during the night.  Oh, and so did any open water on the lake.  Fortunately, the snow's surface froze in a rough texture that allowed us to move freely on it.  And, as soon as the sun came over the western ridge, the air warmed about 30 degrees in just moments.

We spent most of our long morning doing laundry.  Then, Dad and I hiked over to the outlet of Sister Lake to catch a glimpse of Smedberg Lake.  It was a very pretty lake.

 

After we got back, we packed up and headed out.  The route to Doe Lake is pretty simple, but we were confronted by a lot of snow and one creek crossing.  I elected to jump the creek, but everyone else waded through a quite deep pool.

 

The hardest part of the day was finding our way down the hill between the creek crossing and Doe Lake.  This was all cross-country, so we didn't expect to find a trail (though there was an occasional use trail), but the snow complicated a slippery wooded slope significantly.  Doe Lake itself is also somewhat difficult to navigate around because it's bounded by granite cliffs  We eventually found a campsite on the northern edge of the lake, near the route we'd take the next day into Slide Canyon.  After setting up camp, I broke out my fishing pole, and Libby cooled her heels in the lake.

Dad caught the biggest back-country fish he'd ever caught here when he was a young 'un, and so I had high hopes to repeat the feat.  I was a bit disappointed, though, as the fish were generally scarce.  I caught two, and they were big for the backcountry, but not very big over-all.  One was about 12".  From what I could see of the fish around the outlet, they were all above average in size, but none was enormous.

That afternoon after fishing, we were treated to the booming of a nearby Sooty Grouse!  We followed the deceptive sound, but couldn't locate the bird.  It seemed to be located atop a cliff above our camp.  We enjoyed the numerous Pine Grosbeaks around the camp, though, and Libby got some good looks at them while I was fishing.

That night we had fish for dinner, and enjoyed yet another campfire!

More pictures at Flickr.

Matterhorn Canyon to Sister Lake

The hike from Matterhorn Canyon to Sister Lake was a really hard one for Libby.  She was struggling with an energy-sapping cold that seemed to take the most out of her on that day.  Combined with some hot uphills and lots of snow, it was just tough.  Still, we all made it to the end of the day, and camped in a really beautiful place.

As we were packing up in the morning, we were visited by our neighborhood doe.  She showed no fear as she spent the early hours picking at grass anywhere and everywhere around our campsite.

 

Once we were hiking, it was only a couple of minutes before we were crossing Matterhorn Creek.

 

This was a nice, easy crossing with a wide ford, and it wasn't long before we were on our way.  That meant winding our way down the valley for a little while alongside the creek.  There was a lot of evidence of higher flow in the weeks ahead, including flooded areas along the trail.  I even saw a fish in a puddle persisting right in the middle of the trail at least a hundred yards from the creek!  I'm glad we missed the high point for the creeks.

Then it was up, up, up the side of the canyon.  This was a tough hike in the late morning because it was an east-facing slope and not heavily forested. It was the only place we heard an Olive-sided Flycatcher, though, singing its "Quick, Three Beers!" song.  Tell me about it.   At one point we left the trail at the corner of a switchback to view the dramatic cascades formed by Miller Creek as it hurried precipitously down to Matterhorn Canyon.

At the top of the slope, we crossed the creek, and then headed upstream in a more gentle climb.  Interestingly, the trail here didn't match the map, re-crossing the creek under snow sooner than indicated.  We decided to find our own way, walking in fairly easy meadows and forest until we came to a giant snow-bridge that took us across easily and safely.  At one point, as we were paralleling the visible trail on the far side of the creek, a young buck trotted along it.  You have to love the abundant wildlife of Yosemite!

We took lunch in the meadow where the trail took off for Benson Pass after re-crossing the creek yet again!  Each of these wet-feet crossings took us a good half-hour as we took time to dry our feet and put on our shoes.  Then it was up to Benson Pass, which turned out to be covered in snow.

 

Libby was not having a good time at this point, but you can tell she's an absolute trooper.  I was having personally very excited about all the snow, but it would wear off for me, too, later.

On the other side of the pass, we had a great view of Volunteer Peak.  Cool dome!

 

Volunteer Peak is just above Smedberg Lake.  Smedberg is a really pretty lake, but we opted to avoid it to avoid the crowds of the PCT.  Instead, we headed off-trail to Sister Lake above it.

That turns out to be pretty easy, actually, but once we got past a picturesque tarn that serves as a good landmark for the cross-country route, we hit thick sun-cupped snow that just didn't let up.  While I think the normal approach would be easy meadow, we were toiling on this difficult snow for a long time, discovering in the process that the lake was still frozen!  So much for fishing that night!

Eventually, we called a halt and Dad and I went ahead to scout out a campsite.  We were fortunate enough to find a suitable spot not far from the point we stopped, and everyone was happy to remove their wet boots at the end of the day.  While we were piling into the camp, we were blessed to see a beautiful Golden Eagle soaring overhead!

