6/23/2015   Sunrise hike 1  
No White-tailed Ptarmigan have been reported from Sunrise this year and I hoped to remedy that. Years ago when the boys were in Pathfinders, I did a loop up over Third Burrows from Glacier Basin. That hike from White River campground would have been reasonable had I started at a reasonable hour, but I didn't leave the car till after three. Because of my late start I did the hike in reverse figuring that it would be easier after dark to walk down the Glacier Basin trail than down from Sunrise. I didn't see any White-tailed Ptarmigan but I did find a couple of Pine Grosbeaks not far below the junction with with the trail from the Sunrise parking lot. The grosbeaks were my 300th species for the year in Washington state, and with them I achieved my primary birding goal for the year.
I ate a late lunch at the Sunrise campground in the bright hot sunshine. A few tiny mosquitoes, very quick but fortunately not very hungry, kept me company. Anticipating them, I'd bathed in bug dope down at the parking lot so they didn't bother me much. Fox sparrows were singing at the next trail junction. The initial couple notes of the song are quite similar to the "whip three beers" call of an Olive-sided Flycatcher.
The snowpack melted a month early this year so the flowers are already out - magenta paintbrush, blue Veronica, Lupine and Fleabane and lots more. Around Frozen Lake the dwarf lupine and scarlet paintbrush are just starting to flower. I took pictures.
Starting up First Burrows, I heard "jrp jrp" calls from a couple of good-sized finches flying across the slope above me. They weren't Pine Grosbeaks and they weren't Cassins Finches or Red Crossbills. I suspected they were rosy finches which would have been another year bird, but after they landed I couldn't find them. Instead I saw a couple of mountain bluebirds, unusual this early at Sunrise according to eBird. Approaching the top of First Burrows the trail crossed a a small patch of snow steep enough that a track had developed around it. On top there were flowers amidst the sparse grass but they weren't very showy. Like First Burroughs itself.
Second Burroughs is a bit more of a mountain. Though just a flat-topped ridge, at least it's not a big plateau like First Burroughs. Third Burroughs actually has a identifiable peak but I didn't make it that far. It was 8 o'clock when I reached Second Burroughs so I hung out for a little while and admired the view before starting down the trail to Glacier Basin. Just past the top of Second Burroughs the flowers were dazzling but I didn't take any pictures because it was getting late. Next time.
Nice views of Rainier, and also a bull elk in velvet, from the trail down to Glacier Basin from Second Burroughs.
Beyond the elk a mule deer was moseying through the woods, then a cow elk dashed across a meadow. Most exciting though was a mama bear and cub(s) which suddenly appeared in the trail ahead of me at dusk. I backed up out of sight and dug my flashlight out of my pack then waited five minutes before starting cautiously down the trail again, singing and shouting and flashing my light all around. I was glad that nobody but the bears was around to hear me. I thought maybe I heard them again, down below the trail about where I'd seen them, but I kept up my racket for a good half-mile or more. In an avalanche clearing not far beyond the bears I spotted their tracks in the sandy trail bed. At first I was alarmed when the track seemed to be headed down the trail in front of me, then I was reassured to see the tracks headed back up the trail behind me. Apparently they'd spent some time foraging the clearing before I met them.

6/25/2015   Sunrise hike 2  
Having neither found a Ptarmigan nor made it to Third Burrows two days ago, I decided to try again. David joined me and we set out from Sunrise around 2 PM. Once again I had arrived at Sunrise closer to sunset than to sunrise.
We ate our lunch in the car in the parking lot then hiked up to Second Burroughs via Sunrise Campground and Frozen Lake. This time I stopped to photograph the flowers on Second Burroughs before continuing on. David stayed at Second Burroughs to take a nap but the breeze and the mosquitos alternately conspired to keep him awake so after a while he gave up and wandered around taking photos. I kept track of him by his bright white shirt.
The alpine flowers alone were worth the trip. Though there was some overlap, each summit had its own character. Inconspicuous flowers on one, brilliant reds and yellows on two and mostly blues and yellows on three.
Again today I found no Ptarmigan but I did get several good views of Gray-crowned Rosy Finches, year bird number 301. Unfortunately no photos of them but I did get photos of adult and juvenile Horned Larks, birds of arid steppes which apparently find alpine meadows a close enough substitute. Mountain goats were everywhere in herds and small groups. I counted more than two dozen adults and most of them had kids. Having not seen any two days ago, I wondered where they all came from.
The views of Mount Rainier were of course stunning. Despite having more than enough photos of Rainier from previous trips, we couldn't resist taking more. Even on the way down we kept looking over our shoulders at the mountain.
We left the Sunrise parking lot at 8:20PM and squeaked into Ranchitos in Enumclaw just before they closed. I had a Negro Modelo, basically a cross between an amber ale and a Coke, with my chicken enchiladas. It was a good day.

