Happy Columbus Day!

Ok, maybe it feels a little weird to be observing Columbus Day when I'm surrounded by Native American tribal lands, so I guess I'll smoothly segue into another topic sentence...

I'm unemployed once again! The season is over, and we're all wondering what we'll do next summer. It's nice to know I'm welcome back at Mesa Verde, and it looks like there will be a three person crew next year. Unless another adventure lands at my doorstep(s), mooring buoy, tent flap, etc... then it's great to know I can return here. Of course, as a wise hobbit once noted, "Adventures make one late for dinner. "

We've a few short weeks left to explore the Four Corners. Autumn has come, with snows reappearing on the mountain tops, quaking aspens turning gold, sincere pumpkin patches burgeoning with treasure, and little pika scurrying to harvest their haystacks for the winter. Folks familiar with my amazing hiking techniques will not be surprised I wore out the bottom of my pants on a glissade down Centennial Peak yesterday. Fortunately, that adventure did not make us late for dinner at the Absolute Bakery. Yum!

M is for Moose-atat

Tempus fugit, eh pardo?

The news from the Natural Resources department of Mesa Verde is a little stranger than normal. It begins with the reports of 6 stray cows ( 3 cows and 3 calves) found within the boundary of the Park. Since the cattle have been hanging around the fence at the southern border, there's suspicion that they snuck across. The biologist thought that we could get 4 members of the veg-crew to sweep down from the top of Navajo canyon, chase the cattle before us, and then be joined at the confluence of Spruce and Wickiup canyon by a posse of Rangers and the remaining veg crew.

Being a Texan, I felt it was my duty to join the vanguard. We swept down the top of the canyon, and after a few miles began seeing cattle tracks, but no cows. With hopes that we were driving the cattle before us, we kept moving down canyon, with 2 of us climbing up on the canyon slopes periodically to ensure cows weren't hiding up on the benches of some of the canyons. The long story short is that we were outwitted by the cows, who probably smelled a trap in the making and ran up the west fork of Navajo canyon. We never saw them that day, but did shore up the fencing. I think plan-B is to find some real cowboys.

For recreation, we took the 4 day holiday weekend to backpack into Vallecito canyon. Before reaching the trailhead, we drove by Vallecito reservoir, which was site of the 2002 Mission Ridge wildfire that burned the same year Mesa Verde had its worst fire season. The fire burned so intensly that embers spotted new fires on the opposite side of the lake. It doesn't take a genius to realize that if a lake doesn't work as a firebreak, then there's not much one can do to stop it. Just like the Boulder blaze that's currently burning, it is likely that the fire was human error. The fire is commemorated in a Trail of Carvings.

We had a great backpacking trip, with the weather nice enough to just rain while we slept. We saw waterfalls and many new peaks, such as The Guardian, and Mt. Silex, and hardly saw a soul in the backcountry. While hiking up the river, we mentioned how it was perfect habitat for a moose... Mooseatat! We were really thrilled when hiking back to camp, there was a bull moose staring back at us. He didn't trust people, so he's a smart moose.

Work continued with a few other intersting activites, such as UTV safety training, the last day of the hummingbird project (thanks to the volunteers of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network!), and the release of Roundtail Chubs into the Mancos River canyon. The Colorado Division of Wildlife is raising the chubs from stock saved from Mesa Verde during a severe drought when irrigation had depleted the river so much that it no longer flowed. Hopefully, these efforts will restore the species back to healthy levels.

We celebrated the release by going on an overnight rafting trip down the Colorado, right along the boundaries of Arches National Park in Utah. Floating down the majestic canyons was great, seeing the Fisher Towers and Red-necked Phalaropes was sweet, but the icing on the cake was seeing a family of river otters swim and scamper along the shoreline.

Outsourcing in the Natural Resources Dept.

Summer is blazing by here in the Four Corners. We have had a nice monsoon, with the rains just taking a long enough break to give our recent guests a nice visit. Projects are finishing up, such as the Seeps and Springs monitoring and the Bighorn Survey.

Another very interesting project we assisted with was establishing long-term study plots for the Integrated Upland Monitoring program done by the Southern Colorado Plateau Network. These plots are intended to be monitored almost indefinitely, so the boundaries of the plots were marked with stakes and witness trees, with GPS waypoints for all reference marks. Once the study plot was established, all kinds of measurements were taken: gap analysis, soil samples, measurements and tagging of all trees, and exhaustive description of plant species and coverage within sampling frames. It takes a team of 3 experienced scientists all day to complete 1 50m study plot.