The dry area of our camp was pretty small, but the snow was just beautiful.  Here's that night's sunset:

 

More pictures are in the normal place.

Virginia Canyon to Matterhorn Canyon

After our typical late start in the morning, we made our way merrily down Virginia Canyon, pausing now and then to ooh and ahh at the beautiful streams and dramatic avalanche swathes flowing down from Excelsior Mountain.  One particularly attractive spot was a point just before we met the Pacific Crest Trail where Return Creek plunged into a granite fault for few dozen yards.

 

 Then we turned left, or north, onto the Pacific Crest Trail.  And we went up.  We spent the rest of the morning climbing fairly steep switchbacks through hemlock and lodgepole forest.  We had our first interesting water crossing, too, at Spiller Creek.  The water was only a bit above calf-deep, but it was fast and wide.

A neat feature of the trail were old blazes made by the United States Cavalry when they were in charge of patrolling the park back around 1900.  It made me think about how old these trees were, to stand there, scarred, for a hundred or so years.  How long had they been standing before that, and how long will they linger?

 

Of course, we were hitting snow in the upper reaches of the climb.  We took a moment to rest, and Dad and I climbed a little promontory to get a view to the south, where we think we saw Ritter and Banner!

 

I'm not too familiar with the mountains around Tuolomne Meadows, so I'm not sure what else we were looking at.

Oh, along this stretch, we were meeting some PCT thru-hikers.  They zipped along quite a bit faster than us, of course.  And we got to Miller Lake, the first still body of water we'd encountered since Summit Lake the afternoon before.  We stopped to pump water, and Libby and I pulled out the head-nets for the mild swarms of mosquitoes that gathered to welcome us.

 

You can see in the photo that the meadow is still brown, and the water still high from the recent melt. Miller Lake was nearly the highest point we reached during the day, and not far past it we were standing on the dramatic edge of Matterhorn Canyon.  We drank in the view, appreciating the craggy heights of the Sawtooths, Finger Peaks, several large waterfalls cascading down the far side of the canyon, and that heady feeling you have when you look down on verdant meadows a thousand feet below.

The route to said meadows was a bit difficult, with snow obscuring much of the trail.  That meant we weren't able to take advantage of many of the switchbacks, but instead scrambled around and down duff, snow and dirt.  At the bottom, we turned up Matterhorn Canyon to leave the PCT and find a campsite.  It didn't take long, and we found a nice big one near the creek.

That night we enjoyed a fire, I tried fishing the stream, unsuccessfully, and we were visited several times by a very friendly deer.  All in all, a very nice day.  There are, of course, more pictures.

Frog Lakes to Virginia Canyon

The first full day of our pack trip dawned in tingly expectation of facing the challenges of a snowy pass.  We got a late start, a pattern that proved to be typical (and beneficial, as it allowed the snow to soften) on this trip, and started out for the pass.  The pass above Frog Lakes is a little over 11,000', but it's not over the main crest.  Our path would take us up and over this unnamed pass, down into a valley to meet up with the trail from Green Lake, and then up and over the crest at Summit Lake -- much lower at about 10,200' -- before plunking us down for the night in Virginia Canyon.

The way up wasn't too hard.  There was snow, but there were also footprints to follow, and the trail was often visible between snow patches.  Both factors were very nice for route finding.  The biggest patch of snow was right at the base of the pass, and we cut at least one switchback in the steep ascent there.

The view to the west from the top was awesome.

We switchbacked down from the top of the pass on dry trail, but below the switchbacks we hit pretty solid snow.  We were forced to climb down and around to cross a creek on a waterfall, and then the trail disappeared completely for a half-mile or so.  We ended up scrambling down a sandy embankment, slogging through mud, and pushing through willows to get to a nice snow free meadow at the edge of Summit Lake's outlet.  It was a lot of work!

After lunch at the meadow, still yellow from the winter but mostly dry, we had our first shoes-off creek crossing, something undoubtedly usually unnecessary here, and then were up to Summit Lake.  Summit Lake drains both ways from the crest, and as we sloshed past it, I mused at which direction the water in the trail was running.

Then we entered Yosemite.

From there it was a pretty easy snow-free downhill hike to Virginia Canyon.  There had been some avalanches in the area, so I think we had to go around some trees, but otherwise it was nice.

At the bottom of the canyon, we met Return Creek, which was running fast and high, but we were able to cross it on a log.  We made camp a mile or so down the canyon from the creek crossing, a good distance from the creek.  It was hard to find a dry spot with all the pools of water around, but the mosquitoes were thankfully quite light.

That evening, a deer and a hare walked past the camp.  We thought maybe we'd have a game parade, but that turned out to be all.  There were a few birds, though, including some Gray-crowned Rosy Finches.  Those always seem out of place in forested areas, but I suspect the persistent snow in their normal high elevation haunts pushed them down where food was more abundant.

Lots more pictures on Flickr.

