And...It's Winter Again, And a New Calf

About two weeks ago I had a post titled signs of spring already. Over this last weekend it snowed Saturday and Sunday and much of the day Monday. We got about 6 inches of wet, heavy snow I would guess. The depth of the snow varied at several places between Rockport and Marblemount. There snow was pretty heavy in Rockport but then lighter on the west side of Marblemount and then got heavier again.

Sunday I had set up with some of the guys with the Marblemount Community Hall to pick up the Christmas tree base which, since December, has been in the parking lot of one of the local businesses whose owner was nice enough to let us set up the tree. I was going to get the tractor and retrieve it. The roads were pretty slick and I was worried about blocking traffic with the tractor on a road that was already kind of dicey. We cancelled until we could get better road conditions.

I decided to go back and get a little more snow time in with Vashti, figuring this might be the last opportunity of the year. We had already built a snowman earlier in the morning before I left for Marblemount and made a couple of snow angels. On the way back I put my pickup in the ditch because I took a corner a little too fast on the reroute at milepost 101 on Highway 20. Fortunately I wasn’t going very fast so I just let go of everything and let the truck ease into the ditch. Then I put it in 4 wheel drive (which I should have done to start with) and drove out of the ditch and on home.

We built another snowman and had lunch. I then headed back up river to do chores and work on the old house at mom’s. Skyeball loved her walk in the snow. The cows were pretty much indifferent or, if anything, a little more crazed to get at the hay because all the old grass that they usually pick away at this time of year was buried in snow.

When I got back home at about dark the lights were out. They were only out on our little stretch of road because of a great big limb out of a big Douglas-fir that had fallen on the lines.

Unfortunately I had neglected to finish the extension cord to hook up the generator to the house circuit. I had also neglected to get a neighbor, who is an electrician to explain exactly how to operate the breakers to power the house without killing the generator or someone who might be working on the line. So we cooked dinner out of a can over a backpacking stove and spent the night in the cold and dark because the house we are renting has a pellet stove and won’t work without electricity. I was kind of harboring some hope that the power would be on by morning but while I was out wiping out the dinner dishes with snow, the snow was falling thick and I could hear the loud reports of branches breaking every minute or so. I figured the power would be out everywhere in the area by morning. It was.

Technology is a kind of funny thing. It allows you to do many things better and more efficiently. But if it is too complicated, it is also vulnerable to failure. This thought struck me many years ago when I was still at mom and dad’s. This was in February also, if I remember correctly. A northeaster was blowing, which often happens there, and the lights were out. The house at that time depended on electricity to operate the cook stove, pump water and heat the house. So there I sat cold and hungry in a screaming windstorm (to top it off, I had a wisdom tooth removed earlier that day as well). At some point during the night I realized that, where my dad was born and lived much of his young life, less than a mile away, they didn’t have power until about 1953. So their house would have been set up without dependence on electricity for water, cooking or heat. If I had been there at that time, forty years before, I would have been warm and comfortable, most likely have a belly full of warm food.

The power came back on Monday evening. Tuesday morning started out clear and cold but by noon it had warmed up so much that the snow water melting off the roofs was coming off in solid streams like there was a downpour only there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

A foot or two of snow isn’t uncommon for February but it usually doesn’t  stick around long this time of year at least not in the valley bottoms. You can feel that the sun’s rays are significantly stronger than in December or January.

As I was laying out the hose to water the cows, I noticed that some of the ornamental lilies by the spigot had begun to sprout and there were holes melted out of the snow around the new growth. This is quite common for some of our earlier plants. I believe that new growth of skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanum) will actually generate heat to melt snow back. I think some high elevation and alpine species do this as well or capture the sun’s heat and reflect it to melt snow.

I think we are well on our way to spring and a lot of the snow was gone by Thursday. It is interesting to note that in certain areas the snow is still several inches deep while in others it is almost completely gone. There was nothing left of the snowmen at the time of this post. I see more in the forecast for the coming weekend but I don't expect it to remain for very long.  

Vashti and the snow men. I guess I should say snow people. The one in front does appear to be wearing a skirt.  

This photo is somewhat of an aside from the post. I saw this while walking Skyeball the dog. Somebody had varied thrush (Ixoreus naevius) for dinner. I often see some interesting things while walking Skyeball. This pile of feathers was on a stump near the trail. Varied thrushes are related to robins (we called them Canadian robins when I was a kid) and are one of the first birds you hear calling in the spring. I have been hearing them for several weeks now. They have a kind of funny call, a single notes in a series of three all three notes at a different pitch. As spring and summer progress, these birds stop calling at the lower elevations while still calling at the higher elevations. I don't know if this is because they stop calling at lower elevations or because they migrate upward in elevation. I have seen varied thrushes in the lowlands several months after hearing the last one call for the year. 

 I don't know if the predator was a bird or four legged animal. There is one forlorn foot at the top left of the feathers. I imagine if one knew enough, they might be able to tell what kind of predator left this evidence. Note that there is no snow in the photo. This spot was under several inches of snow just a few days ago. 

The morning of Saturday the 1st of March it was spitting snow pellets and there was a new calf in the field.  Gigi had calved the previous night or early in the morning, in synch with a weather system that was moving in. I have noted that calving coinciding with weather fronts is quite common and I have a hunch it may have increased survival under wild conditions. New calves are pretty tough. This calf is actually sleeping while snow pellets are falling and a strong, cold wind is blowing. 

Sunday morning March 2nd. About 6 inches of snow on the ground with plenty more falling. 

The cows might look miserable but they aren't really. They are adapted to survive much colder weather than this. 

My one concern is the new calf. I don't have a shed to put it and Gigi in to get out of the weather. I think it will be okay, at least I hope so. The weather isn't really that cold, only somewhere around freezing not near or below zero fahrenheit. 

The cows trying to get hay that they didn't eat yesterday. They can get a little bit but the snow greatly hinders their efforts. I give them an extra bale when there is lots of snow on the ground. 

Being part husky, Skyeball is not fazed by the snow. In fact, she loves it. 

The stump where something made a meal of the varied thrush. The feathers are still there under the snow.

Osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) budding out. It's hard to believe but, if this year is like most years, the snow will quickly disappear and grass and other things will be growing before the end of the month. 

The Cascades Frog, You Heard It Here First

I started recording notes of my travels in the North Cascades in 1998. These weren’t anything as cool or romantic as memoirs. They were notes on the forests, plants, wildlife and geological features I was observing. The information included in these notes has grown in volume and scope over the years. I have tried to be diligent about getting this information in the form of copies of my field notes both to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the federal agencies that manage these lands. In recording the notes of my travels, quite by accident I seem to have stumbled across a very interesting pattern in the distribution of the Cascades frog within the North Cascades.