6/28/2015   Vesper Peak  
Several decades ago I hiked up Vesper peak and I remember white granite ledges and classic Cascades alpine scenery. And also White tailed Ptarmigan. As I recall it wasn't a particularly difficult hike, and didn't require scrambling, for which my nearly defunct arms are now ill-suited. The boys and I hiked up as far as the lake last November and though I climbed up to the ridge above the lake I didn't have time to get to the summit. Today I did.
Though the elevation and distance today were not much more than last week, the trail was rocky and the ledges steeper than I remembered. Bugs were scarce but the temperature during the first couple miles of the hike was almost stifling, as warm as any hike I can recall in the Cascades. The scenery was great and I wished I'd started earlier so as to have more time to explore, but that will have to wait for another trip.
My first real stop was at the hidden ice cave in the hanging valley, about 2 miles up the trail. The cave was quite spectacular last November when the boys and I explored it. Then it was perhaps 100 feet long and 30 feet wide with walls and ceiling of scalloped blue ice 8 feet overhead. Now it is collapsed, a jumble of rounded blocks of white ice. Apparently the collapse occurred within the past two weeks, based on some photos I found on the Internet. I found it hard to believe that the cave could have melted out so much since last November, but I guess with recent temperatures consistently in the 80's, even glacial ice goes fast.
The switchbacks at the start of the climb to Headlee Pass were partly eroded away and a bit dicey in running shoes. About half way up I thought I heard a couple of White-winged Crossbill calls but couldn't verify them. Otherwise my bird list was pretty typical for the time and place.
The trail up the ridge on the far side of the lake outlet stream is particularly scenic with scattered old Mountain Hemlock, outcrops of white granite and drifts of blue lupine and red mountain heath. The ledges began above a band of krumholz and are for the most part just gentle enough to walk up. I drank from icy snowmelt streams trickling down over the granite and admired the views across to Sperry and Glacier peaks and east to Big Snow Mountain and its neighbors. The area just below the summit is a true alpine garden with myriad flowers tended by a lone rosy finch. I parked in the lee of the summit crag and peered over the edge at the massive slab of rock plummeting into the cirque above Copper Lake. Nearly all the snow has already melted off the glacier which has yet another two months to bake in the summer sunshine. I marveled at the polished granite ridge between Vesper and Big Four and wondered if there is any way I could get over there to explore. I doubt it. I swapped photographer services with another hiker then explored a little around the summit before beginning my descent.
The other hikers started down. A breeze rustled silently around the summit boulders and the clouds overhead stood still. I photographed flowers, including a showy bluebell species which I don't recall seeing before. The rosy finch came and went. A couple of goats ambled along the ridge to the south but the Ptarmigan, if present, remained undetectable. I'll bet they were over to the left, on the ridge above the lake which I didn't have time to explore.

7/1-7/2015   Big Bend Trip  
I had no expectation of ever getting to Big Bend National Park until a week ago when I had John over and he mentioned that he was going to spend a week there after the conclusion of a three-day conference in Austin. Having just served him dinner perhaps I took unfair advantage by suggesting at that point that maybe he would like company. He agreed that would be okay. All I knew about Big Bend was that Lucifer hummingbirds and Colima warblers lived there and that they had a Marathon in March which had always filled up before I'd gotten around to registering. Here is a journal of my week in Big Bend with John.