Summer Backpackin'

This year, we went on a pack trip from Virginia Lake to Bridgeport's Twin Lakes in the eastern Sierra.  Our campsites were at Frog Lakes, Return Creek in Virginia Canyon, Matterhorn Canyon, Sister Lake, Doe Lake, and a bench below Burro Pass.  The trip was unique for its abundant water - frozen and otherwise - and all together beautiful!

Our original plan was to start hiking Monday, but we wanted to get an early start that day.  The result was that we started Sunday afternoon and camped at Frog Lakes after only a short walk in.  The real highlight was having lunch with Grandma Brown in Bridgeport.  Then she helped shuttle us over to Virginia Lake so that we could leave a car at the parking lot in Twin Lakes.

The hike was short, but there were some pretty sights along the way, and a few snowy spots in the shade.  This old cabin by a prospect was interesting:

We were all in a good mood when we set up camp because we weren't tired.  The area was beautiful, and after a dinner of tomatoes, brie and apples, we went for a walk out  around the nearest Frog Lake.  In the nearby talus a Pika whistled, frogs were singing in the snow-melt inundated meadows, and handsome flowers like this marsh marigold were blooming in the cool evening light:

The restful dusk was bursting with the beauty of the mountains, but of course the prettiest thing I saw hiked up on her own two legs:

A few more pictures from the first day are at Flickr.

Fourth of July

Sometimes you go looking for a certain bird, and you don't find it.  Such was the case this last fourth of July weekend.  We left Friday evening for Fresno with the goal of finding Great Gray Owl in the early morning in Yosemite, and then Sooty Grouse in the later morning at Glacier Point.

Well, it didn't quite turn out that way, but it was a great excuse to drive through beautiful Yosemite, and to enjoy the flooding waterfalls and late snow.

We woke up at 2:30 in the morning to get a good early start.  Our goal was to be at McGurk Meadow, a grassy patch off of the Glacier Point road, well before sunrise.  We parked the car around 4:30, and hiked in the gloom of the early morning down the short trail to the meadow.  We got there in the first light of morning, hiking through the forested meadow edges and intently watching for any large nocturnal predators.  Nothing hooted, nothing flew by, and so we admitted defeat around 7:00 in the morning and headed back to the car.  On the way we flushed a Junco from the ground and wondered at its tiny little nest in a scrape in the duff.


Then it was off to Glacier Point, where we enjoyed the spectacular waterfalls in the light of the early morning and from a thousand or so feet above.

 

Unfortunately, no Sooty Grouse.  We did enjoy a Pileated Woodpecker, some Nuthatches, and I got to see a deer bed down for the day in a thicket just off the beaten track.  That was a treat.

Then it was off for Tioga Pass.  We didn't want to brave the crowds in the Valley, but we did stop briefly at Bridalveil Falls because it was on the way.

 

Quite a soaking standing at the base of this sometimes ribbony falls this Independence Day weekend!  

Our next stop was the Crane Flat Chevron Station.  The meadow there sometimes hosts Great Gray Owls.  We decided to take a late morning stab at them, without much hope, and wandered off through the bordering woods in vain.  The meadows themselves were all well inundated with the recent melt, so we decided not to brave their miry depths.

Unsuccessful, we headed for a short hike to the Tuolomne Grove of Giant Sequoias.  This is a cool 3 mile round trip hike, and we had a great time admiring the enormous trees.

 

Lots of cool birds on this hike, too.  Down in the grove, there were a couple of feisty Pacific Wrens singing their heads off.  Their incredibly long and fast tinkling songs are always a pleasure to hear, and this was our first time encountering them in the Sierra.  Along the trail up there were a couple of singing male Hermit Warblers, too, and I always love to encounter my favorite little hooded parulid.

On our way out, we were hoping to hike out to May Lake, but the trailhead road was still snowed in.  Not relishing doubling our hike at the latish hour, we passed along and did a little touristing at Olmsted Point and Tuolomne Meadows.  We still had enough time for another hike, though, so we took off for Dog Lake from the trailhead below Lembert Dome.

 

On the way up we ran into a couple of Japanese girls who were in distress.  One of the girls had fallen down on Lembert Dome, and had suffered a concussion.  Some other hikers on the way down said they would help them on their way, so we shared our water with them and headed on.  We ran into them again on our way out, and a member of their party had come up to help.  It was a short hike, but it's a good reminder that bringing your "essentials" can help someone beside yourself.  It made me wish we'd had our daypack so we could have been of more assistance, but we thought such a short hike could be done lightly.

Then it was off over the pass, where there was still a lot of snow on the ground.  On the far side of the pass, we had a Mono Cone, and then made for the cabin.  Lots of snow meant another hike in, but we were just happy to be there regardless!

While the trip to Yosemite was a real highlight, it wasn't the sum of our experience.  We still had Sunday and Monday to spend around the cabin.  On Sunday, we hiked to Barney Lake.  From a little way above Emerald and on, we were always walking on snow.

