This was the first time I had seen a muskrat out of the water, even from a distance I was startled to see how long and white its claws were. Taken in a quiet backwater channel on the Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.
Category: Mammals
Boomers
Red squirrels are known as boomers in some areas, a name I love although I don’t know its origin — these little chatterboxes certainly aren’t quiet, but boomy isn’t quite how I’d describe their shrill alarm calls.
I’ve toyed with the idea of having a series of “Greatest Hiking Days Ever” posts that trace in pictures and words my favorite days on the trails from start to finish, and if I do, September 27, 2005 would be a fine place to start. It started with a lovely sunrise in the Tetons, then black bears dining on huckleberries amidst the fall colors, followed by a wonderful hike into Death Canyon where I met this red squirrel and chipmunks and blacktails and even my first pikas, and ended with a moose family in Willow Flats.
There are many things to love in parks as spectacular as Yellowstone and the Tetons, and perhaps squirrels shouldn’t be so high on my list, but I love the chatter and scoldings that rain down from the trees as I hike the forested trails. I heard almost no squirrels on my last trip there a couple of years ago, a personal anecdote in support of the controversial theory of global quieting. I’m not in a position to say if humans are playing a role or if the earth is naturally cycling from noisy to quiet, just that I missed my treetop companions and I hope they are there to welcome me on my next return.
Strange Looking Trees
After a wonderful week of hiking in Wyoming in October 2005, in the last few hours of my last day I decided to take quick jaunts part way down three Yellowstone trails new to me, to get a taste for future visits. I planned an hour for each trail but when I reached the designated time on the the first trail, the Rescue Creek Trail, I wasn’t ready to turn back so I continued on at the cost of only having time to sample one more trail before sunset.
Having reached the new turnaround time, I stopped to drink in the dry landscape and some water. Strange looking trees down the hill caught my eye so I raised my camera for a closer look. The telephoto lens turned my strange trees into six bighorn rams of various ages.
I never made it to any other trails, I spent the remaining hours watching the rams until they wandered up the trail in the opposite direction and I headed back to the car to start the long journey home. One of my all time favorite hiking moments.
Roosevelt
The race of elk we have in the Pacific Northwest, Roosevelt elk, were named in honor of Theodore Roosevelt. I came across this bull, part of a larger herd, on a rainy morning near the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park.
While President Cleveland protected some of the forests of the Olympic Peninsula in 1897 by declaring an Olympic Forest Reserve, the protection did not extend to the elk who lived there and in a few years less than 2,000 survived. President Roosevelt (Theodore, not Franklin) established the Mount Olympus National Monument in 1909 to protect the elk but future politicians cut back the acreage to half of its original size. President Roosevelt (Franklin, not Theodore) granted National Park status in 1938 after visiting the area, the status it has retained to the current day, protecting not only the elk that bear the Roosevelt name but also the many plants and animals that are unique to the Olympic Peninsula.
You can find more info about the history of the park in a PDF on the official park site.
Jealousy
It’s hard not to be jealous of how well-adapted some animals are to their environment. It was a little humbling to watch these tiny little pikas sprinting across the talus field with plants in their mouths. I don’t think I’d be quite so quick if I had to drag several 12 foot tall trees in my mouth as I ran across a boulder field with rocks as big as a school bus.
Remind Me Why I’m Not Hibernating Yet?
The higher elevations in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier got a light dusting of snow on the morning of my last day there but it melted when the sun rose. After hiking a bit on the Sourdough Ridge Trail early in the day hoping to see marmots, pikas, or grouse (and not seeing any), I went a little lower in elevation to the trailhead of the Summerland Trail. The trail is an uphill march mostly through a forest before you pop out into a mountain meadow at the very end of the trail, I chose it since there was a chance of seeing hoary marmots and elk in the meadow (the mountain views from the meadow are also spectacular and make up for the lack of views in the forest).
I didn’t see any elk but I did see a few marmots when I first entered the talus field. The afternoon sun didn’t make for good light for pictures but this marmot was shadowed by rocks where the snow hadn’t melted. I followed the trail through the rocks and saw more and more marmots until I realized just how large the colony is at the end of the trail, this was by far the largest marmot colony of any species I’ve come across.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the marmots as at least one was usually close to the trail, taking advantage of every passing cloud to improve the light. I had thoughts about staying until sunset but I still had a long hike back down and while I had my headlamp, I was hiking alone and didn’t want to risk it. When the marmots that had been near the trail were no longer around, I took that as my cue and headed back down the trail.
Changeling
Some day I’m going to stop posting pictures of this bear, but today is not that … no actually I think today is that day. Watching the bear in person it was pretty obvious that it was young, I’m no expert on bears but it clearly was at least a year old but not yet a full adult. Looking through my pictures sometimes it appears younger to me and sometimes older, a furry changeling, but I just love its fur coat of many colors.
Browns
I found this Olympic marmot colony in the afternoon and hoped to photograph them in better light later in the day, but unfortunately they weren’t around when I came back in the evening. This marmot in multiple shades of brown gave a nice view of its paws.
Unique
I saw at least four species for the first time on my Washington trip, three of them mammals and two of them marmots. In addition to the hoary marmots I saw at Mount Rainier, I was lucky enough to see Olympic marmots in Olympic National Park, one of the species that is unique to the peninsula. I expected to see them in rock formations along the trails in the Grand and Badger Valleys but neither saw or heard them. I did see a couple on the road between Obstruction Point and Hurricane Ridge, I would have missed them if a friend hadn’t seen them there on an earlier visit. The road is quite narrow with occasional steep dropoffs and made me more nervous than any of the trails I hiked, but in this particular location there was enough room to park on one side of the road and be clearly visible to traffic from both directions.
Oh Yes! OH YES! OHHHHH YES!
My favorite moment with this bear, after stopping to eat huckleberries beside the trail (the picture in the previous post), it returned to the trail but soon turned aside again, stood up on its hind legs and began rubbing its back up and down on this tree. I guess it had an itch that needed scratching (or a scent that needed marking).
Boolie 