According to Wikipedia, the Cascades frog (Rana cascadae) occurs at elevations between about 2000 feet and 8000 feet in the Cascade Range from California to Washington and possibly Canada. It occurs in the Olympic Mountains as well. An older reference I have, Amphibians of Washington and Oregon (Seattle Audubon Society 1993) states the highest observation of this species had been about 6700 feet. There is a newer edition of this book and I don’t know if this information has changed. Another reference I have, Amphibians of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia by Charlotte C. Corkran and Christina R. Thoms (1996 Lone Pine Publishing) gives an elevation range of 2500 to 6000 feet for this species, with occasional occurrences to 1600 feet. Wikipedia states that this species sometimes occurs below 2000 feet in elevation in Washington. From my own personal observations, I haven’t seen this species much above 5500 feet in elevation in the North Cascades. This doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t there, it’s just that I haven’t been seeing them. On the lower end of the scale I have also seen them at about 1500 feet in elevation on the White River near Enumclaw.

The distribution pattern I have come across is as follows: If you were to draw a line following the South Fork of the Cascade River and then down the main stem of the Cascade River to its confluence with the Skagit River and then down the Skagit River, south of that line Cascades frogs are common at elevations above 2000 feet. North of that line, at least in the Skagit River watershed, you would not find any Cascades frogs all the way to the Canadian border.

I don’t know as I can lay claim to being the sole discoverer of this phenomenon. Park Service biologists conducted an extensive survey in North Cascades National Park, which is all north of the South Fork Cascade River in the early to mid 1990’s that didn’t find any Cascades frogs in the park except for in the Stehekin River watershed. I know this because they told me so and I have read the report they wrote. I myself have never seen a Cascades frog in my own travels within North Cascades National Park and I have been to every mapped high lake and pond within the boundaries of the Skagit watershed in this park.

The park biologists weren’t aware of how far this phenomenon extended outside the park boundaries though. I have also been to every mapped high lake and pond in the Skagit watershed north of the line on the Cascade and Skagit Rivers that I described previously. Much of this land is on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest which bounds North Cascades National Park on the west. There is some private timber land in this area as well. I didn’t observe any Cascades frogs in the Skagit watershed on the Forest and private lands west of the Park either.

In the Ross Lake area of the Skagit (managed by North Cascades National Park) and to the east of Ross Lake (mostly managed by the Okanogan National Forest, with a small area along the lake managed by the Park), there are no Cascades frogs to my observation or knowledge, though Columbia spotted frogs (Rana luteiventris) are fairly common here.

I don’t know where the western and eastern boundaries of the hole in Cascades frog distribution are. Obviously the Cascades frog occurs on the Stehekin River. I assume that they also occur within the Nooksack River watershed. However, I have done contract stream survey work for the U.S. Forest Service on every fork of the Nooksack at elevations where we saw Cascades frogs in other areas. We (the crew and I) didn’t observe any Cascades frogs along the three forks of the Nooksack in the areas we surveyed. However, I have been to very few high lakes and ponds in the Nooksack watershed where chances might be better for finding Cascades frogs.

I am also aware of a study in the area around Baker Lake done by contractors for Puget Sound Energy that recorded Cascades frogs. I have never observed a Cascades frog in the area of this survey and I was part of a crew that operated a smolt trap for several years in the contractor’s survey area. This smolt trap picked up a lot of amphibians (red-legged frogs (Rana aurora), roughskin newts (Taricha granulosa) and probably others) but we never, to my knowledge, observed Cascades frogs. I have also been to all the mapped lakes and ponds in the Baker River watershed without observing any Cascades frogs.

I noticed that, in the contractor survey of the Baker Lake area, all of the animals identified as Cascades frogs were all tadpoles. None were adults. From my experience tadpoles can be tricky to identify as to species. There is some reference material out there for keying tadpoles (Corkran and Thoms) but I have never been very confident in using these keys. There is a possibility that these tadpoles were misidentified red-legged frogs but I don’t this know for sure. There would really be no way to tell unless one had done genetics on the tadpoles in the study or had captured some and grown them to adults. There are a few spots in both the Baker River and Nooksack River watersheds where I have observed some intriguing looking tadpoles that might have been Cascades frogs but, frustratingly, I never saw any adults.

Of course it can be said that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but the area we are talking about here is large and I have personally been to a lot of spots within it where I should have seen Cascades frogs and I didn't. You at least have to consider absence of evidence of a species in order to develop range maps.

In all of the areas mentioned above where Cascades frogs seem to be absent, above the normal elevation range of red-legged frogs, western toads (Bufo boreas) seem to be fairly common. I have also observed western toads in the areas where Cascades frogs are common.

So why does this apparent hole exist in Cascades frog distribution? I don’t know. Maybe it has always been this way or maybe it has been a fairly recent development. For years I nursed a pet theory that the presence of Cascades frogs was linked to the presence of large areas of sphagnum flats where ponds for breeding are often quite numerous. There are a lot of these sphagnum flats south of the north/south line I earlier described following the Cascade and Skagit Rivers and very few sphagnum flats north of the line. However, I have since made a number of observations that make me doubt the relationship between sphagnum and Cascades frogs, though, in fairness, I have also not conducted a controlled experiment to prove or disprove it.

Is this information important? I don’t know. I would think it would be. An amphibian’s skin is very permeable. They actually absorb oxygen through the skin as well as any chemicals that might be in their environment. So they are very sensitive to environmental conditions which means they are likely to be the one of the first animals to respond to problems in the environment. They are kind of like an early warning system, or canary in coal mine, if you will. Recently there has been a lot of concern about amphibians because many amphibian species have gone extinct. The Cascades frog’s range is restricted by elevation. Climate change will likely have a big impact on conditions experienced at higher elevations so the Cascades frog stands a chance of being dramatically affected by climate change if nothing else. So maybe this information is important but, then again, Cascades frogs are not charismatic megafauna that generate a lot of public attention and sympathy like polar bears are.

I have told every wildlife manager that I came across who I thought might be interested in the Cascades frog distribution pattern about it but have pretty much gotten a  “gee whiz that is kind of cool” response but little else. 

I think the distribution pattern is very interesting. Of course I would think it is interesting. All of the observations I made in order to figure this out represent 14 or more years of my life spent going to out of the way places which required a lot of physical effort and no small risk to life and limb to access, so I have a lot invested in it. You might say this has been a large part of my life's work for the last decade and a half. It would also be interesting to analyze the observations I have made on other amphibians species. I would not be surprised to see some interesting patterns pop out there too. This would be even more powerful if one combined my observations of Cascades frog and other amphibian species with amphibian observations that other people have made over the years. There are a lot of documented amphibian observations out there, though I have been told that many of mine are from areas where no information was previously available. I would be interesting to know not only the patterns by also why the patterns exist. It is possible that someone, somewhere is aware of this pattern but I doubt it. As I stated many of my observations are often the only information available for many areas so it is doubtful anyone else has put the puzzle together yet. 