Skelton still had a bit of lake ice, but not too much.  The trail was under the snow, of course, but we're familiar enough with the way that we didn't need it.  We saw a back-country skiier come out from the pass at Skelton.  We didn't talk to him, but I guess he'd been at Purple.  Sort of an unusual activity for the fourth of July!

Barney was pretty much ice free, too, though the pass wasn't. 

The next morning we were off for Hammil Lake in the morning.  I had only been there once before, so I had only a vague notion of how to get there.  Nevertheless, we made it, and found the lake hard to recognize under its thick covering of snow and ice.  In fact, I have to admit I didn't recognize it.

All in all, it was another highly enjoyable trip to the Sierra Nevada.  It's such a remarkably late year in regard to snow that I was always trying to drink it in and make the most of it.  More pictures of snow at Flickr, of course.

Opening the Cabin, 2011

Big snow in the Sierra this year.  Record-breaking amounts of snow!  Piles and piles on feet upon yards of the white stuff in big rolling drifts.

So, when we went up to open the cabin in the last weekend of June this year, we were all tingly with expectation to see the extent of the mountain frosting.  Last time we were there was back in February, when though there was a lot of snow, it wasn't yet at record-setting levels.  Now we knew there would be less, but we also knew there would be a lot more than normal.  Normal in late June for the immediate area around the cabin being none.

We drove up Friday night, got in around 9 or 10, hiked up to the cabin and dropped into bed.  In the morning we awoke to a brilliant spring wonder-land.

 

It was great!  Lots of snow, warm days, and the constant murmur and rush of the big melt going on all around us.  Much of the trip we spent our time opening and cleaning the cabin, but we also found some time to do some sledding.  That led to a pretty hairy accident.  Here's a smaller foreshadowing of that disaster.

The long and the short of it is that Dad hit a tree going much faster than above, and he was OK.  Thank God.

On Sunday morning, we took a hike up to Hart Lake.  We figured that trail would be fairly open due to its open treeless slopes and more southerly exposure, and we were right.  To get there, we hiked up the Coldwater Creek Campground road, which was still closed, enjoying the Pine Siskins and Cassin's Finches busying themselves in the trees around us.

 

Up on Red Mountain, we were serenaded by Dark-eyed Juncos, Green-tailed Towhees and Thick-billed Fox Sparrows.  At a meadow, an Orange-crowned Warbler was foraging in the willows.  I'm always surprised to encounter this species, which breeds in our local park, at high altitudes.

The best part of Hart Lake was that it was still frozen!  There was a thick coating of snow and ice over much of the lake, along with a scattering of trees swept in by an over-winter avalanche.

 

That afternoon, we headed home.  It was a short trip, but a fun one, and we'll long remember this extraordinary year of late spring snow.  Lots more pictures, and some videos, from the trip can be found on our Flickr page.

Wonderful Wednesday

As the first glow of a new day's light tinted the murky dark of an east Texas April night, we pulled into a weed-grown side road. A long and slow train, a difficult search for an open restroom, and a much-needed stop for doughnuts had stretched our long drive north-east to the Big Thicket from Winnie so that we were now in danger of running out of sufficient darkness for owls and nightjars.

Stepping out of the car into the cool, damp morning, our hopes were set on Barred Owl and Chuck-will's Widow, but our attempts in the pre-dawn gloaming netted only a responsive, but essentially unseen, Eastern Screech-Owl and a snuffling skunk. The owl flew in over Libby's head, and then simply disappeared in the dense understory.

And so began our morning of birding in the Big Thicket area of eastern Texas. This region is full of southern pinewoods and humid bayous, and our primary goal was to find a Swainson's Warbler. We were acting on the advice of a local, and it was perfect. Soon after dawn, we had our first look at this skulky brown southern specialty.

 

Libby at Gore Store Road

We continued on down a road called Gore Store, finding Yellow-breasted Chat, and our only Prairie and Hooded Warblers of the trip. We didn't know that there had been a fire in the area immediately before we arrived, and that they were still mopping up the after-effects. We found out soon enough, as the road turned into a muddy quagmire. We somehow navigated through the sludge in our little economy rental.

On the other side, we stopped at the headquarters of the Big Thicket National Preserve for a stroll down the Kirby Nature Trail. I was hoping for some more southern-style birds, but it was very quiet in the middle of the morning. Still, we enjoyed the lizards and trees of the walk. There were, of course, a few birds. Red-eyed and Yellow-throated Vireos sang unseen in the high canopy, an Ovenbird charmed us in the undergrowth, a Northern Parula sang circles around us when we entered his territory, and most exciting of all, a Red-headed Woodpecker flew into some snags near a Cypress swamp! That was a much-anticipated lifer, and we had fairly good , if neck-craning, views of the bird.

As we made our way back to the parking lot, a cool breeze from the north began whispering in the still humid air, rustling the oak leaves and pine needles. We set the wind to our back and made for High Island.