7/11/2015   Mountail Quail Redux  
Blair is attempting to photograph every species he sees in Washington this year. He is only missing a half dozen or so, which is impressive considering that he is the #1 eBirder in the state with 327 species. BTW, I'm in the #2 place at the moment with 301 species. One of the species for which he did not have a photo was Mountain Quail, so when he saw that I had reported one recently he gave me a call. I suggested a day of birding together starting with a trip to the Port Orchard airport/quarry to look for Mountain Quail.
We parked at the usual spot M+ across Sidney Rd SW from SW Lakeway Blvd and hiked west up the track towards the old clear-cut. Since my last visit the track has been bulldozed all the way to the quarry, completely eliminating the need to bushwhack. Convenient for access, but the development it portends probably spells the end for the Mountain Quail population on the site. I don't know where else to find them, but on the other hand a year from now I probably won't be looking for them any longer. Today we saw three and we both got photos of one of them. We also saw a coyote, Public Enemy Number One from the quail's perspective, down in the quarry within 100 feet of where we saw the quail.
I was looking for a Semipalmated sandpiper. They're coming through with Western and Least sandpipers but I haven't seen one yet this year. First we tried the Hylebos bridge M+ in Tacoma, a spot I recognized once we got there. At first we didn't see much, then we found a flock of Western and Least sandpipers roosting out on the point. They allowed us to get very close and I took lots of photos. The Westerns are still mostly in breeding plumage so they have varying amounts of rufous on the crown and scapulars. That distinguishes them from Semipalmated sandpipers which have no rufous. The Least sandpipers were much darker brown than I expected, with little evidence of the buffy scapulars by which I usually identify them. There were no Semipalmated sandpipers in the flock.
Not ready to give up, we drove over to Levee Pond Park M+, another good shorebirding spot during fall migration. There we found a nice mix of shorebirds L+ but still no Semipalmated sandpipers. The snipe was wading out in the water like the dowitchers and fooled us both until Blair looked at his photos from the day. I lugged around my D600 with the 80-400 mm lens on the monopod and though it was a lot of work, the image quality is far superior to the SX280. I wouldn't mind finding something in between the two.

7/17/2015   Birding with Blair Redux  
Blair offered to show Melissa, a friend of his from BC, a Green-tailed Towhee and asked if I wanted to come along. I did, but more for the possibility of a Great Gray Owl or a Semipalmated Sandpiper. Blair himself was looking for Tricolored blackbirds for his year list and Ruffed Grouse for photos. The towhees in Washington occur only in the Blue Mountains near Walla Walla so that would be our starting point. Tricolored blackbirds have recently been reported only at Para Ponds near Othello, so we'd probably end up there.
So as to get an early start, we all spent the night at the Super 8 Motel in Walla Walla. At 6AM, the breakfast room was crowded with construction workers, a mix of old guys and college-age kids. I managed to retrieve my coffee and cereal without spilling anything on the floor and felt good about that. The guys, recognizing my disability, treated me with polite deference.
Blair drove us up the North Fork, by Creek Road and stopped at a clearing just short of the top. I was skeptical that we would find towhees there so I didn't get out my camera. That was a mistake. As soon as Blair played their song, one flew across the road in front of us and perched in plain sight not 20 feet away. Melissa didn't manage to get photos there either, so we stopped in a couple more places overlooking brushy canyon slopes and called up another towhee or two and both Melissa and I got pictures. No ruffed grouse for Blair, though we hiked a half-mile or so of road up in mixed coniferous forest. On the way back into town I suggested we stop at Rooks Park to see the Lesser Goldfinches which are apparently breeding there. To Melissa's delight and my relief, they cooperated. Blair and I left Melissa in Walla Walla. She wanted to go up Biscuit Ridge to look for more towhees. We wanted to check out the Dodd Road ponds for Semipalmated sandpipers and other shorebirds on the way up to Othello.
It's difficult to imagine a less appealing location for birdwatching then the Blood Ponds on Dodd Road. The Denny's had reported a Semipalmated sandpiper or two along with 742 Western and Least sandpipers just two days earlier so we had to stop and check them out. Dodd Road is a narrow two-lane road busy with heavy agricultural truck traffic. The south side of the road is lined with feedlots and a beef processing plant. On the north side of the road, the several Blood Ponds are presumably named for the watery nitrogenous waste sprayed and pumped into them periodically. As that dries, it forms a muddy crust which cracks and buckles to provide innumerable hiding places for small sandpipers. They emerge from hiding to scour and probe the damp surface, presumably for maggots. The sun was hot and bright when we stopped; heat waves made it difficult to scope the peeps and impossible to get good photographs, but having studied Western sandpipers for several hours yesterday at Perch Point L+, I immediately recognized the Semipalmated sandpipers when I spotted them among about 50 Westerns and Leasts. They're paler and grayer than Least sandpipers with a stouter bill which is somewhat shorter than even the shortest Western Sandpiper bill, and unlike most of the latter, they show no rufous on the crown or scapulars.
Regarding truck traffic, the Para Ponds are not much of an improvement over the Blood Ponds but at least they're somewhat more natural looking, with shallow water and exposed mud enclosed by rushes and cow pasture. There We found not only a dozen Tricolored blackbirds but also a satisfying selection of shorebirds, ten species including another Semipalmated Sandpiper and 20 Lesser Yellowlegs, the most I've ever seen in any one spot. I didn't get many photos because I had elected to haul the scope out of the car instead of the camera. Not until all the Tricolored blackbirds had finished displaying and the shorebirds been mostly scared off to a more distant pond by a passing truck did I get out my camera. Lighting conditions were tough anyhow, the birds backlit by bright sunlight. The all Tricolored blackbirds had a curious manner of either displaying or foraging. With wings drooping they tilt forward so their beaks are touching the ground and their tails sticking almost straight up in the air.
Continuing into the Columbia national wildlife refuge, we flushed a mystery grouse near the pond where I might have seen the Snowy Egret two years ago. It was the size of Dusky Grouse with black head and nape, chestnut side or front of neck, brown and gray streaked or scaled back, short dark tail and red or orange legs. It had a slight crest on its head like a Ruffed Grouse. I saw it very briefly on the ground and in flight from above and from behind, with covey of adult and young California Quail. Although it was presumably an escaped bird it was not at all tame. Neither of us had any idea what it was but the next day, perusing grouse photos on the Internet, I identified it as a Black Francolin, year bird #303 until eBird disallows it.