To date, no one has seemed to be interested in taking on this project. It seems like there is enough here to make a nice master’s thesis for someone. A lot of the information, my observations at least, is just sitting there at Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and at the federal agencies. I once entertained thoughts of analyzing the observations to try to pick out patterns but I couldn’t find funding for it. It would be a lot of work and one would need a stable income of some sort to pull it off, I think. My disposition doesn’t favor chasing grant money to pay for this type of thing. Ironically, if I pursued a higher degree and all of the trappings it would require to do well sponsored research, I probably wouldn’t be living here, in the North Cascades any more. There aren’t many jobs in Eastern Skagit County or in most of Skagit County for that matter for someone with an advanced degree in herpetology or wildlife biology and I would probably end up chasing work somewhere far away.

Maybe some day a graduate student will take my information along with all of the other available information and make sense of it. Until then, there it stands. But remember, you heard about the strange pattern of Cascades frog distribution here first.

Range map for the Cascades frog based on my own personal observations and other information. The base map is from USGS Map Maker. The red lines denote the boundaries of areas that I have personally been to and not observed Cascades frogs. The green lines denote the boundaries of areas that I have been to and observed Cascades frogs. The orange lines denote boundaries that I am not sure about. I have also labeled areas that I am not familiar with. I have stated that an area or boundary is unknown to me not because I am the be-all and end-all for Cascades frogs but because someone else may have the information and I am not aware of it. Every map has its trade-offs and limitations. The trade-offs for this map are the presence, no presence boundary lines. I have used the Cascade and Skagit Rivers as a boundary when the actual boundary should be at about the 2000 foot level above and away from most of the area of both of these rivers. The same holds true for all of the area below 2000 feet in elevation of the streams within the boundaries. I initially tried to make the map this way but it was too confusing. 

This is one of my favorite photos of a Cascades frog. This frog was in a small pond below Whitechuck Mountain above Rat Trap Pass 2010. 

Cascades frog at pond on Bluebell Creek in the Illabot Creek watershed 2010. 

Cascades frog at small pond/lake east of Lake Byrne on the Whitechuck River.  I was quite excited to see this frog.  It was a challenge to get to this small lake/pond and it was still mostly frozen over even though it was early September 2012, a strange year for melt-out in the high country. Anyway, I observed this frog and got to add another data point to  the overall map. There was little or no sphagnum in the immediate vicinity of this small pond/lake. 

Cascades frog at a small pond on Fern Creek, Whitechuck River 2012. This pond was also a struggle to get to. It took me three attempts over as many weekends to make it. There was a lot of sphagnum at this pond and also a lot of frogs. 

Cascades frog at same pond as in above photo. 

Signs of Spring Already

Over the last week or so I have been noticing several of the plants that are my harbingers of spring start to show signs of life.

The catkins are beginning to open on both the native hazelnuts (Corylus cornuta) and the ones introduced from Europe. I have seen snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) which are introduced ornamentals blooming as well. Compared to other years, this seems to be about the right time for these plants to be showing activity.

I have also noticed some salmonberries (Rubus spectabilis) and osoberries (Oemleria cerasiformis) beginning to break bud. This seems a little early but most of the bushes I see breaking bud are a little bit back from forest edges where the forest canopy moderates temperatures and it doesn't get as cold as it does directly in an opening.

And there are the stinging nettles (Urtica dioica). They are already up and growing beneath the layer of last years tree leaves. Some people swear that they are "hotter", with a more intense sting, when they are just beginning to grow. I don't know if this is true but it wouldn't surprise me. Other plants tend to put more of their energy into defense at more vulnerable life stages.

Sometimes I wish I had kept notes years ago on the first day or week the different species of plants break bud or when the first species of migratory bird shows up. Living here, you have a good general idea of when certain organisms will start to become active but notes give you a more solid information without having to rely on memory which can often be faulty.

The Rock Bridge in the Wilderness

Time and time again I have heard this idea that rural communities in beautiful areas can base their economy on tourism and relying on area’s natural beauty to attract tourists who will spend money. It should be obvious that, in order to have an attraction, you have to attract people. Certain land use designations make access to these lands difficult, thus making it more difficult to attract people. Who would want to spend a lot of time and money to go somewhere and then not be able to see the main attractions?

Prohibition of commercial or mechanized development on federal lands designated as Wilderness under the Wilderness Act, naturally limits access to these lands. I have often heard local woods in or near heavily developed areas where one can take a leisurely stroll on numerous trails referred to as wilderness simply because the area is not developed. This is a far cry from many of the Wilderness areas on federal lands in the North Cascades where there are often no trails and one has to battle thick brush full of biting, stinging insects-mosquitoes, black flies, yellowjackets and nameless biting bugs; sweeping water currents and slick rocks; where every step is hard work and a calculation and a decision and you are only as good and as safe as your last decision, because, if you hurt yourself, you will probably never be found. How many people in the world do you think are up for that kind of experience, even if they are physically capable of it?

There are some Wilderness areas that are fairly easy to access but even these limit the number of people who can use them and, in many Wilderness areas, access is very limited to the majority of people. So, if you want to attract tourists to an area in order to build an economy, you should probably be careful about how much land in that area you designate as federal Wilderness because it keeps people out. This is well known by land managers. I am not against Wilderness designation of federal lands but we have lands designated as such that are interconnected and run along nearly the whole length of the North Cascades. We also have rural communities in these areas that suffer from chronic economic depression. Tourism as an industry doesn’t create a lot of well paying jobs. I recently heard the U.S. Secretary of Labor refer to tourism jobs as “low quality jobs”. But they are jobs nonetheless and it stands to reason that if you are trying to make it with a marginal industry like tourism, you need to attract as many people as possible.

What follows is a story of a spectacular place that I have been to in North Cascades National Park that would probably be a big attraction if access was fairly easy. I know of a similar place, mentioned in the story, with very easy access that draws a lot of people. The place described below doesn’t draw anyone however, because it is in a Wilderness designated area and there is no trail to it and a lot of very difficult, dangerous terrain to cross in order to get to it. From evidence I saw at the site, I know at least one other person had been there before me but, in modern history, I would guess that only a handful of people have ever been there, so very few people probably even know it exists. Some would argue that it is better that way because it won’t get trashed. I am not in complete disagreement with that sentiment and so I have kept my descriptions anonymous. But it is also a prime example why wilderness designated lands do not promote or enhance tourism. I have done many trips not unlike the one described below and I am sure there are a lot of other quite amazing things out there unknown to myself and most, if not all, people. In my 25 years or so of exploring out of the way places in the North Cascades far from designated trails and popular climbing and fishing routes, I have encountered other people only once. 

