In Praise of Glacier Lilies

Many deer, one marmot, one raven. Lots of little birds. Oh, yes, and the snowy peaks of the Bailey Range.

The View from Hurricane Ridge, June 13, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

By the time JB appeared on Wednesday, it was nearly 5PM, and overcast. But the webcam said it was sunny up on Hurricane Ridge, with deer all over the place in the cam's view at the visitor center. We decided to shift into we-can-have-it-all mode: ignored the clock and the visible sky, grabbed a mug of tea to bring with, and hurtled up the mountain. The overcast was dense dense dense as we drove up through it, in places the heaviest fog I've ever driven in. Finally we popped out into the sunshine. Was the marmot who lives down the slope below the visitor center out enjoying the afternoon? Yes he was.

Blurry marmot (Click for larger image.)

We wandered around. JB much taken with the deer, and the raven. Raven was parading around like he owned the place; as if the people, the parking lot, the cars were all irrelevant. Oh. Right.

Lordly Raven (Click for larger image.) ... (Click for larger image.)

The road is open to the Hurricane Hill trailhead, and in fact it looks like it might be hike-able all the way to the top of the Hill already. The only flowers in evidence anywhere were some glacier lilies.

... (Click for larger image.)

This year the melt is proceeding much faster than last year. They'll surely open the road to paradise (Obstruction Point Road out to Lillian Ridge) by the middle of July... The server for the snotel website has recovered, here is the graph showing how much remains of the snowpack at Waterhole, halfway out towards the Lillian Ridge trailhead:

JB was especially pleased to finally be in the Olympics, our bijou Alps, which are on his far horizon every year when he visits Port Townsend, Bellingham, Samish Island. I was most happy to see the marmot; and all that space.

... (Click for larger image.)

Hurricane Ridge Spy Trip, with Marmot Sighting

It's t-shirt weather on Hurricane Ridge. Steep southfacing slopes, like the one below the visitor parking area, or the face of Hurricane Hill, have grassy patches emerging already though not yet green. The peaks of the Bailey Range, Mt. Olympus, and all the rest look high and snowy and remote, as they will continue to do even when the near places have melted.

View From the Visitor Center, June 4, 2011 (Click for larger image.)
Visitor Center (Click for larger image.)

In the woods along the spur road to the Hurricane Hill trailhead, the snow is still deep. They're working it now, plowed about halfway, and will surely finish this week. I hiked down hoping for a good view of the Hill, but the snow walls were always too high, and then the worked part of the road simply ended. Hiked back up. The sunlight was dazzling. Three people came by carryiing snowshoes and poles, wearing wraparound dark glasses: not intending to be deterred by the end of the plowed road...

Hurricane Hill over the snow and through trees, June 4, 2011. Look closely at how much bare ground there is already. (Click for larger image.)Panorama: Bailey Range from the Road to Hurricane Hill, June 4, 2011
Near End of Spur Road Plowed, Road Equipment, & As Far As They've Gotten, June 4, 2011 (Click for larger image.)  

Intuitively I had parked directly above where I saw the marmots last year on June 7 (look how much more it was melted then— and it was green already!), and when I got back to the car I looked over the edge. Yup.

There's a marmot down there in the grassy patch. (Click for larger image.)OK, So You Have To Take My Word For It: This Is a Marmot (Click for larger image.)

PS. They haven't plowed or dug out the patio at the back of the Visitor Center, but it's melting itself out just fine. The small purple arrow near the top center of the image marks the web camera. You can see that it's not still midwinter up there, even though the cam looks right at the snow bank and this morning still imagined the building was all but buried...

Back of the Visitor Center, showing the web camera. (Click for larger image.)

Anticipating Marmots

Still snowing up there. I wonder if there are years when the road out to Lillian Ridge never is opened at all? Last year it was open only mid-July to mid-October. Marmots. I need to be able to anticipate marmots.

The Waterhole SnoTel, halfway out to Obstruction Point on Hurricane Ridge (Click for larger image.)

The Weekend Lingers...

AW put her marmot movie up on youtube. Our marmot on Sunday right by the road. Don't read another word until you have watched it. Really. Go now.

On Wednesday after work I went back up the mountain to try to figure out the flaming bushes we took pictures of on Sunday. Bounced on out the Obstruction Point Road to just before the halfway point, to the very patch we took the pictures of. It had to be one of the huckleberries

Original picture, huckleberry patch, October 10, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

most likely blue leaf (Vaccinium deliciosum) because that is the one which grows in big patches that turn red in the fall, except every single book says that Vaccinium deliciosum is at most 12" tall and a lot of the ones along the road were way taller than that. Tim McNulty says it is so, and a ranger identified it for PG & me a couple of Octobers ago— BUT from a distance. I've never looked up close at the red patches painting the mountainsides and thought, 'This is what grows in a red patch, this is the stuff.'

