Start of the Hiking Season

My hiking season is in full swing. The weather has been good and I have done trips for the past two weekends. I have been doing day trips to try to get ready for the longer trips I hope to take later in the summer. Day trips can actually be harder than overnighters. Though your pack is lighter, you have to keep going all day so you can get back before dark rather than camp and rest before going on the next day.

Last Saturday and Sunday I went into some ponds at the head of Wanlick Creek which drains to the South Fork of the Nooksack River, Bear Creek which drains to Lake Shannon and Grandy Creek which drains to the Skagit River. The land in this area is a mix of private and DNR (Washington Department of Natural Resources). The ponds are all in fairly close to one another and there are roads near most of them but the roads are now gated at the bottom and many are decommissioned.

I didn’t expect to see any fish on the trips to the smaller ponds. When I first started my project, the focus was all on fish and I only went to places where I thought I might catch them. Later, I became interested in amphibians and my project evolved into small ponds as well as bigger ponds and lakes. The project also evolved into a photographic study of the entire Skagit River watershed. I no longer harbor much hope of doing anything with the photographic study but I have turned up some interesting things with the amphibians. I saw a lot of amphibians these past two weekends.

I accessed this area by taking the Dock Butte trail from U.S. Forest Service land to Dock Butte but, instead of going up the butte, I went to the north side of it and dropped about 800 feet into the road system below. This meant a lot of walking on trails, off trail and decommissioned road systems. Overall elevation gains and losses were probably only about a thousand feet or so but I did a lot of walking on decommissioned roads which can be pretty miserable because you have to go through a lot of tank traps which means a lot of tiring up and down, like going over hurdles in reverse. Not too many years ago it would have been possible to drive these roads. Now this area is fairly remote.

I don’t know exactly how much distance I covered. On Sunday I traveled the furthest, maybe 6 miles, one way, 12 total, with a lot of minor (several hundred feet at a time) elevation gains and losses. I spent a solid 8 hours walking on Saturday and about 11 hours walking on Sunday. My pack weighed about 50 pounds give or take. I don’t usually weigh my packs or try to judge distances but it seems like most folks like these types of stats so there they are. Since I am usually alone when I go places, I always take a bigger pack so I have more resources if I run into trouble. Of course, my camera and lenses are some of the heaviest stuff I pack and they aren't going to do me much good if I get into trouble.

I survived without any major cramps. Sunday night my legs and feet were aching, and I had a few patches of skin chafed raw by sweat soaked pants and the belt of my pack. The temperature was somewhere in the high 80’s on Sunday I think and I ended up wringing out my bandanna sweatband twice that day. On many hikes I never have to wring out my bandanna. I stumbled into the house in an exhausted haze. This is pretty typical of how I spend the summer hiking season on my high lake project, go, go, go and try to recover as much as I can at my day job so I can go out and hit it again the next weekend.

I saw a lot of interesting things. There are some excellent views from this area. I saw lots of deer and elk sign and bear sign and some cougar tracks. I saw what I want to say were goat tracks in the snow but I can’t be sure of this because they were so melted out. I also saw a bunch of whistle pigs or hoary marmots (Marmota caligata).

I saw lots of amphibians. Long-toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum), Northwestern salamanders (Ambystoma gracile), western toads (Bufo boreas) and Pacific tree frogs (Hyla regilla). 

Twin Sisters from the Dock Butte trail. 

Loomis Mountain and Mount Baker ( L to R) from Dock Butte trail.

Mount Shuksan form the Dock Butte trail. 

Dock Butte from the Dock Butte trail which is still under several feet of snow at this point. I cut off the trail a couple of hundred yards beyond this spot. The snow melted fast over the last two weekends. I would guess several inches a day easily, maybe more. 

Washington Monument from the west flank of Dock Butte. 

The posse is watching. Four hoary marmots (Marmota caligata) watching me from a talus slope on the west flank of Dock Butte. There were actually 5 marmots but the last one didn't show its head until after the photo was taken. I always like to see these critters. I prefer calling them Whistle Pigs if for no other reason than to keep alive a colloquialism. It seems to me that I have been seeing fewer whistle pigs in the past few years. This may just be my imagination or maybe they are currently in a down population cycle. The only way to know for sure would be to do a study. 