This post is a long one for which I apologize. But I felt I had to describe, blow by blow, the effort it took to access this area in order to try to recreate this experience for the reader. With my usual vignettes and asides added in, I couldn’t find a way to create a shorter version. If you doubt what I have said previously about Wilderness and tourism, please read on.

The first time I went to the Rock Bridge it took me a little more than a day, about 12 miles by trail including a miserable slog up, then back down the nose of a ridge. As I started down off the ridge, I could almost see my destination near the head of a small side valley. The sight gave me a tinge of butterflies and nausea. It was so steep! It looked like it would be impossible to get up into that valley, let alone maneuver its precipitous sides. Rugged crags looming over the head of the side valley did little to reassure me. Logic told me this was inanimate rock, neither good nor evil and completely indifferent to human concerns, but superstitions playing in my mind saw austere, even malevolent giants in the sharp, bare rock jutting into the summer sky. My only consolation was that the USGS 7.5 minute quad indicated that the ground slope in that valley should be gentle enough for me to travel through it.

I had passed this way several times before in previous years on my way to other destinations and had gazed up that side valley with a vague uneasiness, knowing that, at some point, I would need to do a trip or two up there. The uneasiness had been easy to shrug off to some vague future date on those previous trips but not this time. I had to face my fears head on now.

I followed the trail a little beyond the mouth of the side valley before leaving it, crossing the stream occupying the main valley and starting up the steep side valley. The stream crossing in the main valley was much easier than I had expected as the stream was spread out over a large alluvial deposit and was very shallow, only knee deep at most where I had expected it to be at least thigh deep. The going was good on the other side of the main valley. The lower slopes were covered with big timber and the thick green carpet of moss underneath was broken up here and there with a few blown out stream channels and vine maple patches but there were no major obstacles.

As started up the side valley, the going quickly got tougher. I almost immediately hit a small, very steep bedrock ravine occupied by a tiny stream. Uphill to my left the ravine ended at some vertical cliffs. Downhill to my right seemed to be the most likely route to cross the ravine in a small band where the ground sloped more gently above what looked like a steep drop off into the larger stream roaring below. It took several attempts to find a safe crossing but I finally scrambled across in one piece with a little assistance from some tag alders which provided convenient handholds. Before continuing on, I took some mental notes so I could find this spot on my way back.

On the other side of the ravine I was in timber again but the slope was much steeper and I had to be very cautious with my footing. Several windfalls on these steep slopes made travel more difficult. In about a quarter of a mile the hill slope became more gentle and eventually I reached a small timbered flat. Just above this flat, on my left, was an opening created by a large rock slide overgrown with vine maple. Skirting below the slide, I started up a small ridge leading to another opening in the timber ahead.

Large openings in the forest below timberline usually bolster my spirits when I first glimpse them because they often provide the means to better see the route ahead. At the same time, and, more often than not, these openings are usually filled with brush which greatly lessens their appeal. Just before I reached the opening, I dropped my pack and scouted ahead. At the edge of the timber, I faced a wall of vine maple growing on a large debris cone created by centuries of avalanches and land slides. My heart sank. The area was passable but it would take a lot of effort and sweat to get through.

After a good rest back at my pack, I continued on. Exiting the timber, I started up a small, dry stream course running along the edge of the slide. This stream course was steep but free of brush for quite some distance; I could gain a hundred feet or so before I would have to deal with the brush. My strategy was to try to get as high as I could on the slide before trying to cross it. The vine maples in the slide were lying down the hill, bent by the weight of deep winter snows and avalanches. This created a grain that would tend to push me downhill as I tried to cross. So the higher I got on the slide before I tried crossing the easier I could cross and still maintain a decent elevation. And, if I was lucky, the brush might peter out higher up, which is often the case, because the upper parts of slides are often more active and the woody perennial shrubs that make such a nasty thatch of brush have a hard time getting established where debris is deposited every year or sometimes several times a year. Of course, being more active, these areas also present hazards from frequent rock falls but I felt it was well worth the risk to avoid the brushy lower slopes.

The dry stream course became unnavigable at some cliffs before the brush petered out so I picked a likely spot, set my jaw and dove into the brush. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that what I had thought to be a solid wall of brush turned out to only be about ten feet wide. On the other side of this narrow band of brush was an easily traversable slope of talus and soil littered with wood. At the far edge of this open spot there was another thicket of vine maple which proved to be no wider than the first I had encountered.

My guess that travel might be easier towards the top of the debris cone had been right. The bottom of the slope was a nearly solid thicket of vine maples while nearer to the top where the vegetation was impacted much more frequently by slides there was a lot more bare ground and only the occasional finger of brush.

So I was able to cross the slide with relative ease mostly on bare, fairly solid ground and I only had to work through a thin wall of brush every fifty feet or so. The open areas between these thickets were created by deposits of rock ranging in size from fine gravel to boulders that had sloughed off the cliffs above. Over the last hundred years or so, many slides of varying size, large and small, had transported these materials down several narrow bedrock chutes to be deposited in an area  about a quarter mile long on the valley wall. These most recent slides were part of the ongoing building of the much larger debris cone. The great bulk of the debris cone lower down near the stream was now buried under the newer slides and brush. It was several hundred feet deep and had undoubtedly taken many centuries, if not millennia, to build. 

I was stopped by impassable cliffs at the upstream edge of the debris cone but I had a way past. A small stream here had cut deeply into the debris deposits creating a large gulch that extended down into the large creek a hundred feet below. The gulch was larger than one would have expected for the size of the stream occupying it. This was probably due to a number of factors. The material of the debris cone was loose and easily erodible and the small stream entered the main stream at the point where the main stream made a hard bend. So, at flood stage, thousands of gallons of water in the large creek would be slamming full force into the toe, or bottom edge, of the debris cone with massive amounts of erosional energy. As material at the bottom of the slope was swept away more material would fall in from above to be swept away as well. This process of material continually falling into a stream, in this case the large creek, and being washed or transported away can extend for some distance up hill slopes in highly erosional areas where soils are not very stable. This effect would be amplified by the presence of the small stream at the sharp bend in the main creek which would saturate and further destabilize the soil as well as wash it down into the main creek. And so it was with this little stream and its oversized gulch.

The gulch was eroded ten feet through the deposits of the debris cone along the course of the small stream from the point where it issued from a crack in the bedrock cliffs above. This provided a brush free path I could descend to get below the cliffs blocking my route but it also presented some problems. The first was getting into the gulch and the second was getting to the bottom in one piece. The sides of the gulch were steep and made up of an unstable mixture of soil, sand, gravel and small cobbles mixed in with a few boulders big enough to crush a hand or foot or break a leg. 