In the books it is shown with very fine teeth around the leaves. You think they are smooth until you look closely. Check. Turned bright red. Check. A few very partial dried up huckleberry-ish berries left on them. Check. Ma-a-a-ybe it's a different huckleberry, but it's gotta be almost right. Until corrected, Vaccinium deliciosum.

Huckleberry patch close-up, October 14, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

As to Monday, we have done much research about pelicans, put in interlibrary loan requests for articles about their range and behavior, etc etc., and will report as information arrives. This morning we discovered that Sam Beebe's Ecotrust aerial photos of the Coast are available for use. Oh my. Thank you Mr. Beebe, thank you Creative Commons.

La Push & First Beach. Rialto is just off to the left. Mount Olympus on the horizon (!) (Click for larger image.)Photo: Samuel M Beebe/Ecotrust, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Foray into Shangri-La

A. came over on the noon ferry. The weather had turned glorious on the crossing, and we darted straight up the mountain.

Destination, Obstruction Point. From Victoria, the Olympics sometimes loom as massive and delectable as Himalayas on the horizon; and I'd promised her this magical foray towards Shangri-La.

... (Click for larger image.)

"Here's where the marmots were," I said as we rolled along, and whoah, there they were.

The marmots' context (Click for larger image.)Two marmots. Energetic and not too fat. Young ones? (Click for larger image.)

The road's been open since the middle of July, and will close as soon as it snows. We walked a little distance along the Lillian Ridge trail, windy, cold, beautiful. It got darker, clouds were moving in, maybe. Time to go? Goodbye for eight or ten months, paradise.

Autumn on Lillian Ridge (Click for larger image.)This one is A's photo... (Click for larger image.)

Except I may have to go back up after work one day this week to examine the amazing flaming bushes by the road in the woods. What on earth are they, and why did I not look more closely after I decided, no, I may not pick a leaf....

Luckily there are some quite close to the beginning of the road... (Click for larger image.)

Visit Road Day #1 Continued

Sunday. The Obstruction Point trip included other wildlife manifestations: chipmunks, deer along the highway and (especially) carefully examining all the cars at the Obstruction Point Trailhead, raptors out over empty space cruising the long drop to Lillian River, a report of mother bear and cub down by the little lake below the big stone steps (those we did not see; I say we get to count them, S. says not)(see PS below); a single raptor where the ridge was still narrow, who cruised up out of nowhere, skimmed across the road and down the other side, showing a white rump patch and must have been a northern harrier (the former marshhawk) though the habitat was all wrong. Some wildflowers left.

Still it was 'the marmot trip'; all the rest, including the vast sweeps of landscape, were just rolled into what in memory was a successful marmot quest. After the marmots, we went on to do four more things. A lunch in town: seafood by the harbor. Then on to pick blackberries from the roadside bushes behind the store at Laird's Corner. Since we were arriving on purpose with containers and a determined crew of two, I went in the store and asked permission. Which was cheerfully granted.

Then on westward, along the lake to the trailhead to walk on the trail to Marymere Falls. There was Barnes Creek, and some quite nice forest, and quite a lot of people speaking a good many different languages. We did not go up the stairs to the falls viewpoint, making do with creek and forest. There was some sun.

Barnes Creek Trail, 08/29/2010 (Click for larger image.)

Still the good weather was hanging on. On the way home we detoured down to Ediz Hook to look for ships and birds. There were a couple of big tankers in the harbor— a Polar at the terminal being worked on, an Alaskan at anchor — but no ship traffic on the Strait except a rapidly receding inbound ship. The pilot boat was just returning from having put a pilot aboard her. Some kids had found something interesting off the small boat dock. They got some sticks and went back out, the better to investigate. A couple of maybe cormorants, and gulls. No other birds.

Port Angeles Harbor (Click for larger image.)

*PS This makes sense as the little lake down there is surrounded by blue-leaf huckleberry, which goes conspicuously red in the fall, creating mysterious colorpatches all over the landscape— P. and I saw it that way around the lakelet a couple of autumns ago— and Tim McNulty says, "Black bears Ursus Americanus), are seen frequently in the high meadows in late summer, most often snout down in a patch of huckleberries." (p.77).

Tim M. also has pages and pages of loving prose about Olympic marmots. "One of the many traits I've always admired in marmots is their fondness for wide front porches..." S.'s iPhone maps our marmot photos as being here, which looks right. Ridge behind dropping into Lillian River. The front porch view out over the unnamed upper reaches of Maiden Creek...

The Marmot's View

About a mile before Obstruction Point, there was a marmot by the road. He ran off, insofar as running is an option for a fatty like this one, and stopped not very far away, on a burrow entry that looks out northeastward over empty space. He was whistling, or perhaps another marmot we couldn't spot was whistling.