Hours later, when we arrived, we knew to expect good things. The parking lots and streets were packed with people. This was the first good weather for birding that season, and as it was right at the peak of migration, crowds of traveling and local birders had settled in to meet the birds. Before we even entered Boy Scout Woods, we were seeing warblers: multiple Northern Parulas and Black-throated Green Warblers were working the edges of the lot. After entering and paying, we soon picked up the first of several Blackburnian Warblers for the day. Red-eyed Vireos, Warbling Vireos and Philadelphia Vireos - the latter a lifer - also moved through on their way north.

After so many days of waiting, it was sweet to enjoy this parade of colorful neotropical migrants. Finally the birding was easy and the pickings good!

Our camera's not too good to take pictures of any of these birds, and it's hard to describe the joy of such a visual experience without images, but I can say it was a fantastic afternoon and evening!  Here are a few pictures we took during the day, but no bird pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157627019081679/

A Texas Tuesday

Our third morning in Winnie, we had more hard decisions to make. The wind was still coming in from the south, so we didn't know if we could expect to find anything interesting at High Island, but that's the place we'd come to see, so it was hard to pass it up for two days in a row. On the other hand, if the passerine birding is poor, one can always count on shorebirds. Our plan ended up being a morning stop at High Island, and then to spend the rest of the day out on the Bolivar Peninsula.

It was still slow at High Island. Still, at Boy Scout Woods, we found our first ever Gray-cheeked Thrush hanging out at dried puddle called, optimistically, Prothonotary Pond. That was pretty cool. Buoyed by our success, but oppressed by the deadly silence embracing Boy Scout Woods, we headed over to Smith Oaks where we found more silence. Some berry eating birds were feeding in hackberries there, which was fun to watch, but the highlight of the morning was our first Chestnut-sided Warbler of the trip. That's an incredibly pretty bird, so we took the time to property enjoy it.

Then it was off to the Peninsula!

The Bolivar Peninsula is a long sand bar that stretches off toward Galveston Island. It looks to be a popular vacation destination, with many houses (on stilts) along its length. After Hurricane Ike in 2008, it was stripped of many of its buildings by the tremendous storm surge accompanying that storm, but it's being rebuilt and looks mostly cheery, now.

Though, there are still many signs of the hurricane.

We picked up a few lifers on the peninsula. At Rollover Pass, we found our first American Oystercatchers and Piping Plovers. We had some help from a friendly Brit with the former, but had to scrape the latter out with our scope from a distant sandbar. We also enjoyed watching the many terns' graceful antics, especially the pretty Black Terns.

We also tried for Nelson's Sparrows in the marsh grass. Supposedly you can pssh them up, but we didn't have any luck, despite trying in whatever hopeful marshy places we could find. We did have a couple of Magnificent Frigatebirds at these stops, soaring in the distance. Those are some friggin' birds.

The weather continued poorly with an absolutely buffeting south wind coming in off the ocean. When we stopped at Bolivar Flats, which is supposed to be one of the premier shorebird locations in the entire country, we had a hard time keeping the scope up. The wind was probably constantly blowing at 20 mph with stronger gusts. The birds were hunkered down, and we had sand in our eyes, hair and mouths. That's what birding is all about!

Blowing Away at Bolivar

We made it out to the tip of the peninsula, where an industrial-looking lighthouse towered over a frothy brown sea and a grassy old fort. We tried to loop around on a different road, but found the hurricane had washed out a bridge and had to turn around. The low traffic, though, allowed us to slowly admire the many shorebirds in some ponds there. We got right up close to some, which was very nice.

Bob Road was a great stop on our way back, with more shorebirds that allowed close approach. We got our first Stilt Sandpipers for the trip, and the only Wilson's Phalaropes. It was interesting to see the phalaropes out of the water. One of them was walking in frantic circles, much like the way that they forage when they're swimming - which is how we normally see them.

Then we dropped by High Island one last time. We found a couple more warblers that evening, including our first Tennessee and Black-throated Green Warblers for the trip. We ended up back in Winnie for a late dinner at a Cajun Steakhouse. Libby got a fantastic dish of grilled alligator, and I got some nice fried crawfish. It was definitely the most memorable meal we had on the trip, and we really felt like we were partaking of the local cajun flavor.

Pictures from the day are up on Flickr.

Space Camp

Not really. Ok, so Monday afternoon we got to visit our ol' college chum Christine! It was great to catch up with her after five years(!) of post-Biola life.

She also works at NASA, so we got to take a tour of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. There are lots of neat things to see there, though some may have been off-limits due to the scheduled Endeavour launch that only finally just took place.

We got to see the old Mission Control. This is the room they ran the Apollo missions from, among others. Apollo 11 told this room that the Eagle had landed, and Apollo 13 told this room that they'd had a problem. Famous!