Decommissioned road. The road fill has been pulled out to allow natural drainage and to prevent the road fill from becoming saturated and causing a landslide. I have my pack in the photo to give a sense of scale. It is very tiring going through these tanks traps. The constant up and down wears you out as if you were doing inverted hurdles. 

More water bars. These are smaller water bars for cross drainage of ditch water. These are quite often dry. The larger tank traps are for larger, constantly flowing streams. These smaller water bars are easier to negotiate than the tank traps but still tiring. 

West side of Dock Butte from road system in upper Bear Creek and Wanlick Creek. 

View south from road system in upper Bear Creek and Wanlick Creek. The prominent peaks are Glacier Peak, Whitechuck Mountain, Mount Pugh, Sloan Peak and probably Foggy Peak. Prairie Mountain is the low mountain in front of Whitechuck and Pugh. The low mountain in front of Glacier Peak is Suiattle Mountain. 

One of the first ponds on my list to visit.

Western toad (Bufo boreas) observed at pond. Western toads are one of the easiest of our amphibians to identify. They have warty skin and at least the ones in our area usually have a pretty prominent dorsal stripe down their back. Also, if you look closely, just behind the toad's eyes right at the water line there are bulges on either side of the toad's head. These are paratoid glands from which the toad can secrete a poison if it is threatened. I think this poison is quite mild to humans and I have never heard of anyone being killed by toad poison. The toad's hind legs are quite a bit shorter than frogs, our other anurans, and toads jump and swim with a short, jerky motion that is quite distinct from a frog, making identification of this animal possible even if you don't get a really good look at it. I have a hunch that toad's hind legs are shorter because they are somewhat poisonous so they don't have to be as efficient at jumping and swimming as a means to escape many predators. On a side note, garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) can and do eat toads.

Washington Monument from a pond draining to Wanlick Creek, South Fork Nooksack River. 

Adult long-toed salamander in the pond pictured above. Adults of this species are fairly easy to identify due to the yellow dorsal stripe on their back. 

Salamander larvae. It is very hard to tell the difference between Northwestern (Ambystoma gracile) and long-toed (A. macrodactylum) salamanders without capture and close inspection, which I don't usually have time for. Usually I make my best guess from a variety of clues. Size and gill structure are among a number of characteristics that can be used to tell these two species apart but, except for size, these features are often hard to see without close inspection. I called this salamander and the others I saw here long-toed salamanders because of the presence of an adult long-toed salamander and the presence of long-toed salamander egg masses. This assumes that where one of these two species is present, the other is absent, which is usually the case but not always, which could make for flawed assumptions sometimes. Long-toed salamanders can go from egg to fully metamorphosed terrestrial adults in less than a year at lower elevations. So they can take advantage of ephemeral ponds that dry up later in the summer. At higher elevations, it may take several seasons to metamorphose or they may become neotenes, that is salamanders that remain aquatic and keep some juvenile characteristics like gills while being able to reproduce like adults. They apparently do not do very well in the presence of fish. 

Long-toed salamander egg mass on a stick. Probably the best feature to tell what salamanders are present are their egg masses. Northwestern salamanders use sticks or vegetation with diameters from a little smaller than a pencil to about thumb sized and they lay large, firm grapefruit sized egg masses with lots of eggs in them. Long-toed salamanders don't need sticks or vegetation, though they will use them as they have here. They lay kind of loose or flabby egg masses often with relatively few eggs in them. So, usually, if there are no sticks or egg masses visible in a pond but there are salamander larvae, I assume that they are long-toed salamanders. If there are smaller, flabby looking egg masses with relatively few eggs, I assume that they are long-toeds. If there If there are lots of sticks with large, firm egg masses, I assume that they are Northwesterns. 

View looking north from road system on upper Bear Creek. Mount Shuksan, Mineral Mountain, Whatcom Peak, Mount Challenger (probably), Mount Blum, Hagan Mountain and Bacon Peak (L to R) with Baker Lake in the middle distance and wetland flats on upper Bear Creek (Lake Shannon) in the foreground. 