7/19/2015   Fremont Lookout loop  
David and I hiked from Sunrise out to the Fremont lookout in search of White-tailed Ptarmigan. We took the low route down the old road because I'd heard that Doug had photographed boreal owls somewhere in the area and I thought that perhaps if we could find their tracks we could follow them to the owl tree. Though we found tracks leading off into meadows and fir groves in several places, they all seem to peter out pretty quickly and we never found any owls. The flowers in the woods seem to be at their peak. Up around treeline the meadows are blue with lupine but the scarlet paintbrush have gone by. The snow patches around Frozen Lake and at the saddle above the lookout tower are almost completely gone.
The Ptarmigan, reported two days ago near the Fremont lookout, were also gone. We searched for them across the ridge to the east, dropped down into a rarely visited basin north over the ridge from frozen Lake then caught the Huckleberry Creek trail back up to Sunrise. It was a beautiful day but the contrasts between deep blue sky, bright white clouds and gleaming glaciers were too much for my SX280 so I used my phone quite a bit instead.

7/27/2015   Canon G3X  
I read about a new Canon super-zoom camera, the Powershot G3X, a couple of days ago on Tweeters. It just came out a month ago and uses a larger sensor than the SX280. On dpreview.com I compared sample photos from the G3X with the same photos from the SX280 and the D600. Though obviously not as good as the DSLR, the G3X images were considerably sharper with less noise than the SX280. The zoom range is greater too, equivalent to 25-600mm. I've been looking for a better lightweight camera option for shooting birds, particularly with my SE Arizona trip coming up, so I drove down to Glazer's and bought one. It was $1000 but time is rapidly running out for me to do bird photography and this might give me a few extra months, so I consider it money well spent. I also ordered the optional viewfinder and an extra battery from B&H photo for another $400.
Daniel's dresser, in my bedroom, was my first photo with the new camera. Shot at 25mm, hand held at 1/20 second with ISO at 800, noise is evident at full crop but only barely at 50% crop. Not bad. The Victoria's secret photo doesn't say much about the camera but I liked the subject. The Queen Anne's lace at 200 mm ISO 800 was almost as sharp as the same photo at 25 mm ISO 400 from the SX280. So far so good, but not exactly a compelling upgrade given the substantially larger size of the G3X.
The bird photos tell a different story. The Mallard was hand held at 1/8 second, about 280mm zoom. The Goldfinch was shot at 1/160 second at full 600mm zoom, overexposed by one-stop to compensate for the backlighting, then cropped by 50%. The feather detail is excellent, there is almost no chromatic aberration, and neither noise nor noise reduction smearing is problematic even at 100% crop. The grebelets were shot at ISO 640 in shadow near sunset, at 600mm zoom. Detail and noise are both significantly better than I could have achieved with the SX280, though the new camera shares with the SX280 the same difficulty in locating the subject and getting precise focus. Despite those issues this camera will work for my bird photography, and I will be able to continue using it for some time after I can no longer handle the D600.