Apollo 13 is a reminder that space flight carries inherent and grave risks. I was impressed by the many memorials in the parts of the Houston complex we visited to those who have lost their lives in the manned space program. On the right side of the room there is a collection of all of the mission patches from the missions run from the room. These patches began on the left side of the room, and then were moved over to the right side after their successful conclusion.

There are two patches that remain on the left side of this old Mission Control room: Apollo 1 and Challenger. It was sobering to see, but gives a sense of the open-ended nature of death that strikes me as appropriate.

Most of our tour we spent in the room where Christine works.

This room runs experiments on the effects of long-term space flight on the human body on the International Space Station. We were in the envious position of actually being able to talk in depth with Christine and one of her co-workers that was at work when we got there about what that involves. I was really impressed by the incredible complexity of running even this small element of a space flight.

Christine then took us by some more of the rooms that you can visit on a tour of the Space Center. We got to see the modern control room for the International Space Station. It's a little fancier than the old ones from the '60s.

After that, we visited the mock-up room. There's a room full of scale models of different spacecraft. These are used by the astronauts and engineers to plan and train missions. They have models of the space station, the new Orion module, a Soyuz capsule, and several parts of the Space Shuttle. They also have displays of new technology, a space suit, and more memorials to those lost in the space program.

One use of this module is to train for emergency egress. The far side has a worn track from where astronauts have rappelled down the side.

The last thing we got to see was Houston's Rocket Park. This is just inside the front gates of the center, and anyone can visit it during work hours. If you're ever in Houston, you should stop by and see a Saturn V.

So cool! The Saturn V is the most powerful transportation device ever built by man. It's the only rocket ever built that could take man out of earth's orbit. They have a nice display here with each of the three stages separate so that you can see the engines, and they have a Command and Service Module from Apollo (probably would have been used on 18) right in-line there, too. It gives a great sense of scale!

After that, we went out to dinner with Christine for some good old fashioned Texas barbecue. This was maybe the best part of the day, and we had a good time catching up with her.

There are lots of pictures up on Flickr.

Anahuac NWR

The Monday of our trip was very interesting, but it divides so cleanly into two parts that I can't help but describe it that way. Hence there will be two blog posts for the day instead of one. In this post I'll talk about our trip to Anahuac NWR, but after that we'll visit Houston and the Johnson Space Center.

Since the wind wasn't letting up, we decided to forgo High Island on Monday. Looking through the book for possible locations to visit, I noticed that Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge was to our west, and therefore closer to Houston than Winnie. Great, since Anahuac is a must-see spot, it worked out perfectly.

On the way there we scanned the fields we were passing to see if any were flooded rice fields. We didn't even really know what a flooded rice field looks like, so when we didn't find any, we weren't sure if we were doing something wrong. Flooded fields are like magnets to certain species of shore eschewing shorebirds. Texas birders call them "grasspipers," and we hadn't seen several of them. Even though we didn't find any flooded fields, we did find an Upland Sandpiper in a dry pasture.

Photo by Johnath via Wikipedia.

At our first stop, we took a windy walk along a sidewalk. Brown-headed Cowbirds, Eastern Kingbirds, and a fly-by Yellow-billed Cuckoo were the highlights of the stop, but we also got to enjoy some of the non-bird wildlife of the area. Check out this Little Brown Skink:

Our next stop was in the main refuge, where we helped a turtle cross the road. It was just past a slight bend in the road, and had only narrowly escaped a grisly fate from a passing truck when we first saw it. The crazy thing is that when I picked it up to move it an enormous amount of water came pouring out of this thing. It was like a water balloon inside the shell had popped or something. I barely dodged the deluge, and was left with a renewed appreciation for the water-carrying capabilities of the common Red-eared Slider.

There used to be some patches of trees in the refuge that are supposed to be good for migrants, but they seem to have taken a pretty heavy battering by the recent hurricanes that have torn through here. Ike was a big one, and the tallest trees in the willows in the refuge were snags. Still, we got a few more Orchard and Baltimore Orioles in what was left of them.

Then we drove around what is called Shoveler Pond. At this point in time, it's a muddy ditch with a little water in the bottom of it, and the "pond" is a bone-dry field on the other side of that ditch. It's been incredibly dry in Texas this year, and it was really evident. Still, the muddy ditch attracted dowitchers, Lesser Yellowlegs, Black-legged Stilts, and our only Wilson's Snipe for the trip. Best of all were a couple of King Rails, which were lifers, and several Least Bitterns, which appeared to be migrating in off of the gulf.

Next, we drove down to the sea-side to see if we could find Nelson's and Seaside Sparrows. The Seaside Sparrows turned out to be easy, but the Nelson's Sparrows eluded us for the day. It was great, though, to get up close and personal with some Eastern Willets. Eastern Willets breed along the gulf and mid-Atlantic coasts, and seem likely to be a different species from the larger, grayer birds that winter on the American coast and migrate into the interior to breed given their disjunct breeding populations.