I carefully made my way into the gulch and then slowly worked down it, nervous the whole way. Footing was treacherous. Sometimes I would take a step and it would seem solid underfoot but, when I applied my full weight, everything underneath would shift and slide downhill sometimes dragging the material above with it. This required some strategic thinking. I tried to pick routes that avoided passing below larger boulders perched precariously on piles of loose gravel. Where this was not possible, I at least tried not to linger below such boulders though I still needed to place my feet with great care so as not to bring a big chunk of the slope down on top of myself with a careless step. The biggest boulders were probably about 3 feet in diameter, small enough that I could also place my hand on them and push myself off and away if they started to slide, kind of like a stiff arm to avoid being tackled on the football field, only here the strategy was to avoid being crushed, trapped or buried.

Reaching the main stream channel, I worked my way up the edge of the stream. The rocks were slick but going was pretty good as the rocks between the brush and the stream had been stripped bare by the relatively minor bankfull floods that occur in our streams several times a year. Occasionally I had to wade the edge of the stream to get past a big boulder or a vagrant clump of vine maple or tag alder fallen in from an undercut bank.

About fifty yards above where I had entered the main channel I hit an impasse. The stream here described a backward “S”. The downstream curve of this “S” was the hard stream bend where I had followed the gulch down off the debris fan. The upstream curve flowed around a pile of very large boulders either left behind by the last glacier to sit in this spot or calved from the nearby cliffs. These boulders were probably up to ten feet in diameter and I had reached a point just shy of the inside of the upper curve of the “S” where I was faced with a boulder too sheer and too tall to climb over. Crossing the stream was out of the question. The stream had a steep gradient and was fast flowing and it was a turbid muddy brown from glacial flour. Flowing as it did between those boulders the pools it had scoured were probably pretty deep, over my head I guessed. Not that I could tell though. I could only see a scant few inches into the opaque water. Even if I had been able to see where to walk, the frigid current was strong enough to knock me off my feet and sweep me away like a dry twig.

My only choice to go forward was a nearly impenetrable wall of brush on my left. After a few minutes of deliberation, I resigned myself, set my jaw and dove into the brush. Wormed in is probably a more accurate description. The brush was a nasty mass of vine maple, tag alder, salmonberry and devils’ club and, for a nice change of pace, underneath these larger plants, small, thorny black swamp gooseberry was abundant. My dad used to call these thorny type plants “handy bushes” as a kind of play on words because they are always “handy” when you need something to grab onto, at which point they fill your hand with stickers. And I needed to grab onto something with almost every step I took in order force myself through the thicket. I am sure there were many innocuous forbs like foamflower, trillium and columbine growing in that green tangle of misery but I honestly don't remember.

I forced my way through fifteen or twenty feet of scratching, stabbing brush before I encountered a gap between two boulders. This gap was brush free and just big enough to fit my pack through with a little wiggling and twisting. At the top of the gap, I had to force my way through a thicket of thorny salmonberry to get back into the sunlight. The creek was maybe ten or twenty feet away and I was over halfway through cutting across the upper curve of the backward “S” in the stream. I was thankful for the long sleeved shirt and long pants, both made of heavy denim and worn for just such situations as this. My hands and forearms were red and crisscrossed with a multitude of scratches and a dozen or so thorns in my hands would be festering over the coming days but I was in pretty good shape overall.

Standing at the top of the gap in the boulders I was at the edge of a pile of smaller rock perched on top of the pile of big boulders. This smaller rock created a fairly flat surface for walking on and the brush growing here was stunted and would offer no resistance to me as I moved through it. I momentarily experienced a warm, fuzzy feeling upon seeing this stretch of easy walking. I must say that the two or three steps it took to get across that spot on my way back into the thick welter beyond were some of the most satisfying of my life.

As I stepped back into the thick brush, I pushed down several dead tag alders. One of them broke and instantaneously whipped up and smashed me on my left ear hard enough that I saw stars. I paused for a minute or two, eyes watering and kind of stunned by the pain. As the pain began to fade, my ear began to feel really warm. Just from blood rushing to it I hoped. I put my hand to it and it was warm and slippery. I looked at my fingers knowing they would be red with blood but I had to look anyway just to be sure. I was bleeding all right. I gingerly felt around the ear again. It seemed like it was still firmly attached though I did not pull on it too hard. It didn’t seem like I was hurt too badly but I didn’t have a mirror or any available still water so I could look at myself. I would like to say that I didn’t give a thought to turning back but I probably did. I distinctly remember reasoning that I was far enough in that if I needed stitches for cosmetic reasons, it would probably take too long for me to get out for them to do any good anyway. With any luck I would have a scar to that would be interesting to talk about but not too disfiguring. So I decided that I might as well keep going. 

I worked my way to the edge of the creek and, with some difficulty, I lowered myself over the large rocks on the upstream side of the boulder pile. This area, just upstream of the backward ”S”, had a lower gradient than below but it was still too treacherous to wade in the main current. Several hundred yards ahead on my side of the creek a nice patch of big, dark evergreens beckoned. I worked my way up the margin of the stream fighting boulders and brush all the way to the timber. When I finally reached it, I saw that, not surprisingly, it was not going to be easy.

The timber, so inviting from below, was perched atop a vertical cut bank about ten feet high at the creek’s edge. The best place to get back out of the creek was in an avalanche track at the downstream edge of the timber and this was no bargain. Within the previous ten years, an avalanche here had flattened a thick stand of sapling evergreens. This formed row upon row of long sharp stakes pointed straight down the 45 degree hill slope. These rows of flattened saplings reminded me of breastworks set up repel attackers in the paintings and drawings of various battles throughout history. These small trees were no more than six inches at the base and had probably grown in after another large avalanche had wiped out the previous stand of trees. Though the saplings had been flattened, not many were killed or uprooted. So the side limbs of the trees that were still living had begun to grow out in their quest for sunlight from their awkward positions, some grew horizontally and some vertically. This formed a mesh of thick limbs that would be nearly impossible to push through. And, in order to get up into that mass of pitchy bark and needles, I still had to get up the bank, only four or five feet here, not ten, but a challenge nonetheless. Somehow I wormed my way up through the flattened saplings and into an old rock slide.

           

By this point, I had been on the go for nine or ten hours and was pretty tired. The going in the old rock slide was a little easier though the rocks were of a size that was difficult to get through. They were big enough to require some climbing and scrambling here and there and thick growth of moss made footing tenuous. Every time I put my foot down here I could not be sure if it would encounter solid rock underneath or go crashing through a flimsy moss bridge. And, of course, I had to deal with the occasional vine maple or scrubby tree which always seemed to grow in places where they would be most difficult to get around.