7/28/2015   Blackberries  
Darchelle and I walked onto Magnuson Park this evening to check out the blackberries, and so I could take a few more pictures with the new camera. I leave in two days and I need all the practice with the camera that I can get. The blackberries are well ahead of schedule. Hot and dry conditions have produced undersized and somewhat bitter berries on many of the canes but we found a few good patches and other people were out picking. My berry picking is limited; I can't raise my hands above my waist except by swinging them up to my chin, not a good move in a thorny blackberry ticket. With substantial effort, I can reach out a couple of inches at the level of my crotch. I can do a little better with berries that are at knee height or underfoot though even then picking is slow because my fingers don't move quickly. I can still eat blackberry pie though, providing Darchelle picks the berries and the next door neighbor bakes the pie.

8/1-10/2015   SE Arizona Trip  
I spent the first ten days of August birding and photographing birds in SE Arizona. Here is a journal of my SE Arizona trip and a bird list of 143 species +.

8/14/2015   Eugene  
Ed was heading down to Eugene for a family event, perhaps a memorial service for his uncle, so we decided to combine it with some birding. I dropped Ed off in Eugene and drove out to Fern Ridge Reservoir L+. I was looking for a particular bird out there but since I don't remember which one, I assume I did not find it. The birding was decent. I appreciated the practice distinguishing Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs but my clearest memory was of Red Swamp Crayfish crawling up out of the mud like miniature horror movie monsters.
My photos suggest that the bird I was looking for might have been a Semipalmated Sandpiper.
After remembering and birding respectively, Ed and I drove back to Salem and spent the night at Claire's.

8/15/2015   Ridgefield & Nisqually NWRs  
On our way home we drove the Ridgefield Auto Tour loop L+ with a short stroll on the Kiwa Trail. Based on my photos, I'd say the birding was a bit slow but I don't actually recall much about it.
We spent an hour and a half at Nisqually NWR L+ too.

8/18/2015   Sahale Arm hike  
I started up around 10AM. The first mile of the trail switchbacks up through shady old growth forest, mostly Pacific Silver Fir and Mountain Hemlock I think. I kept a bird list L+ but didn't have many species. By mid-August many of the summer breeding visitors have either gone silent or started on their way home to the tropics, or both. No flycatchers, no tanagers, no swallows. Not many bugs either; I don't know where they disappear to but by mid-late August the biting flies aren't much of a problem even for me with my reduced ability to swat them.
Sahale Arm is an anomaly in the north Cascades - a broad ridge ascending from 5400' at Cascade Pass to 7400' at the Sahale Glacier. Most ridges in the region are impassable knife edges a few feet wide but the crest of Sahale Arm is a gentle slope anywhere from 100 to 500 feet wide. It's great for hikers, and views, and bears too when the berries are ripe.
I don't recall finding any huckleberries though I did see a bear. Ambling down the slope 100 yards away, it showed little interest in me. I were content that it was content to not get too close. I imagine it resorts to watery crowberries when huckleberries are scarce. Black Crowberry is common on dry alpine knolls and some of the clumps I saw were laden with fruit. It's hard to see how a bear could fatten up on them though.
I did a separate bird list L+ for the hike up the arm, much of which is in Chelan rather than Skagit. With eBird, county matters, or at least it can matter if you want it to because eBird maintains separate lists at the county level, and each eBird location is assigned to just one county. It's a good data practice but inconvenient for areas like Sahale Arm which span two counties. Some of the Black Swifts zipping around over the arm surely crossed back and forth between Skagit and Chelan but I arbitrarily counted them just in Chelan. Nobody questioned me about it that I can recall.
The Gentians were flowering, a sure sign of the end of summer.

