McMillan Park

After returning from my four day trip into the headwaters of the Whitechuck and Sauk Rivers I debated doing another trip that coming weekend of the 14^th and 15^th. The following weekend my crew was going to be working and they were going to be short handed so I really didn’t want to skip out on them.

I felt rested enough to do another three day trip but I wouldn’t be ready to go until Saturday. There was supposed to be some weather moving in Sunday early I thought. If the weather had been coming in late, that would have been okay with me. I would have been able to do what I wanted to do and see things early in the day. I would have been fine with getting wet but I didn’t want to end up spending all day in a fog bank.

As it turned out, I should have gone. It was nice almost all day Sunday. Hindsight is 20/20. I did work the following weekend-the weather was bad anyway and now I have some kind of flu or cold bug but, all this is a different story. Here is the story of my trip into McMillan Park.

Since it looked like I was going to be tied up for a while, I wanted to get another trip in before the work week started. There is a pond below Crater Mountain that the West Crater trail goes by that I had been into several years ago. I didn’t see anything in it but it looked like a really good spot for long toed salamanders. When I had been there previously, the weather was cold and it was trying to snow so I figured that if there were salamanders in this pond they might not have been very active that day. The goal of this trip was to go back into that pond and check it out again and then do a short detour into McMillan Park nearby. Sacha had also been wondering what grouse tasted like so I bought my hunting license and took along my shotgun.

The trail into McMillan Park starts just below the confluence of Canyon Creek and Granite Creek below which the stream is called Ruby Creek. My dad told me that the reason for this strange naming was for the purposes of mining claims.

Near the start of the trail on Canyon Creek sits the Granite Creek Guard Station, a log cabin that is now pretty much in ruins. Why it is called the Granite Creek Guard Station while it sits on Canyon Creek, I don’t know. Possibly it is so named because it serviced the land on Granite Creek which was also where the main thoroughfare trail over the mountains was. The history of this cabin is quite interesting and well recorded so I won’t delve any more into that.

When he worked for the U.S. Forest Service, my dad spent several summers in the mid 1950’s at the Granite Creek Guard Station. He had several interesting stories about his time there. One summer he had an attack of acute appendicitis. It hurt so badly that he could barely walk and couldn’t have made down the trail to Ross Lake (there was no highway there at the time). I don’t know the exact distance to the dam where transport became easier but it has to be about eight miles.

A friend of my dad’s named Roger Vail who also worked for the Forest Service at the time got him loaded into a wheelbarrow and wheeled him down the trail. Another friend, Fred Berry took them down the lake to the dam. At that time, one had to cross a log boom behind the dam to continue on. There was no way to get across the boom except to walk so Roger helped dad across. Even with the help dad said that it was a thoroughly miserable experience.

When dad got to the hospital, he was rushed into surgery. The doctor said that he got there in the nick of time. His appendix could have ruptured at any moment and they had to be really careful taking it out. My dad carried a large scar from the surgery for the rest of his life. They weren’t quite as sophisticated about minimizing scarring from surgery in those days.

Roger accompanied dad all the way down to the hospital. This all happened mostly during normal work hours. When Frank Lewis, the district ranger found out that Roger had not been working on whatever task he had been assigned to, and had been helping my dad instead, he docked Roger’s pay. Roger decided he didn’t need to work for such mean spirited outfit and promptly quit. Roger was the best man at my mom and dad’s wedding.

Back to the present. The trail to McMillan Park goes through an old burn for most of its length. I would guess this burn to be 80 to 100 years old though the forest here is in a slightly drier climate so it may be a little older. Every once in a while you come across a large fire scarred old growth Douglas-fir but most of the forest is smaller and the Douglas-fir has the thinner, white bark typical of second growth trees.

The forest along the trail goes through a rapid transition at about 4800 to 5000 feet in elevation from Douglas-fir dominated with Alaska yellow cedar and subalpine fir (the subalpine fir grows at lower elevations than normal in this area) to Pacific silver fir dominated with Alaska yellow cedar, Engelmann spruce and mountain hemlock mixed in. This may be a result of the burn or it may be due to a micro climate that occurs at that elevation or it may be from both or for some other reason.

A little bit beyond where the forest becomes dominated by silver fir, I came across a vole, apparently dead, in the trail. I stepped over it and was about to move on when I decided to take a picture of it. Some voles are associated with old growth forests, and while this forest had several canopy layers, it seemed to me it lacked older trees so it didn’t look like the classic definition of an old growth forest. The presence of this vole here was probably not important but I couldn’t know that. If I recorded it, then the information would be there later if needed.