Since all we see here in California are the interior birds, we rarely see Willets of any sort in breeding plumage. At some locations on this trip to Texas, we saw the two together in the same pond.

As we were stopping to use the facilities on the way out, a couple of birders from Georgia invited us to see a King Rail family in their scope. The babies never cooperated with us, but we did get to see a Sora and some other shorebirds as well as get some better looks at King Rails. Then it was off to Houston!

We took more pictures of birds on this day than we did any other day, and there are thirteen photos in the set from the morning. It's great to be able to take pictures of birds from the car, and the Willet above is a sign of that. We also have a good picture of an up-close Eastern Kingbird.

Easter in Texas

On Easter morning this year we worshiped at a small church in Austin called St. Francis' Anglican Church. It was good. The congregation uses the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, so we had to read through some of the prayers, and we unknowingly attended the earlier said mass. Well, we knew it was the earlier mass, but we didn't see that it was a said mass. It doesn't really matter, though, because we were able to celebrate the resurrection with fellow Christians, and that's what's important. Afterward everyone was very kind and welcoming to us.

The church was near downtown Austin, so we swung by the Capitol afterward. It's a very beautiful building made of nice red stone. In the picture below, you can see a beautiful woman in front of it, too.

Libby at the Texas Capitol

There were some interesting memorials on the grounds as well, including one to the Texas Rangers, one to firemen, one to cowboys, and one to the great Confederate States of America that came off as particularly un-neighborly. The verdant grounds seemed decent for migrant songbirds, but we didn't see any. Still, we enjoyed the White-winged Doves and Blue Jays that were common all around.

Then it was time for a long drive to Winnie, Texas -- east of Houston. It took about four hours to get there, but there wasn't any traffic and we got to listen to Jane Eyre on the way.

After checking in at our hotel that afternoon and changing, we headed down to High Island for our first visit to this birding mecca. High Island is among the most famous birding locations in the country. It is heavily visited by as many as 10,000 American and foreign birders interested in observing the spectacle of spring migration close-up and personal.

The location's powerful attraction is due to its unique bio-geography. The upper Texas coast between Galveston and the Louisiana border is very flat. It consists of coastal prairie, agricultural fields (lots of rice), and brackish marsh-lands. For many miles, this flat expanse stretches inland uninterrupted by any relief. There are no hills, few groups of trees, and few enough houses away from the immediate coast.

That is good habitat for many birds, and the area teems with wading birds, rails and shorebirds. But it is not very welcoming to tired migrant song birds in need of rest, shelter and fuel after their marathon nocturnal flight over the Gulf of Mexico. After their four to six-hundred mile over-water flight, they have to make a decision. If the flight was good, they'll be able to continue on into the insect-rich interior of east Texas, where pine woods and bayous promise good food and good cover. If, however, conditions conspire against them, such as an unforeseen mid-morning cold front sweeping into the gulf from the midwest (the trans-gulf flight taking more than 12 hours even in the best conditions), they will seek shelter in the first spot of trees that they find. For many miles along the upper Texas coast, that is High Island.

High Island is not an island. It is a salt dome where a protruding salt column has pushed the soil several feet higher than the surrounding wetlands. The resulting higher ground provides ample space for many hardwood trees to grow, especially oaks, and these trees are like a lighthouse to weary neotropical migrants. It's a very small town, mostly residences with one motel and no traffic signal, but its avian population can swell exponentially given the right weather!

When we arrived on Sunday, there was a southeasterly wind. It was blowing strongly, probably about 15-20 mph, and the birding was slow in High Island. Most birds were able to happily continue on their way to the interior, so there were only a few flocks of Orchard Orioles, female buntings, some Baltimore Orioles, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and a rare Western Tanager around. Later searching turned up a male Scarlet Tanager in the late evening. While our hopes for oodles of warblers went unfulfilled, we did enjoy the rookery at Smith Oaks. There we watched Roseate Spoonbills sweeping the shallows for water while the hum and smell of the nesting birds provided an interesting spectacle.

The best part of the evening, however, was a brief experience with a Magnolia Warbler, which was a lifer for us. We saw two, and the first one was seen well by Libby but poorly by me. The second one we found I was able to see quite well, also, and so we added our only lifer for the day!

Louis Agassiz Fuertes' Magnolia Warbler via Wikipedia

Pictures of the day can be found on Flickr.

The Hill Country

Different regions have different birds, and part of the treat of looking for unique bird species is seeing those unique regions they inhabit. On our recent trip to Texas, this pursuit took us to the hill country of central Texas for two endangered species that breed there: Black-capped Vireo and Golden-cheeked Warbler.

We landed around midnight in Austin, Texas. Following the helpful directions of the friendly lady at the rental car counter -- God bless friendly Texans -- we soon were ensconced in our hotel just to the north-east of that city. A very few hours later to beat the dawn, we were on our way into the Hill Country and Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. The flat terrain began to wrinkle, and hills dotted with shrubby junipers rose up on either side of the road. It was the unique ecology of this scrub habitat that provided a home for the special birds we were there to see.