8/22/2015   Cedar River, Mount Margaret  
I met Ed and Delia at their house this morning at 8:30 and we drove down to the Cedar River mouth where both Baird's and Stilt Sandpipers have been reported recently. Neither was among the 10 species of shorebirds we found there, but we got good close up photos of a Semipalmated Sandpiper on the mud flats and somewhat more distant photos of a juvenile Sora foraging along the far bank Cedar River, sheltered by a blackberry hedge from the jet wash of planes taking off from the adjacent runway. We dropped our binoculars to plug our ears with our fingers as they roared overhead.
I had planned earlier in the week to go down to Ocean Shores. A Lesser Sand Plover was hanging out on the beach and I could have seen it if I had gone down on Wednesday. I didn't feel like going alone so I stayed home instead and then was unhappy that I missed the sand plover and other year birds down there. This morning I recognized again how the pleasure of company takes away the disappointment of missing the target birds.
Distracted by peeps on a gravel bar a few hundred yards up from the lake, mostly Least Sandpipers I think, we were late leaving the Cedar River so I was late for my haircut and late for lunch with Darchelle and Ellen at the Royal Palm. The haircut wasn't quite what I wanted, hair too short and beard too long, but I was too timid to ask her to trim my beard shorter. Darchelle had ordered eggplant for me , normally a good choice but it was a little too salty. I ate too much nonetheless so had to take a nap afterwards.

8/23/2015   Morning  
I awoke this morning from a happy dream though I could not recall the details. When I sat up to get out of bed, I felt the weakness in my arms and was sad, realizing again that this is my reality, and from it there is no escape. Doctors can't fix it and there is no longer any magic in God.
I pulled my shorts up to my crotch and grabbed the waistband in back with my fingers, braced my knuckles on the edge of the counter and squatted down to into drop my butt my shorts. Then I turned around and with my left hand pinned the left side of the snap to the countertop, squatted down a bit to raise my shorts as high as they would go and with my right hand slid the right side of the snap across the countertop and into place on top of the left. It took several tries. Then I pressed down with all my strength using both thumbs to pop the snap together. After that the zipper was pretty easy. The belt buckle is tough so since I wasn't going out of the house I just left it for later.
My arms were feeling pretty good. I've noticed recently that my arms feel somewhat better the day after a hike so I try to to take advantage of that, this morning by cooking breakfast. I chopped and sauteed some sweet onion, added some morels that I froze back in May and some black sticky rice left over from a couple of days ago. Seasoned with salt, pepper, basil and nutmeg, it was quite tasty. I decided to try an omelet as well. I used to enjoy making them but now the physical effort is generally too much. Cracking the eggs I mangled one of them but was able to salvage it. Grabbing a fork with both fists, I pushed the yolks around the bowl a few times before getting up to speed. I beat them pretty well. I didn't even come close to dropping the pan while cooking the omelet but I turned the burner off a little too soon and had to finish it up under the broiler. I added tomato and cheese for the last minute. The eggs were nice and light but the flavor was a bit disappointing. I think maybe the tomatoes weren't sweet enough. Sitting in my little dining room with the yellowish sunlight slipping in through the bay windows, sipping my strong coffee and eating my morel-flavored rice and my so-so tomato omelet, I felt something akin to joy.

8/25/2015   50 Mile Hike - Crystal Mt to Chinook Pass  

8/26/2015   50 Mile Hike - Lk Eleanor to Sunrise  

8/27/2015   50 Mile Hike - Sunrise to White River CG via Third Burroughs  

8/28/2015   50 Mile Hike - Frying Pan Ck to Box Canyon  

8/30/2015   50 Mile Hike - Grove of the Patriarchs and Pebble Creek  

9/03/2015   Ocean Shores  
I'm still learning to tell our two Golden Plovers apart, and I had good opportunities to practice this afternoon at the Oyhut Game Range L+ in Ocean Shores. I identified most of them as Pacific because their tertials reached nearly to the tips of their primaries.
After studying plovers for a couple of hours at the Game Range I drove over to the beach L+.
Before I'd even driven a mile on the hard-packed sand I spotted the bird I'd hoped to find. Roosting among the Caspian Terns was a solitary Elegant Tern, a late-summer visitor to the Washington coast from southern California. I found a few more over at Tokeland, but have not seen any in the years since.
I don't remember what inspired me to drive an hour out of the way to Tokeland, but on the way back we photographed Red-necked Phalaropes, which normally migrate out at sea, in the pond at Midway.