When I looked closer, I saw that the vole was on Death’s door but it was still alive. I didn’t know what was wrong with it and I don’t like to kill something for no reason. I didn’t think it was long for this world but maybe not. I didn’t want to leave it in the trail where it might be stepped on (this was opening season of the high hunt for deer and there were a lot of people on the trail) but I also didn’t want to pick it up in case it had rabies or something. Finally I flipped it out of the trail with a stick.  

As I was nearby taking some notes on the forest, I saw something moving in the blueberry brush. It was a large weasel. I quickly dug my camera back out and put on my long telephoto lens. I tried to get a few photos but the weasel was too fast and quickly disappeared. I still had some writing to do so I left my camera out while I finished.

Sure enough, the weasel showed up again. This time I was able to get a couple good photos as well as a bunch of blurry ones. The weasel was sniffing around close to the ground like it was searching for something and I snapped some more photos in which the weasel was mostly obscured by the vegetation. I think the weasel was searching for the vole because it’s track took it closer and closer to the vole and then zip! Weasel and vole were gone.

As I finished my notes, I saw more movement. The weasel was back then I saw more movement where the vole had been and another weasel appeared. They both disappeared before I could get any more photos.

I continued on to the trail junction with the Crater Mountain trail which was only about a quarter mile further on. I made it to the pond below Crater Mountain and had lunch there. The weather was warm so I figured if there were any salamanders or other amphibians in or around the pond, conditions would be good for seeing them. For the second time I saw nothing. This doesn’t mean there were no amphibians there, it means that both times I went there I didn’t see any.

From this pond you can see West Crater and East Crater. There were fire lookouts on both peaks. The lookout on West Crater was problematic in that it was so high that it was often in the clouds so the person manning the lookout couldn’t see anything, especially after a storm had moved through. So they abandoned that lookout and built another one on East Crater which was a thousand feet lower.

My dad helped build the new lookout on East Crater. The boards and other materials for the new lookout had been pre cut, like a kit and packed in to the lookout site during the summer.

At the end of the fire season was over, sometime around the end of September, they sent a crew up to construct the lookout. I don’t recall the names but there was a guy in charge and two helpers, my dad and another guy.

At the start of the job the supervisor stressed that everything they needed to build the lookout was there and cut to the proper length. They had one extra board. So, if something didn’t fit, they were to stop and they would figure out where it went. By no means were they to cut any board.

They had just started into the job when the other helper ran into a board that wouldn’t fit so he promptly cut half an inch off of it. Of course, then it was too short to fit where it was actually supposed to go. And, of course, the extra board wouldn’t work as a replacement and they couldn’t just run to the store and get another one.

So they had to cut half an inch off of every board on that side of the lookout. Of course, this changed all of the angles that had been cut to fit the rafters so these all had to be recalculated and cut as well. They couldn’t afford to make a single mistake or the lookout would fall apart when exposed to the elements on the mountaintop. There was no power so this all had to be done with handsaws.

I think dad said this slowed whole process of building the lookout by over a week. Of course they had only budgeted enough food to last them for the duration of the project so they were short on food at the end. Dad said those last days were really miserable. It was October by then and some weather had rolled in and it was cold and spitting snow and they were down to eating oatmeal three meals a day.

The last step in the process was putting in the windows which required cutting half and inch off several panes to fit the short side of the building. They didn’t have any tools to cut glass and Dad didn’t remember exactly how they pulled that off but, however they did it, it wasn’t easy.

The lookout is gone from East Crater now. When the Forest Service abandoned it, they burned it down. All the and work and on the spot ingenuity and suffering that went into building that lookout, burned to oblivion in a few hours. Now there is nothing to attach the story of it to except maybe the mountain itself.  

I headed back down the trail for McMillan Park. Along the way I managed to kill two blue grouse. I hadn’t hunted grouse for a few years and I was a little worried that I might be kind of rusty but I didn’t miss and I didn’t do a lot of damage to the meat or fill it with a lot of pellets which can be an issue when you are using a shotgun.

I didn’t go very far into McMillan Park, just to some big wetlands. I saw a number of long toed salamanders and Columbia spotted frogs and tadpoles. I took some photos and headed back.

I was disappointed to see the weather hold until the end of the day on Sunday. So I could have squeezed that three day trip in over this weekend but I missed the opportunity. Hindsight is 20/20.

