A Honey of an Anklet

My semi-rustic accommodations near the western short of Mono Lake (no phone, TV, A/C, internet) were pleasant enough, save for the regular noise of heavy truck traffic on U.S. 395, just a few meters from the cabin.

I started the morning on the north side of the lake, at the county park. Very pleasant: a clear sky; shirtsleeves rolled down; save for one other photographer, I had the place to myself. A scope would have been a helpful to get a better view of the phalaropes feeding, but it wasn’t essential. In late July, the birds are almost all out of breeding plumage, so I was using field marks like bill length to separate Wilson’s from Red-neckeds. The short boardwalk trail leads straight out to the lake, with no loop. Some up-close encounters with the tufa, described by someone as a petrified spring.

As compared to the interpretive signage on the federal property on the south side of the lake, the county is more explicit about the role of the City of Los Angeles in the depletion of Mono’s water. The lake itself is not the water source; it has no outlet and is too salty for drinking. (That Mad King Ludwig calcium carbonate geology didn’t happen overnight in the 20th century.) Rather, it is the diversion of water from the Owens River and elsewhere in the watershed that is causing the lake to dry up.

In case we needed reminding, the city still owns land and water rights here. Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

Following a tip from the Westrichs’ book, I followed an unmarked section of Cemetery Road that became gravel, beyond the boneyard, to a place marked by a shack, where Yellow-headed Blackbirds once congregated. No more. But I did learn something useful: car birding in a hybrid is brilliant! I was rumbling along the gravel, slow enough that I was already in electric mode, when I saw a bird I wanted a better look at. I touched the brake, the car stopped—and everything went quiet. No idling noise, no vibration. Just quiet.

On the south side of the lake, on Forest Service land, the trail forms a loop and you can get right to the water, if you care to. (It feels a little oily, or like watery gelatine.) There are consequently a lot more people. On the plus side, the sun angle is much better for looking at the birds. One or two of the Red-necked Phalaropes bore some traces of breeding plumage. Along with the signature spinning strategy, the birds seem to herd the alkali flies up to the shoreline for easier snacking. No vertebrate life survives in the water, but along the with flies, the lake is home to an endemic brine shrimp, Artemia monica.

Undisturbed, the flies form thick clusters. But the shadow of a slow hand wave is enough to get them moving.

I left the lake, tried another birding stop that might have been great at publication time (1991), then paid a short visit to Panum Crater. The volcanoes here in the basin are dormant; it is estimated that Panum was active only 650 years ago. Shards of obsidian on the trail. I didn’t walk the entire loop of the crater rim: hot, dry, not too many other visitors, and I really couldn’t be sure that the sketchily-marked trail made the complete circuit. Ever so slowly, the veg is making a place for life in the volcano’s crater.

Sunday was intended for driving and birding, but I did as much botanizing as I did birding, and that without a local field guide. I drove east over the mountains along the road to Tioga Pass, which was not cleared of snow and opened to traffic until June 18 this year. I used LoLo and Jim Westrich’s Birder’s Guide to Northern California and Jean Richmond’s Birding Northern California as guides.

At Hodgdon Meadow (4,900 feet), I heard a few difficult flycatchers but saw few birds. At the campground, smoke was still evident in the air from a managed burn a couple weeks previous. I saw a lot of this lupine, perhaps Lupinus grayi.

At Olmstead Point, I couldn’t even scare up a Clark’s Nutcracker. Tenaya Lake is beautiful, but wasn’t birdy when I visited mid-day.

At Tuolumne Meadows, the bird that surprised me was Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularia), working the banks of the river.

On a side trail from the meadow, I found this fuzzy congener of the lupine I saw at lower elevations. I believe this to be Lupinus breweri. It was doing a scrappy job of colonizing otherwise bare soil; pines were the only other veg in evidence.

A final stop at Dana Meadows (about 9,700 feet) yielded a distant look at a Cassin’s Finch (Carpodacus cassinii). I got a good look at the strong red crown contrasting with the rest of the head feathers.

I left the park at Tioga Pass, just shy of 10,000 feet, and dropped down into the Mono Basin via Lee Vining Canyon.

One of the best ways to get around Yosemite National Park, I quickly figured out, is to hop one of the shuttle buses that work the valley. Shuttle to your trailhead, walk a circuit or a straight line, and get back to your car at the central parking area on another shuttle. This plan is not without pitfalls, however, as I learned.

Saturday afternoon, after climbing to Columbia Rock in the morning, my plan was to use the El Capitan shuttle to its stop at the bridge over the Merced, hike the western loop of the Valley Floor Trail, then catch the El Cap shuttle at the picnic area and return to my rental vehicle. Now the Valley shuttle (the green route) runs into the evening, serving the campgrounds, the lodge, and suchlike; but the El Cap shuttle (the burgundy route) only runs until 18:00. No problem, I was on the trail by 14:45, the loop was about 6 miles on mostly level ground (rated moderate by Ranger Mates only for its length), I should be back to catch the last shuttle easily.

As soon as I left the shuttle stop, I discovered a hard truth about hiking in the park: the park doesn’t believe in trail blazes, and it’s not too keen on lots of wayfinding signs. I missed the trail I wanted to follow and was immediately backtracking along the road. (I’d like to turn the PATC loose in this park.)