           

Finally I reached the bigger timber. When I first spotted it, it had looked so inviting but in the time it took to actually reach it, it had seemed more and more like it was mocking me. The going here was easier though it was no picnic in some spots. The ground was all forest duff which made footing better. The forested area extended for some distance upstream, maybe half a mile or more. This patch of timber was also in an area influenced by avalanches but the last slides here were much older than in the area I had just come through.

           

The forest was an interesting mosaic of differently aged stands of trees established in the wakes of past avalanches. In areas where slides had come through in the last 20 to 30 years, the stand was thick and nothing grew in the heavily shaded understory. These areas were the most difficult to move through. The trees were tightly spaced and bristled with limbs nearly to the ground. These limbs and twigs were dead, dry and super hard because they had grown very slowly and their tightly spaced annual rings formed a very dense wood. Limbs of neighboring trees intertwined to form walls of twigs that resisted me and poked and tore incessantly at my eyes, clothes and pack. While passing through one of these walls on the way out, a twig actually poked a hole in my soft plastic water jug.

           

Other stands of trees within this strip of timber were older and had reached the point where their lower limbs were completely gone and they had begun to self-thin a bit. Scattered throughout the stands of smaller trees, in patches or singly, were large trees three to five feet in diameter. These venerable old trees had somehow survived hundreds of years of avalanches and some bore the scars of many a close call. If those trees could only talk, I’m sure they would have many harrowing tales to tell. Travel through the patches of big old trees was pretty good, a little brushy at times and a few large logs to get over or around but it wasn’t bad.

           

In spots where the big trees had fallen over or been knocked down by avalanches recently enough to have a stand of thick brushy trees growing around them it could be pretty miserable. I not only had to clamber over the big logs which were sometimes as high as my chest, I had to, at the same time, push through the poking, clawing limbs of the small trees.

           

I finally reached an open slide track at the upstream end of the forest strip. This slide track was brushy in spots but it was relatively flat with some areas that were surprisingly free of any kind of springy, tangling brush. It would be quite a break from most of the avalanche tracks that I had come through that day.

           

By the time I reached the upstream edge of the timber, I was at the point of exhaustion. My legs and shoulders ached and my back was tired. Even my jaw was tired from constantly setting it and gritting my teeth.  I didn’t want to push any farther that day so I made a rather poor camp between two large old logs in a stand of small brushy timber at the edge of the slide track. I could work down a nearby cut bank to the edge of the creek for water. It was far from an ideal camp but it was workable, and, since I didn’t know what lay ahead in the way of camping spots, probably the best I could do within the range of my strength that day.

           

The next day the sky was overcast with low clouds threatening rain. I had planned on going several more miles up the creek that day but it looked like my trip would be cut short. The country ahead was similar to what I had just come through and I had made it my policy some years earlier not to invest a great deal of time and effort in trips where I was more likely than not to end up soaking wet and tired with nothing to look at but the drifting mists of a fog bank. I didn’t need to make myself miserable in order to get a fog bank experience when I could see all the fog I wanted to from any number of roads while sitting in a nice dry car. It kind of hurt to lose all of the effort of the previous day but it would be better that than investing another day like it, except a lot wetter, just to contemplate the inside of a cloud instead of the scenery.

           

To try to salvage something from the trip, I decided to scout the route ahead a little way so I could better plan for the next time I came through. This is how so many times, despite my policy, I end up tired, beat up and wet contemplating a fog bank. It starts out innocently enough but then I get the urge to see what is around that next corner just upstream then the next corner, then the next. Then it starts to rain and …oh what the hell, I’m already wet. Might as well keep going.

           

That didn’t happen this time though.  I started out through the avalanche track with a light pack. The tag alders weren’t too thick and there were large open areas with patches of salmonberry and bracken fern. The bracken fern was about chest high and it resisted my movements a little bit. It grew so thickly that I couldn’t see where I was placing my feet so I stumbled every now and then but all these were minor concerns. Compared to the previous day, it was a pleasure to walk through those bracken fern thickets and I would gladly walk through hundreds of yards of them to get around one hundred yards of vine maples or tag alders.

There was small fringe of tag alders with a small spring running through them at the upstream edge of the avalanche track. Beyond the tag alders was a nice open stand of evergreen timber. I was vaguely disappointed. If I had pushed on for only a few hundred more yards, I could have camped in the nice open timber with a source of clear sweet water nearby. But I couldn’t have known this beforehand and could have just as easily ended up in a huge brush patch with no place to camp at all. This was exactly the reason I was scouting ahead. The timber was a real traveler’s paradise. The trees were well spaced and the canopy was fairly closed so there was very little underbrush.

           

Within a quarter of a mile of entering the timber I found the Rock Bridge. The hill slope started to rise fairly quickly in the timber. As I traveled through the trees and around small rock outcrops the roar of the creek became louder as its gradient increased. Then I became aware of a deep muffled booming superimposed over the sound of the creek. As I traveled up the hill, its slope increased until it reached about a 45 degree angle. There was now a slight rise between me and the creek so I couldn’t see it but I could tell that its channel had become much more narrow. The booming sound was coming from a waterfall just out of sight over the slight rise. Curious, I cut toward the creek and up and over the rise.

           

I can’t express in words my feelings when I laid eyes on that waterfall. My heart, already beating fast from my exertions in coming up the hill, picked up its pace and my breathing became even faster. I’m sure some obscenity made its way through my mind, not the kind uttered in blasphemy or disrespect, but the kind born of pure awe and amazement.

           

The stream which was probably 30 to 50 feet wide ordinarily now flowed through a slot it had cut deep in the bedrock. This slot was probably less than ten feet wide in many places. The creek fell through this slot for maybe one hundred feet before dropping into a giant crack in the bedrock and falling another hundred feet or so. This great crack was at most 20 feet wide and was probably less. It split the solid bedrock from where I stood at the waterfall several hundred feet to the bedrock’s downstream edge. The crack was so deep and narrow that the stream was not visible from where I stood, only a few feet from its edge. It seemed like the bedrock wall on the other side of the crack was close enough that it would be possible to touch it with a long stick or pole. Though the rock where I stood looked solid enough, I didn’t stray too close to the edge, not trusting that it would not crumble under my feet and send me plummeting into the abyss.

           

What created this great crack I do not know but an earthquake would top my list of possibilities. It looked like the work of some sudden, catastrophic event. The top of the crack on my side of the stream had a very sharp edge as if it had been suddenly broken rather than eroded slowly by water. Water would have left a rounded edge. Both sides of the crack dropped vertically or nearly so into the stream.

