Converse in the North Cascades: 2014 Discoveries, Re-Discoveries and Mysteries

In order to achieve my overall goal of walking into every mapped high lake and pond that drains to the Skagit River I set a yearly goal of how many of these water bodies I want to get into in a year. I figure if I can do 20 a year, I should be able to achieve my overall goal assuming I have a normal life span and stay healthy enough to keep hiking. In years when I go into areas that are difficult to access and the lakes and ponds are far apart from each other, I figure I might only get into about 15. In areas where access is easy and the lakes and ponds are close together, I figure I might get close to 30.

This year I got into 33 lakes and ponds. Of those, 26 were mapped. Of the total number of mapped lakes and ponds I went into this year, I had been into 5 previously. One of these lakes drained to the Similkameen, rather than the Skagit River. This left a total of 20 lakes and ponds that I visited this year in the Skagit River Watershed that were mapped and new to me and thus, were progress toward my overall goal.

I had hoped that many of the lakes and ponds on the Canadian Skagit that I visited this year would be easy to access. For the most part, this was not the case.

Even though they didn’t necessarily count toward my overall goal, the waters that weren’t mapped or that I had been to before were worth my time. At most of them I got some good observations and learned more about the North Cascades. As far as the ones I have already visited, quite often I didn’t take any notes or photos on my first visits years ago. So, in certain ways, I was visiting these for the first time as well.

I scanned my field notes from the year and will send them to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U. S. Forest Service and, since I did a bunch of trips in British Columbia this year, the BC Ministry of Environment.

At some point it would be nice to comb through my notes over all the years and see what kind of patterns pop out, like the Cascades frog distribution hole that seems to exist (see The Cascades Frog You Heard It Here First). WADFW is already doing this kind of analysis with a database and GIS.

I usually discover or re-discover quite a few interesting things every year. Some are quite easily explainable, others are mysteries, at least to me. Some general things of note that I discovered or re-discovered this year that come readily to mind are:

Rock rabbits or pikas (Ochotona princips) at about 340 feet in elevation in the talus below some rock bluffs near Marblemount. Rock rabbits are perceived to be a high elevation species but I have seen them at mid to even low elevations in areas of talus and log piles in old logging landings.

Wax flower or single delight (Moneses uniflora) along the Slide Lake trail. This isn’t anything particularly astounding. This small member of the Wintergreen family isn’t rare or endangered but I think it is a really cool looking plant and I have only seen it in a few places.

The forest in the Lower Skagit Highlands, Cultus Mountains, Day and Cumberland Creeks, is than one finds in the mountains to the east and the rest of the plant community is different as well.

Pink heather (Phyllodoce empetriformis) is present but no white heather that I have seen. This isn’t too far out of the norm, I think pink heather will grow at lower elevations than white heather. The blueberry community or Vacciniums are composed mostly of V. ovalifolium and V. membranaceum and I didn’t see any of the lower growing, sweeter berries like V. uliginosum or V. deliciosum.

In the Mountains of the Lower Skagit there is a lot of Mountain Hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana) at elevations that seem pretty low (less than 4000 feet) for this species in the forests farther east. But what I found most striking, in a forest community like this with Pacific silver fir (Abies amabilis) and mountain hemlock, one would expect to see Alaska yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) but there is none that I have seen. Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) appears to be the only cedar in the area. Which begs the question: Where is the western edge of Alaska cedar distribution? I think it might be on Upper Finney Creek. I know there is Alaska cedar on the North Fork Stillaguamish just east of Finney Creek. And I have seen it in the valley bottom at an elevation of about 370 feet in the Marblemount area. The even more interesting question to me is: Why is Alaska cedar distributed the way it is in this part of the Cascades?

Another piece of information I gathered about the Cultus Mountains area is that blue grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus) occur there. I promise you that this is no news to the people who have hunted this area for generations. I have see quite a few grouse over the years in this area and figured most, if not all, were blue grouse but this is not my normal hunting grounds and this is the first year I actually killed a grouse in the area so I could get a good close look at it. Blue grouse are mid to high elevation species so this is the species you would expect to find at similar elevations farther east in the Cascades.