Pacific tree fro (Hyla regilla). These frogs come in a variety of base colors from green to gray to tan with darker brown markings and masks. These are the frogs you hear singing at night, especially in the spring, which is why they are also called spring peepers. These frogs do swim but they spend a lot of time climbing. The webbing on their feet is almost absent. If you look closely at this one you will see bulges at the tips of its toes. These are the means by which it clings and climbs vegetation. This one was several feet up in a salmonberry bush when I first came across it but it quickly dropped to the ground.  

Unmapped pond. I run across quite a few of these and, if I have the time, I survey them as well as the mapped ponds. 

Tadpoles in the pond pictured above. I believe these are western toad tadpoles because their backs are black. Almost all of our frogs have some kind of brown dorsal surfaces. 

The pond that was my destination when I came across the unmapped one pictured above. 

We have quite a few different species of Odanata (dragonflies and damselflies).  I have, on occasion, tried to photograph the ones that I have seen and identify them later as best I can from the photos. Unfortunately, getting good photos usually takes a lot of time, which is also usually at a premium for me. I usually end up making general notes about what I have seen. These invariably record the color of the insects and little else and are probably of little more than general value to a serious entomologist. 

Northwestern salamander larvae. There weren't many sticks in this pond but there were enough for the Northwesterns to lay eggs. 

Northwestern salamander egg masses. Northwestern salamander egg masses are large (usually about grapefruit sized) and firm with many eggs in them. The algae in these egg masses is normal. The metabolic wastes of the salamander larvae provide nutrients for the algae and the algae produces oxygen for the larvae, a useful adaptation for animals that often live in stagnant water. 

Pond on DNR land that I visited on Sunday the 21st. I walked pretty steadily for 11 hours that day. 

Northwestern salamander larva in pond pictured above. This one was in pretty shallow water and didn't swim away immediately allowing me to get a fairly decent photo showing some good detail. Paratoid glands are barely visible on the head behind the eyes. Paratoid glands produce poison if the animal is harassed. From what I understand, Northwestern salamanders aren't deadly poisonous but they can make you sick. These salamanders need at least a year and a half or two years to reach the point where they metamorphose and become terrestrial. They may take even longer at higher elevations. So they are indicators that a body of water is fairly permanent. They also seem to do better in the presence of fish, maybe due to their poisonous nature, a useful adaptation for animals that live in permanent waters that may often also be inhabited by fish. They are not, however, immune to fish predation. I have seen several in the stomachs of fish. 

Another Northwestern salamander larvae on 7/21. This is more typical of they types of photos I get. This is still good enough to see some details but dark water and the animals constant movement contribute to make this photo a little less crisp. 

This Northwestern salamander was almost white. I did see an albino long-toed salamander once near Mount Watson. 

Northwestern salamander egg masses (center) and larva (lower right corner). These egg masses must be attached to some small stick or rock protrusion on the bottom of the pond. The general rule about the size of sticks this species usually needs in order to lay eggs is usually true but in places where there aren't many sticks of the right size, these salamanders appear to sometimes break the rules. 

Scan of my notebook pages from the past two weekends. I managed to fill 8 pages with notes from that time period. My notes  usually include date, time, temperature and weather as well as location. I try to note all of the vegetation I see in and around the lakes and ponds I visit as well as amphibians observed. I usually walk around a given lake or pond 360 degrees and count the numbers of amphibians I see. This gives a rough number of the relative abundance of the animals. I also note any other wildlife, plants, geology or other things of interest that I observe as well. The underlined six letter words are biological shorthand. The are the first 3 letters of the genus and species of the plant or animal noted. If I don't know the latin name of a plant or animal, I write its common name out and if I don't know what it is, I describe it as best I can. Many plants like sedges, rushes, willows and asters are difficult to properly identify without taking a lot of time with a dichotomous key or identification book so I usually end up identifying them only in general terms.  I usually give copies of my notes from each year to whatever agency is charged with managing that land. Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U. S. Forest Service and the National Park Service are usually the main agencies I give my notes to. These notes provide general information and many things in them would have to be double checked to insure positive identification of some of the species I have noted but, that being said, I think some of this information is a lot more than many of these agencies have for a lot of the areas I visit and I think the information could be used to identify some broad patterns of species distribution that could be refined into specific studies.