Golden-cheeked Warblers are the only endemic breeding species in the enormous state of Texas. They migrate south to Mexico every year, but they return every March to feverishly provide for the increase of their species. They do this in the scrubby mixed juniper-oak forests found in the hill country, making nests almost exclusively out of Ashe Juniper bark.

Black-capped Vireos have broader habitat preferences, and also breed sparingly in Oklahoma and Mexico, but while their nesting ecology may be less picky as to species, they still require rare successional habitat such as is provided by suppressed wildfires, and is regularly cleared for grazing cattle.

We pulled into the parking lot at Warbler Vista in the refuge early enough to hear a chuck-will's-widow wrapping up its dawn performance, but when we headed off onto the trail we found a steady 20 mph wind flowing up the south-facing slopes of the limestone escarpment we were contouring along. It was quickly obvious that, despite hopeful little trail signs painted with Golden-cheeked Warblers at regular intervals, detecting singing birds was going to be hopeless.

We were both breathing silent prayers, and as we topped out on top of the hill to loop back to the car, a beautiful male dropped onto a branch over the trail. It continued there, giving good looks, as another warbler sang from the trees somewhere nearby. The wind died down, or we were sheltered from it, and we were soon hearing many Golden-cheeked Warblers singing. We only saw a couple more, but we had been able to really enjoy the one we had seen!

Afterward, we worked our way through the refuge toward the Black-capped Vireo spot advertised on-line. Along the way we enjoyed the beautiful geology and more fun birds like Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, Lark Sparrows, and Eastern Bluebirds.

Cow Creek carves steps into a limestone hill.

Soon we were standing on the Shin Oak observation deck, and listening to Black-capped Vireos singing in the unobtainable distance. That activity would end up being our entertainment for most of the rest of the day, interrupted only briefly by a bathroom break to Doeskin Ranch. Sometimes the vireos would come in close to the deck, but they always sang from deep within the scrubby oaks. We would have undoubtedly had a better chance if the wind had been less strong, but even then it was probably not a safe bet.

While we sat and listened and strained our eyes in vain for four and a half hours, we made our acquaintance with a Houston-area couple making a weekend trip to the hill country for the warblers and the vireo among other natural pursuits. When they left, we exchanged e-mail addresses and talked about meeting up with him later in the week. There's nothing like local knowledge, so it was a very fortuitous meeting!

We called it a day after seeing one of the vireos fly from one bush to another. It was nothing we'll count, but it seemed the culmination of a long and tiring effort. Running on three hours of sleep, we wanted nothing more than a nap! So, we went back to the hotel and grabbed one before dinner.

A few pictures are up on Flickr.

Mammoth Skiing

While most people go to Mammoth to catch a ride on a ski lift to some fun on the slopes, we Rowleys have a different philosophy. We toil our way into the virgin white forests away from the madding crowds, where twittering chickadees and the swish-crunch of cross-country skis on new snow are the only sounds to violate the mysterious silence of a winter's day.

Libby and her Dad soak in the serenity of a snowy forest.

This year, Libby's Dad joined us to recapture the joyful pursuit of cross-country touring he enjoyed many years ago. We all had a great time in about 5' of dry powder, toiling happily along in slow agony as we laid our familiar tracks up the mine road. It took us three days of retracing our tracks and laying more to finally reach the meadow below Emerald Lake, but it was undoubtedly worth it.

Coldwater Creek just below Emerald Lake.

We also took a break from the hard work in the forests to enjoy the groomed tracks around Lake Mary, visiting Horseshoe Lake and taking in beautiful views of the crest and Crystal Crag. Along the way we stopped to feed the bold little Mountain Chickadees. They snatched peanuts from our hands, pecked at our plastic food bags, and even landed hopefully on us when we weren't feeding them.

A Mountain Chickadee perches on a ski pole.

The weather proved entertaining. It was snowing when we began skiing to the cabin early on Friday afternoon, and it never stopped completely until late on Saturday. That meant about two or three feet of new powder on top of two or three feet of powder dropped between Tuesday and Friday. While that made it incredibly difficult to move, the storms also brought the sleepy beauty of a heavy snow, and ensuing cold. This was the coldest trip to Mammoth I've been on, and I got to experience my first sub-zero temperatures.

A couple of degrees below zero

Water didn't freeze instantly, but drops did freeze within a minute. We also experienced a novel problem for us -- keeping our water bottles ice free. On a chilly trip up the mountain I found the top had almost frozen closed and that there was a centimeter of ice coating the interior of my Nalgene bottle. This was despite carrying it in an insulated cover!

Inside the cabin we enjoyed our normal winter pursuits. We read, played Uno and Bananagrams, and chatted while drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate and teas. It was, all in all, a great time.

Picture wrap-up on Flickr: February Cabin trip, 2011.