A Marmot At Home, August 29, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

This was the day before the weather was going to change, and we crammed as much as we could into it, that Houseguest Sprint we Olympic Peninsula people do when visitors come from places like Cincinnati :-) So up we were and toodling along the Obstruction Point Road, looking for scenery and marmots at quite the early hour. Succeeded.

Where the Marmot Was, August 29, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

This is probably what the marmot was looking at when we startled him away from the road:

The View in the Other Direction, August 29, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

Eventually we went on to the end of the road and had a walk along Lillian Ridge. There were in fact no marmots in the hollow by the parking lot where they usually frolic. It was mostly brown up there, but the green in this image isn't enhanced, just selected for :-) More about the rest of the day in next post.

Lillian Ridge Trail view, August 29, 2010 (Click for larger image.)

Marmot Quest #Fail

We went to Obstruction Point, as L. wanted to see marmots. Naturally they were all hiding. We weren't up for hiking. The mountains were in fine fettle, however, and there were flowers, and flitty little chipmunks.

Here There (Should) Be Marmots (Click for larger image.)

Marmots, There Were Marmots Out

At 11 AM Monday, as I told twitter, "Hmmm. Turned up #atthecollege for a database training that seems to have been de-scheduled. Not expected back #atthetribe Hmmm..." So I went up onto Hurricane Ridge, to see with my own eyes how the melting is coming along. It's coming along. There were no flowers, the grass was greening up quite satisfactorily below the visitor center, there were marmots out, there were marmots out. Walked down the road towards the Hurricane Hill trailhead, but the hill was covered in fog.

From the Visitor Center, Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park (Click for larger image.)Here There Be Marmots (Click for larger image.)Deer on a Snow Bank, Pretending It's Still Winter (Click for larger image.)

OK, so you can't really see the marmot. Last year when V. was here we had one almost in our laps out at Obstruction Point, right next to the car.

Three Months After the Road Opened

The Obstruction Point Road is about ready to close again. Soon the gate will close at the point where the dirt road leaves the Hurricane Ridge Road, up by the visitor center; already they warn you:

There was a bit of snow on the road going out in the morning, much less by afternoon returning. The clouds never quite cleared off Mt. Olympus, a twilighty sunshine came and went. Frost outlined the grasses. The marmots are gone down into their burrows.

Lillian Ridge Trail at Obstruction Point, October 2, 2009 (Click for larger image.)

WC saw a pod of orcas from the ferry on his way across yesterday morning. In the afternoon we tried for salmon leaping up the Cascade on the Sol Duc River. But though there were more salmon in the pool below the Cascade than there were a week ago, they are still not jumping. What happens if the river never fluffs up? Will they eventually move anyway? Or do this year's returning salmon never spawn?

Tomorrow we try (again) to see the turkey vulture migration at Salt Creek.

The Vastest of Landscapes

It's hard to believe you just get to be there. You should have to backpack for miles to get to such a place, carrying weight and striving mightily to get into the remotest back country; but no, you just drive out a dirt road eight miles from the pavement, and arrive in heaven. Heaven with flowers. Along the road on the inboard side was what my friend P. calls Botticelli meadows: slopes and sweeps and swathes of mixed flowers, patches of avalanche lilies and magenta paintbrush and sitka valerian and lupines and veronica and polemonium and dephinium, and lupines and lupines and lupines. Off the other shoulder of the road, views on an astonishing scale. Here is the best place to get a good look at Mount Olympus, no longer hidden by the Bailey Range but Out There. Extremely out there.

Along the Obstruction Point RoadAlong the Obstruction Point Road (Click for larger image)

The road opened for the season July 4th weekend; it will be closed by the first snows, long about October. (map; pink for unpaved road, purple for trail)

We hiked about an hour along the trail, in dazzling sunshine, frequently flopping down in the middle of the trail, or stepping cautiously off-trail on patches of talus, with books and notebook for identifying wildflowers. We heard a marmot calling, looked out and first saw only a deer walking across a rise in the usual marmot hollow. Then we saw him, far away, then he vanished down a burrow.

Lillian Ridge Trail from Obstruction Point

It's pretty dry up there on the ridgetop, conditions always demanding for the plants and this past winter only 70% normal snowpack and a long dry spring. For lavish, the roadside slopes were much better, but here anyway many determined alpine flowers were doing their job of blooming and setting seed in the vastest of landscapes.

Lillian Ridge Trail (Click for larger image.)Lillian Ridge Trail (Click for larger image.)

When we got back to the parking lot, we had our own private marmot. He was popping in and out of his burrow, and looking around, and watching us. Right. Next. To. The. Car.

The Marmot (Click for larger image.)