The Granite Creek Guard Station. This is the side facing Canyon Creek. Flashing for a stovepipe is visible at the left side of the ruin.

The Granite Creek Guard Station. This wall, with the doorway is in the best shape. 

The Granite Creek Guard Station side opposite Canyon Creek. 

The vole I saw incapacitated in the trail. From the descriptions I have found, this was probably a Gapper's red backed vole (Clethrionomys gapperi). This species is widely distributed and one of the habitats described for it is old burns.   

This was probably a short tailed weasel, a.k.a. ermine or stoat (Mustela erminea).  It was six to ten inches long, a little small to be a long tailed weasel (M. frenata). It's undersides and feet were white. Long tailed weasels undersides are often orange or yellow though they can also be white. In the wintertime, the weasel's brown hair will turn white and the tip of the tail will remain black. I had to do a little research on this one. I was familiar with least weasels which can often fit in the palm of your hand, having caught a number of them many years ago. I had also seen several road killed long tailed weasels with orange throats and bellies and, not realizing that they were weasels, thought at the time that they were strange looking marten (Martes americana). Marten have orange or yellow throats but this color does not extend to any other part of the body. 

Weasel on the move. Everything was happening so fast that I didn't have time to increase the shutter speed of my camera enough to freeze the weasel's action. I got lucky on the previous frame because it stopped to check me out for about a second. However, between the previous frame and this one, I think pretty accurately describe the experience of watching the weasel. It would be still for a moment and you would get a good look at it then it would be moving so fast that all you could see was a blur then it would be still for a moment again.  

This isn't a very good photo but it shows the weasel sniffing its way toward the vole.  The weasel's head is just below and left of center frame with its body extending to the left. The vole is just to the right of center and near the bottom of the frame. Moments after this photo was taken, both weasel and vole had disappeared. 

East Crater from the pond near the trail to West Crater. 

West Crater from the pond near the trail to West Crater. 

Looking to the southeast from the pond. 

Blue, or sooty grouse. Both of these were at fairly close range so I shot at their heads rather than their bodies. This can be tricky because the head is a small target and sometimes you miss completely. On the other hand, if you shoot them in the body, you usually destroy a lot of meat and I think it is better to miss than to waste something. The other problem with body shots is that you usually end up chomping on a lot of shotgun pellets. The pellets are steel now which hurt a lot more than lead, then again, at least they're not lead. Over the years, I have occasionally gotten blue grouse that had been eating fir needles. This makes the meat indescribably awful tasting, enough to make me swear off hunting blue grouse several times. You know you are in trouble when you start cleaning them and discover that their crop is full of needles. Fortunately these two birds had been eating berries and leaves and tasted just fine. 

Just so the reader knows that I am not a wanton, bloodthirsty killer, I let this one go. Besides the fact that it was in the trail and therefore shouldn't be shot at, it was pretty small and probably just got all its flight feathers a just few weeks ago. 

Wetlands at the west end of McMillan Park. 

Wetlands at the west end of McMillan Park.

Crater Mountain from the west end of McMillan Park. 

Salamander larva. I am pretty sure all of the salamanders I saw in the wetlands at the west end of McMillan Park were long toed salamanders (Ambystoma macrodactylum). Below the light blob near the top and left of center of this frame is a water boatman. These are true bugs in the Family Corixidae. They have oar like hind legs (visible in the photo) that they use to propel themselves through the water.

Adult Columbia spotted frog (Rana lutieventris). About ten years ago or thereabouts, these were split from the Oregon spotted frog(R. pretiosa)  which occurs further to the west and whose population has been in decline for years. I have encountered Columbia spotted frogs in a number of areas of the Ross Lake watershed of which McMillan Park is a part. From my observations, the population of this species seems to be in good shape. 

Columbia spotted frog tadpole. 

The Columbia spotted frog looks similar to the red legged frog (R. aurora) but differs in many aspects. One of the more noticeable differences is in groin coloration. It is hard to tell from this photo but the groin area just forward of the hind legs is white and dark brown with no other colors. 

This is a red legged frog I encountered earlier this year. Note the green to yellow coloration of the groin area just forward of the hind legs. Spotted frogs of either species don't exhibit this characteristic. 

The coloration of the ventral surfaces (belly and undersides of legs) differs between spotted and red legged frogs. This is a Columbia spotted frog. 

The red legged frog from earlier this year showing the ventral surfaces.