           

But what made this particular part of the stream so special was not the great crack. Nor was it the slot carved deep into the bedrock above the great crack. I know of several streams and waterfalls that are deeply incised in bedrock in a similar manner. Ladder Creek Falls in Newhalem is one example that readily comes to mind. And split rock, even a huge outcrop of bedrock, is not uncommon. What made this place special is that, about where the creek poured from the slot into the great crack, a rock bridge spanned the narrow channel.               

           

When I say bridge, I don’t mean it in the sense of a road or trail bridge with a broad horizontal surface for traveling on. While it was a single unbroken piece of rock bridging the water-worn slot, its smooth, rounded horizontal surface, which was hard to see, was very narrow, probably only 2 or 3 feet wide while its vertical surface extended 5 or 6 feet from top to bottom. The whole thing spanned barely 10 feet, so it was definitely no Bridge of the Gods which once spanned the Columbia River at the Dalles. The collapse of the Bridge of the Gods in pre European contact times gave birth to many wonderful stories among the peoples who lived around it at the time (the collapsed rock from this great bridge formed the Dalles, where the Columbia cascades. The entire Cascade Mountain range was named by Lewis and Clark for these cascades). Now, I am sure that this was not the only rock bridge in existence in the Pacific Northwest and certainly not in the world. Nevertheless, it was the only naturally occurring rock bridge that I had ever seen and I had never heard of anything like it in this part of the world other than the Bridge of the Gods. And its setting was certainly impressive.

           

From where I stood, I was looking slightly up at the rock bridge. The vertical side of the bridge facing me was sheltered from the stream during floods and it was interesting to see on it a heavy growth of moss through which grew goatsbeard and several species of saxifrage. I was familiar with these plants in less dramatic settings on the forest floor and they seemed almost out of place clinging tenaciously to the rock bridge, above the yawning chasm.

           

The power of the waterfall was frightening. I was deafened by the sound of thousands of gallons of water thundering into the misty void at my feet with enough force to make the ground shake, or so it seemed. The roiling water disappeared into the great crack and did not reappear for hundreds of feet downstream. When it finally came back into view it was flowing smoothly across the tailout of the big pool that I couldn’t see but knew was just below me in the bottom of the great crack.

           

My mind sometimes does funny things. Though I wouldn't try to cross that bridge in a million years, my mind, beyond my control, wondered what it would be like to try walk across it. The thought made me shudder often, imagining slipping off the water rounded, algae slickened rock to be crushed under tons of water in the chasm below. That being said, I know a few people who, at least in their younger years, would have probably tried to cross that rock bridge on a lark (in case you were wondering, yes, the people I know who might try such a feat are all male).

           

I don’t know what phenomenon created the rock bridge but I would speculate that it had its origins in a pothole. Potholes are created in the bedrock of a streambed where water swirls in a circular pattern. Rocks ranging in size from sand to boulders can be caught or entrained in these currents and begin to erode a round hole into the bedrock. If the current shifts away or the main erosive rock finally erodes away it leaves behind a hole shaped like a cooking pot.

           

On an interesting side note, I have heard that several hundred years ago, before the science of geology existed, people in Scandinavia called these things witches cauldrons. No one understood how these big round holes in solid rock came to exist with no apparent cause and assumed that they must be the result of supernatural forces. Finally a geologist noticed that some of these holes were funnel shaped and figured out that they had been formed by single boulders entrained in swirling currents. These boulders bored holes into the bedrock that became progressively smaller as the boulder cutting into the bedrock eroded itself and became smaller and smaller and eventually eroded away leaving no trace of its existence.

           

I have run across a number of potholes myself. Some were empty. Others, apparently still in the process of eroding, had single rocks a little bit smaller than the hole in them and still others were full of sand and gravel. I even saw a few places where holes had been bored completely through thin rock shelves by this process.

           

The rock in this area is characterized by numerous dikes and sills which create bands of different types of rock. Possibly the rock of the bridge was a narrow band that was harder or more competent than the surrounding rock and a pothole got started in some soft rock behind it. After the pothole had eroded down to or just below the level of the bridge, it hit another band of hard rock and the erosional forces were directed laterally to bore a hole through softer rock below the bridge. I’m not a geologist but this seems, to me, to be a likely scenario for the creation of the bridge and makes a pretty good story too. If this was in fact the process that formed the rock bridge, it would not surprise me if others existed. While these would certainly very be rare, they might not be as uncommon as one would think, especially in places where the rock and stream conditions are right.

             

I photographed the waterfall and rock bridge from several different angles and, while I thought these photos turned out well, they didn’t even come close to capturing the power and beauty of that place. While setting up at one location, I noticed that a small scrubby tree about an inch through had been cut neatly off with a saw in just the right place to take a photograph. It had been cut at least several years previous to my visit. The tiny stump was black with age so it had probably been cut many years before. I was not surprised that someone had been here before me. Given the at least 8000 year habitation of these lands by Native Americans followed more recently by the miners and trappers, all searching the nooks and crannies of the mountains in search of resources, and, even more recently, the people seeking recreation, I was under no illusion that I was the discoverer of this place. Ironically, this stump gave me a sense of well being. This was a lonely place in the middle of the howling wilderness but the stump, an indicator of a human presence in the relatively recent past, made me feel less lonely.

           

With my pictures taken, I scouted farther up the valley. On my way back by the rock bridge and waterfall, I noticed a very good place to camp in the woods only 100 feet or so back from the waterfall. There was a small spring issuing from the bottom of an old, partially timbered rock slide and there were several nice clear, flat spots amongst the trees between the spring and waterfall just big enough to pitch a tent or lay out a sleeping bag. Making a mental note of this camping spot, I continued on the long, hard journey out.

           

I made my second trip to the rock bridge two years later. The second trip was a little easier since I already knew the route and didn’t have to do any route finding. I also found that, in my mind, I had built up some of the harder spots along the way to be much worse than they actually were. I say it was easier but, make no mistake, it was still tough. The last half mile to the rock bridge was a lot harder than I had expected. On my first trip, I was at the point of exhaustion when I reached the last avalanche track before the rock bridge. So it was on the second trip only I had to push on, past the point of exhaustion, in order to reach the good camp near the rock bridge. I barely had the energy to set up my tent and cook dinner in the gloom of the waning day.

           

The rock bridge was the same as I had remembered. This was verified because I couldn't resist taking some more pictures which turned out to be pretty much the same as the ones I had taken on the first trip. The only thing of note on the second trip other than the hardship which I won’t belabor the reader with, happened on my way out. While crossing the bedrock gully near the bottom of the valley, one of the tag alders I was using as a veggie belay broke in my hand. Luckily the tough fibers of the trunk held and I didn’t go tumbling off into space. I was surprised. The tree was live and looked healthy with no obvious wounds. I made a mental note to be careful choosing handholds here if I ever came back. Of course I wasn’t planning on coming back. I thought my trips up that rugged valley were done.