9/07/2015   Arranging flowers with ALS  
Yesterday at the Ballard farmers market, I bought a large bunch of flowers. Unfortunately they were too top heavy even for the largest vase I had so this morning I decided to trim the stems. Because I was unable to flex my arms to lift the vase into the sink, I climbed up on to the low stool that I sometimes use for working in the sink. I pulled the flowers out of the vase and trimmed the stems one at a time, pressing the handles of the scissors against the bottom of the sink to make the cuts then replacing the stems in the vase. As I was finishing up the arrangement I leaned over too far. The stool slid out from under my feet and I fell forward into the sink. Unable to stop myself with my useless arms, my forehead hit the backsplash tiles as my jaw struck the hot water handle and my shoulder slammed into the sunflower bouquet. Only the flowers were damaged; I was fortunately not seriously hurt, just angry once again about this damned disease.

9/13/2015   Yellow Aster Butte  
The last hike of the summer was primarily an attempt to find White-tailed Ptarmigan but though I traipsed through the high country north of Mount Baker for more than six hours, I saw none. Not that there weren't compensatory rewards. The huckleberry bushes were brilliant, the lighting dramatic and the landscape wild and scenic. And the marmots were adorable.
A marine layer moved in overnight and the mountains were obscured by a low stratus overcast which was beginning to break up by the time I reached the trailhead. I missed the turn off the Mount Baker highway and wasted a half hour trying to find it before finally checking the map. The 4 1/2 miles up to the trailhead were really rough. The trail itself was pretty easy, climbing pleasantly through forest for a couple of miles before starting to break out into meadows below Yellow Aster Butte. At 3.5 miles the trail crosses the shoulder of the butte and a side trail climbs steeply up to the right to the summit. It's worth noting that the WTA trail description and the map don't agree as to which summit is the real Yellow Aster Butte. The map names the first summit west of Gold Run Pass as Yellow Aster Butte but that summit is relatively inaccessible. West of that summit is a prominent sharp peak which is the highest point on the ridge. From that peak the ridge runs southwest about a third of a mile to a steep but rounded summit capped with crowberry, mountain heath and alpine huckleberry, the latter brilliant red this time of year. It is that rounded summit which is the destination of the Yellow Aster Butte trail.
It was a good day for accipiters, beginning with the burly Northern Goshawk which had cruised down into the valley as I traversed below the Butte. Then when I gained the ridge Sharp-shinned Hawks starting sailing by at a rate of about one per minute, repeatedly flushing a flock of about 50 American Pipits. One pipit almost got caught. Among the Sharpies were at least a couple of Cooper's Hawks, larger and more stable as they soared overhead.
After surveying the country, I elected to drop down into the basin northwest of the summit where tarns are scattered among ledge-capped knolls and colorful tents were scattered around the tarns. I crossed the basin and climbed steeply up the other side following a boot path north towards Tomyhoi Peak. After passing through a couple of tree bands I veered off to the left towards open ridges where Ptarmigan surely must dwell. Perhaps they do but I didn't see them.
The morning stratus had re-formed as a stratocumulus layer which gradually lifted off the lower summits as I ascended. Yellow Aster Butte itself came into the clear as I sat eating lunch in the lee of a young Mountain Hemlock. A pair of feuding Sharpies shot by and a Redtail soared down over the basin. Chilled after eating, I hiked on up the broad ridge towards Tomyhoi until I came to a steep drop into a narrow pass. I carefully followed a track down into the gap but I was blocked by a short scrambling step on the other side. I could have made it up but I was concerned about getting back down so I turned around.
I hugged the east side of the ridge on the way down, stopped for a nap in a sheltered meadow, descended off trail into the valley below the sharp peak on the ridge of Yellow Aster Butte. As the cloud layer broke up I began at last to warm up in the sunshine. After climbing the steep slopes up to the saddle, on the alert for Ptarmigan, I scrambled up the sharp peak. The trail up the peak was well-worn but a bit intimidating without arms.
The views were great from both the sharp peak and the rounded summit. The clouds had lifted above all the mountains except Shuksan and Baker. The late afternoon sun accentuated the glacier-smoothed topography in the basin below as well as the reds and golds of huckleberries and meadows. I didn't find a Ptarmigan but I did find joy there in the midst of such beauty.
Too soon I dropped into the shadow of the mountains and the colors faded to dusky greens and blues. I thought I was done with photos for the day when I spotted a solitary Band-tailed Pigeon perched on the leader of a young Mountain Hemlock by the trail. It waited patiently while I fumbled with the camera and was still posing when I moved on.
It was a long drive back to Seattle, something like three hours. Lorenzo's Mexican restaurant had just stopped serving for the night when I reached Sedro Worley shortly after 9 PM so I continued on home.