Assisting other researchers is always a treat, since it's a chance to learn a lot from smart people and also a nice break in our routine. We never let go of our primary directive -- combating invasive plants, and now we have competition! This past week, we've "contracted" out controls of musk and canada thistle to "foreigners" that work for free, and with luck, they'll do a great job. I'm not too worried about my job, since these competitors have historically only shown to be about 30% effective, and more importantly, they have the IQ of... well... a tiny bug. Yup, I'm referring to the biocontrols used against thistles: Trichosirocalus horridus (the Musk Thistle Rosette Weevil) and Larinus Planus (the Canada Flower Weevil). We set these weevils free in areas of high infestation that were also difficult to treat with herbicides, due to remoteness or sensitive riparian areas that might contain Tiger Salamanders or other species of park concern. I hope they work well!

With all that the rain promises, I considered myself fortunate to attend a Mushroom hike organized by the San Juan Mountain Association. It was great, and I learned much. Tonight we feasted on Five-Shroom-Pizza, including the coveted Chantrelle (spotted by yours truly!), Aspen Bolete, tiny puff balls, and a few others. So far, we've survived our first harvest! Important tips from my field notebook: be careful, cook practically everything, test for allergic reactions (esp for Boletes), watch for maggots, and be even more careful.

'Till next time: peace out, bro!

Mountains, Monsoons, and Mines

The summer "monsoons" have begun in the rockies, and for the past two weeks we've enjoyed watching the storms build each afternoon. The humidity is much higher, but the clouds and cool breezes make it very enjoyable. I was hanging laundry as a storm raged in the nearby La Plata mountains, and watched the inflow from the storms flap the damp clothes dry and draw that vapour to feed the maw of the thunderstorm. Isn't it strange how we can perform routine tasks while a phenomenon with several times the power of an atomic bomb rages just a few miles away?

The summer rains are always welcome here, and the plants are greening up again. Also importantly, the rains have greatly reduced the chance of fires, so that's one less thing to worry about. Mesa Verde National Park and adajacent Ute Tribal lands have seen 4 fires so far this year, each caused by lightning, and each caught and snuffed out before they had burned more than a third of an acre.

Lately, the vegetation crew I work with have been assisting other researchers. There's two teams doing different bird-banding surveys. One team is doing many surveys in different locations across the southwest. The station I helped at had several nets along route almost one mile long, which required frequent checking, which adds up to a lot of walking. It was a slow day, but we caught a black-throated gray warbler, and several ash-throated flycatchers. Another team is focused solely on hummingbirds, and most of the work is done by volunteers. The morning I helped, we caught over 50 birds, with only 3 that had been previously banded. The rufous and black-chinned humming birds are migrating through, so there's lots of turn-over during these weeks. The broad-tailed hummingbirds seem to stick around though. It requires certification to band the birds, so the poor researcher in charge of the station was constantly busy taking measurements and placing on bands. Fortunately, we can close the nets so we don't get too many birds at one time.

Another researcher, who is a new employee at Mesa Verde, has big plans for the park. When the park was first established, natural resources were not really protected very well, and for a variety of reasons many species began to dissappear. His goal is to reevaluate the habitat for some of these missing species that belong in the park and determine if conditions are right so that they can be reintroduced.

One of his first priorities is gathering data for Big Horn Sheep reintroduction. It's a complicated problem, especially since nobody is really sure which sub-species of bighorn lived in the park; were there once Mountain Bighorn or Desert Bighorn? There's many factors that go into making a decision, but the one part my team has been helping with is going out into the field to perform terrain-coverage estimates. We do random transects across the terrain, and at several points within a transect, measure the amount of coverage a sheep would experience. Bighorn prefer a mostly open terrain, where ambush predators such as puma can be seen from a safe distance (14 meters). So as we hike along to each point, one of us crouches down to sheep-eye-level (90 cm) and the other drags a checker-board to the North, East, South, and West 14 m away and determine how much of the board can be seen. If you glace at a map of MEVE and draw about 50 points, with each point having a line 140m long in a random direction, and then look at the terrain, it is clear that this involves some challenging hiking. It's often an adventure, and we've seen interesting fossil beds, anazasi ruins, and lots of wildlife.

The rainy weather has impacted both work and play, and we've been limited to day trips in the area. I really enjoyed a hike along Red Mountain pass; one trail followed a cliff edge around a canyon, and another went past the old Joker Boarding House and up to an old mine and mill site way up on the mountain. Long ago (how long I shall not say), I explored this area and the mining tunnels were oozing really vibrantly-colored goo that was as clear a warning sign of toxicity as any aposematic coloration in nature. It looked like something Dr. Jekyll might keep in vials. Fortunately, much money has been spent to try and clean up and reclaim the soils and water of the area to keep the toxins from contaminating both people and wildlife. Many of the old tailings have been worked into large leach fields (about as pretty as it sounds), and water from the Joker tunnel is now channeled into a small canal that has some weird string-alage growing in it, which I think was planted to help eat the acids and perhaps even store some of the heavy metals. I'd like to know more, so if anyone has some info, please share it.