           

It’s a good thing I remembered that broken tag alder because I found myself crossing that gully again five years later, on my way once more to indulge in self inflicted misery. This time though, I found a better way across the gully where I didn’t even need handholds. And I walked in seven miles the previous evening after work and camped, so I started out the day with seven fewer miles on my legs before I started into the valley. This helped make a rough trip a little easier. I was also lucky in that the route was pretty much the same. There were no new rock slides or avalanches to navigate, just the same old nasty brush and old slides to fight through. The stream was a little wider here and there where it had had room to migrate due to a big flood in ’03. Other than that everything seemed the same as before, or so I thought until I got to the rock bridge.

           

The camping spot near the rock bridge was the same but the rock bridge itself was another matter. The floodwaters of 2003 had stripped away the heavy growth of moss and vegetation around the bridge leaving the blue-gray granite bare and exposed. A rocky projection or horn of bedrock just above the bridge was gone. The edge of the great crack where I stood was bare as well, stripped clean by floodwaters so voluminous they overwhelmed the capacity of the narrow slot which was the normal stream course and spilled out over the surrounding bedrock and onto this ledge with enough energy to leave nothing behind but bare rock.

           

In my mind’s eye I could picture the scene of the flood, a gigantic seething mass of muddy brown water battering and scouring its way through the bedrock constriction to finally drain into the great crack in a swirling maelstrom. The place where I was standing, a cliff 100 feet above the present surface of the stream had been under several feet of swirling water at the edge of that maelstrom. I shuddered when I thought about it.

           

The rock bridge was still intact and, amazingly, it still sported most if not all of its vegetation, a two-tone green swath in the midst of blue-gray granite and white water. Some insane part of me couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like on that vegetated side of the rock bridge during the flood. The experience would have been beyond awesome, beyond terrifying. The force of the flood waters through the small space around the rock bridge must have been so great that it caused the water to shoot almost horizontally above and below the rock bridge leaving its side opposite the stream untouched and maybe even dry. If that moss and saxifrage could have only talked, what stories they would have had to tell. I took more pictures of course, noting that the small cut stump had survived well above the reach of the flood.

           

The area of the rock bridge and waterfall seemed a little less aesthetically appealing with all of the bare rock though it lacked not a bit of the overwhelming power that still caused my heart to beat faster and my breath to come quicker. I took more photos thinking that they wouldn't amount to much but when I got them back, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all that bare rock made the vegetated green rock bridge stand out in stark contrast. I had been frustrated with the previous pictures because the rock bridge blended in with its surroundings and it was hard to convey in photos what it was. The earlier photos show only small bits of a stream in a rich mossy rock gorge but are otherwise unremarkable because the rock bridge blends in so well with its surroundings that it doesn’t stand out. Even in the new photos it was still impossible to convey the height of the waterfall and sheer magnitude of the place though. The new photos did a much better job of making the rock bridge stand out though they still pale when compared with the actual experience of standing there. 

           

I don’t know if I will ever return to the rock bridge. I have been to all the lakes I could find in that area so have no other reason to go back into the valley. Maybe someday I will return if my body is still functioning well enough to do the trip but I have a lot of other places to go in the meantime. I don’t even know if the rock bridge still exists. There has been at least one major flood since the last time I was there and one can assume that there will be many more in the future.  A boulder propelled through the slot by floodwaters and hitting at just the right spot could spell the end of the bridge, or an earthquake, or weary joints in the rock could finally succumb to the relentless force of flood waters or frost. I know that, as with all things in this world, one day it will cease to exist. I count myself lucky to have seen it during my short stay on this earth. It is certainly a special place to me but I think it would be for most people.

             

I know some American Indian cultures place great significance on waterfalls. I have heard of other cultures around the world where a specific god or gods are associated with special places. It seems to have all of the qualities that would sanctify a place. To reach it the pilgrim is tested by a journey filled with danger and almost constant hardship and discomfort. Upon arrival, the pilgrim experiences a place at once beautiful and terrifying with tons of water disappearing into the great crack, a dark mysterious void or even an entrance to another world at their feet. And above it, the rock bridge, is an anomaly making this cataract a great rarity among the many thousands of waterfalls pouring down off the rugged mountains. While standing at the edge of the great crack, one gets the feeling of a mysterious unseen presence permeating everything.

           

This could certainly be put down to the presence of some god or The God. One could also take the approach that this unseen presence can be explained by the hard laws of science in the physical world. I have heard that church organs produce sounds at pitches just out of the range of our hearing at the low end of the scale. Though these sounds are not audible, the subconscious mind still registers their vibrations, creating the sense of an unseen presence. The waterfall above and below the rock bridge produces a deep, muffled thunder and it would not surprise me if the same or similar phenomenon that is supposed to occur with church organs occurs at the rock bridge as well. Taking into consideration the rock bridge, the great crack and sense of an unseen presence, it would not be much of a stretch for me to see how a person could see the place as the abode of some god and how they could even be in the presence of that god or The God. And, provided nearby at a very convenient distance, a sweet, cold spring and soft duff covered flats in the timber where the pilgrim can rest and refresh himself and gather his strength for the hard journey out.

           

Whether one believes the place was created by a god or The God or prefers to put it all down to the random forces of nature following explainable physical laws, the sheer magnitude of the forces that created it, the rarity of the rock bridge and the sheer raw power present in the form of the waterfall still demand respect if not awe. 

The Rock Bridge as I first saw it in 2001. Some of the plants growing on it were a Saxifrage species or two, goatsbeard (Aruncus sylvester or dioicus)) and maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) if I remember correctly, as well as several moss species. There were probably several other species of upland type plants there as well that I have forgotten about by this point in time. This photo and the ones that follow do not even begin to capture the magnitude of the experience of standing by this waterfall and rock bridge. 

The Rock Bridge in 2001, zoomed out slightly from previous photo. 

The Rock Bridge in 2006, from roughly the same location and magnification as the previous photo of 2001. There had been some big floods the winter previous to this photo (2005-2006). Note the scoured rock everywhere except the Rock Bridge where the vegetation remains. Also not that there is a point of rock over the stream channel on the right hand side above the Bridge that is present in 2001 but gone in this photo, making the slot in the bedrock wider. The white rock in the foreground is 20 or 30 feet from the waterfall and about one hundred feet above the stream, yet it has been scoured clean by floodwaters.  

2006. Same spot as previous photo. Zoomed out. 

2006. Same spot as previous two photos. Horizontal showing more of the setting of the Rock Bridge.