I learned while researching this post that blue grouse have been split into two separate species, sooty grouse (D. fuliginosus) which usually occur on the west side of the mountains and dusky grouse (D. obscurus) which usually occur on the east side of the mountains. There is some overlap between the two species however and they look very similar.

Finally, on the subject of wildlife, it was interesting to note abundant bear sign at high elevations almost everywhere I went this year except the Cultus Mountains.

I found the forests on the Canadian Skagit had a lot of Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii) in them. This is fairly common in this area south of the border as well. There is quite a bit of Engelmann spruce in the Little Beaver drainage which is on the west side of Ross Lake as well as many of the drainages on the east side of the lake. Engelmann spruce might also occur farther south on the lake in the Big Beaver drainage as well, but I can’t recall this off the top of my head. Engelmann spruce, Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Rocky mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) occur as far south as Diablo Lake.

There is a lot of whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) in certain areas on the Canadian Skagit but most that I saw was in pretty bad shape. All of the larger trees had been killed by white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola), a fungus that attacks five needle pines and there were only seedlings left and many of these weren’t doing very well either.

If I knew more about dragonflies and damselflies, I might have picked up some interesting information there too. I saw a lot of dragonflies this year. The most common had a blue abdomen with green on the thorax and green eyes but I saw many other species as well as some damselflies.

I saw a lot of fish eating birds at high elevation lakes that historically probably didn’t have fish in them. The birds I saw were osprey (Pandion haliaetus), common loon (Gavia immer) and belted kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon). I also saw ducks and waterfowl like goldeneyes (Bucephala spp.) that also spend part of their time in saltwater. Ducks and waterfowl have probably always used high lakes for at least part of the year or for resting while migrating. Maybe the fish eating birds did as well. I have also seen many shorebirds at high lakes.

Finally, I noticed a different in the parent bedrock on the Canadian Skagit. On the west side of the river, much of the rock is granitic while on the east side it is a different type. I don’t know much about the rock type on the east side but it tends to be more of a solid brown or grey or blue color. This rock seems to be fairly competent i.e. erosion resistant but when it breaks away from parent bedrock it seems to crumble. I didn’t encounter any slopes of large talus in the part of the eastern Canadian Skagit that I visited this year.

I think this division in rock types might run all the way down Ross Lake to at least Ruby Creek/Granite Creek. I know that there is some sort of rock type boundary in this area but I don’t recall the specifics. I will have to read up on it.

Something that I found quite interesting was the use or lack of use of stocked high lakes in B.C. Evidently there isn’t a strong high lake fishing culture there. The lakes were obviously stocked by someone but many I visited no evidence of use by fishermen. Some of these spots were within only a few miles of roads and places like that in Washington would have trails and camps and also a lot of litter. The lakes in B.C. had none of these. Maybe there are more, better choices that are more readily available in B.C. than the places I visited. Though many places I did visit there are still, or once were, fairly easy to access.

Finally, while doing the post for Galene Chain Lakes, I noticed in some of my photos that there is a tower of some sort on Shawatum Mountain. This wasn't visible from anywhere on my visit to Shawatum Lakes. So maybe there is a trail of some sort up there, just not from the direction I took. They may have also installed the tower via helicopter.

I don't have any photos particular to this post that aren't already published so the photos that follow are from previous years and numerous different locations.

Black bear (Ursus americanus). This bear was in hyperphagia, a condition where it was so concentrated on getting food it ignored me standing about ten feet away while it was eating blueberries.

Western toad (Bufo boreas)

Blue grouse. The light band on this grouse's tail marks it as the new sooty grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus) of the blue grouse complex.

Crab spider (Misumena vatia) on marsh cinquefoil (Potentilla palustris). These spiders don't spin webs. They wait on plants and ambush insects that land. Quite often, I have seen them take bumblebees (Bombus spp.). These spiders can change color for camouflage, seeming to prefer yellow on red and green backgrounds and white on purple or lavender backgrounds. Evidently these colors work in the ultraviolet spectrum because I believe this is how insects see plants and flowers.