We all live downsteam!

The rainy weather has finally given us some downtime to go into town and see some traditional Ute dances and listend to a Navajo Code Talker down at the Cortez Cultural Center. I hope we have good weather next weekend, since I'm ready to go hiking again.

Midseason

Sorry for being a slacker, but I just havn't had the chance to write much. I guess procrastination pays, because others have written excellent blogs about stuff i like to talk about. In lieu of being a parrot, I'll just link em here:

Mesa Verde is cool: and so is Marilyn Collyer, who is mentioned in the article and very knowledgeable about the natural history of the area. She volunteered to lead us techies and the interps around to look at plants and stuff.

ZOMG, don't forget the first annual NATIONAL FOSSIL DAY!

Fiery Fourth

It's been steady progress at work, with us making thwarting thistles, knapweed, toadflax, and other noxious weeds. We'll soon be trained in chainsawing to begin fighting tamarisk growing in a few areas of the park. Fire season is also upon us, and recently the fire crew has been short staffed as a portion of their team is in Arizona beating back a wildland fire started by a sloppy camper. Four of us on the natural resources crew have red cards, so a few of us were called in to fill in weekend dates, and were outfitted with linepacks and associated gear.

I passed on the first round of overtime, since I had some family come in for a nice visit. We had a lot of catching up to do, since my brother works as a contractor for NASA's manned space program that is currently in the process of reinventing itself as the space shuttle is retired. They met me at Mesa Verde and we toured Balcony House, Spruce Tree, Sun Temple, Far View, and a few other sites, which made for a full day. I was hoping we could check on the status of the parrot figurine from Yucca House, but I'll have to find out another time.

We spent a day rafting the lower Animas River in Durango, and the next day saw Cascade Falls in Ouray. We saw a bear cross the road at Pinkerton Hot Springs. That worked up our appetite, so we scarfed down some Mouse's Chocolate and then went to a local pub to watch the sunset. It was a busy holiday weekend and the hot springs were packed like sardines. My brother's family went on north to visit with more relatives, and we went in search of a campsite. The nearby Forest campgrounds were all full, so we drove to Dallas Creek and found a nice gravel patch along the roadside to call home.

Dallas Creek is the trailhead for the hike we did on the 4th of July. It goes up into the Mount Sneffels Wilderness to the Blue Lakes, which is some spectacular alpine scenery. Snow banks along the mountainsides were melting into cascades, all of which fed into a strangly blue lake. The water clarity was somewhat clouded by glacial flour from the slow moving rock glacier on it's south shoreline. We explored the shoreline to get a few nice views of the nearby waterfalls, and then trudged up to the upper Blues. The trail is very steep and messy at first, probably because the original trail washed away. After about half a mile, it improves and the going gets much easier.

At the upper lakes, we had a nice lunch and just soaked up the incredible vista. Mount Sneffels just seemed sooooo close, I figured I had to try it while I was there. The hike up to the saddle was fairly easy, and I could see all the silly jeepers below bouncing around the Yankee Boy parkinglot on the non-wilderness side. A study in contrasts. Mount Sneffels summit sits outside the Mount Sneffels Wilderness, and I suspect someone in the jeep touring industry can explain that irony.

From the saddle, the route quickly became interesting. It took some focus and gumption to scramble around the pinnacles guarding the South Ridge couloir. Once past the couloir, the summit loomed above, not looking much easier. The wind tried to convince me to turn around, but it slacked off and after a few moments of wondering what I was doing, I was on the summit with 3 other nice folks. The view was amazing, and I tried to take a few photos, but as always they don't do justice to grand scenery of dappled sunlight racing across distant ridges, etc, etc. I went back down immediately, and began the hike out.

We celebrated in the hot springs as a rain storm came over the mountains. We watched the fireworks and began driving back home in the dark. After midnight, we began singing the Deer Patrol song to keep us alert, as we passed many a mulee munchin on the roadsides (one was taking a dirt nap). It was a great holiday weekend, but now it's back to work.

Happy Solstice!

I just wanted to wish the planet a happy summer solstice, and especially send some good vibes to those helping protect and restore the Gulf Coast. National Park Service personnel are being enlisted to assist in the BP oil spill cleanup and all of my crew has signed up for the job. We're not sure where or when folks will be deployed, but this will certainly impact our restoration efforts this season at Mesa Verde.

Here's a photo of the beautiful mountains just north of us at Lizard Head pass. We saw lots of waterfalls and mountains the past two weeks. The alpine meadows are starting to thaw and light up with amazing wildflowers.