Confidential to the man of the couple who asked me for directions to Half Dome on this same road: in casual conversation with a stranger, to make a point about gender roles, it’s best to avoid references to the Jaycee Dugard abduction case.

I found the trail I was looking for and started moving. It turns out that the Valley Floor Trail is not a good choice for a sunny July afternoon. It touches the very busy roads at too many points, and is generally too full of people. What is nice about the trail is that it’s nearly flat and smooth—the trail is worn-out pavement in a few places.

I was still making good time, looking to make the turn at the Pohono Bridge at sometime after 4. In the section leading to the bridge, the trail crosses the southside road, fords some braided streams, then skims along the Merced. I crossed the road and promptly found myself off trail; maybe I was disconcerted by the huge idling bus I had to walk around at the road crossing. But since I could keep the river on my right and the road on my left, I figured a little bushwhacking wouldn’t kill me.

It was then that I came to the ford. Lots of late snowmelt means good waterfall action into July, and it also means that the ford was two to three feet of fast-moving water. At first, I wasn’t sure where I was; it took a consult with my compass and several looks at the map to realize that the teensy blue line on the map was this dangerous-looking pour of water.

One of my survival skills is having a reasonable assessment of what I can do. I was just not ready to make this crossing, not by myself (where were the crowds now?), so I started backtracking. With the bushwhacking and the pondering, I had lost a lot of time, and I didn’t see a way to continue the loop. I would have to return the way I came, along some well-traveled trail.

My other survival skill is stubbornness. I got back to the southside road, and realized that I could still make the loop and the 18:00 shuttle if I beat feet along the road to the Pohono Bridge.

I made the turn at the bridge and started the return along the north side of the valley. Have I mentioned how profligate the scenery is around here? There you are, walking along, then there’s a break in the canopy and WHOMMP! there’s El Capitan looking at you.

I got to the northside road… and no picnic area. So I crossed the road and continued east. Lovely meadows, but no picnic area. Well, the last mile is always the longest, right? Somewhere just shy of 18:00 I realized that I had misread trail and map again, and that I had overshot the picnic area. I calculated that I could turn around and make a westward dash for the picnic area and the last El Cap shuttle, or I could continue east to Camp 4 where I could catch a Valley shuttle at the westernmost point of its route. After hiking 6 miles (and a climb in the morning), I wasn’t ready to outrun a bus. So I headed for Camp 4, adding another 2 miles or so to the walk. Total time for the open-jaw walk: approx. 3:30.

A busman’s holiday: waiting for the bus to arrive.

I did pause long enough to look at what I keyed out as a female Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheuticus melanocephalus).

Back in Mariposa in the evening, many of the eateries roll the sidewalks up by 21:00, but I had a fine dinner at The Butterfly Cafe. This place can even make a house salad interesting.

Saturday was the day set aside for some serious walking and climbing, and I made good on that plan. I followed, after a fashion, two moderate hikes scouted by Ranger Vickie Mates.

But first I made the drive up Merced Canyon from Mariposa to the park entrance, following CA 140 along the south side of the canyon. The sight of the abandoned bed of a one-lane road running along the north side of the canyon is somewhat disconcerting. Sections of the old road are crumbling and overgrown after perhaps a mere half-century’s disuse.

However, not completely disused: the road jumps to the north side of the canyon (via a pair of temporary truss bridges) to get around a quite impressive rock slide. Between the signalized waits to traverse this section of the canyon and Monday’s trip up and down CA 270, I realized that driving through a damaged canyon is California’s answer to the Outer Banks’ wait for the impromptu ferry boat that crosses a new hurricane-opened inlet.

But back to the hiking. From the main parking area south of the visitor center, I took the “El Cap” shuttle bus to Camp 4 and the head of the trail that climbs to Upper Yosemite Falls. Following Ranger Mates’ advice, I climbed 1000 feet to some very nice vistas of the falls at Columbia Rock, then pushed on to one more look about a hundred feet higher. But I knew I would not have the juice to make it to the top. Lots of company on this trail: I heard a lot of German spoken. On the return descent, the slippery sand worn from the granite steps made me glad I’d brought my stick. I spotted a few White-Throated Swifts (Aeronautes saxatalis) in the valley. 3:30 up and down.

Along this trail and elsewhere I found examples of paintbrush (Castilleja sp.), a hemiparasite of plant roots now placed in the broomrape family. The green leaves shading to red at the distal end should have been a clue that I was not dealing with a conventional wildflower.

These rather tame squirrels in the park are an unexpected ID mystery. The pale “shrug” and non-bushy tail don’t match any of the candidate species I see in the field guides, but I suspect I’m dealing with nothing more exotic than a Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus).

After a midday drive from Sacramento, I put in a 2-hour round trip climb to Sentinel Dome summit, using scouting reports like this one from Jason and Katie Loomis. I had originally planned the complete loop around the dome, with the side trip to Taft Point, but I got started later than I planned and I didn’t want to force myself in unfamiliar country at elevation. From the parking area on Glacier Point Road, it’s but a 400 foot ascent.

The nearly bare summit (8122 feet [2476 m]) nevertheless supports quite a bit of life — several wildflowers, including Mountain Pride (Penstemon newberryi); a succulent shrub that provides cover for the rather tame ground squirrels; an unidentified butterfly having a bask; and a couple of Common Ravens (Corvus corax).

A handful of people on the trail and at the top, like me, enjoying the extravagant views.