High Country, Out of Character

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That’s Mount Dana, elevation 13,057 feet above sea level, just south of Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park. The picture was shot from a ridge above the Gaylor Lakes just north of the pass, elevation about 10,500.

My nephew Max and I drove across the Tioga road on Wednesday, and it’s a trip that will leave an impression for some time. As I’ve said elsewhere, this is country that’s normally far beyond the reach of the casual winter traveler. The Sierra this high up is usually buried in snow. Beyond that, it can be cold and harsh in a way that’s utterly foreign to us Northern California lowlanders. The day we were up there, it felt like the temperature was in the high 40s, at least, and warmer in the sunlight. There was no wind. I was wearing shorts, though that was pushing it a little. Plenty of others have journeyed up to this strangely accessible alpine world. A local outdoors writer did a blog post last week about a couple guys who had driven up to hike Mount Dana–yeah, that peak pictured above–in running shoes.

All the weather forecasts show that this midwinter idyll, made possible by a long, long dry spell accompanied by unusually mild daytime temperatures, is coming to an end. The forecast for the end of the week is blizzardy: snow, then more snow, with high winds. And already, the weather has changed. Today’s high is for a high of about 30, with 50 mph winds gusting to 80 mph. Tonight’s forecast: a low of 10, with a westerly wind of 60-65 mph gusting to 105 mph. I have a picture in my head of being blown clear off this ridge.

More on this later. For a rather short trip–we were only on the road across the high country for a few hours–it filled my head with impressions.

Bolinas Ridge Bovine Encounter

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Today’s outing: To the Bolinas Ridge Trail in West Marin. We got out there to the north end of the trail, at Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, probably an hour, an hour and a half before the sank behind Inverness Ridge, to the west. We found a sort of rocky natural platform overlooking a ravine and the trail we had walked in on, and just stayed there as the sun went down. Soon, the moon rose, and we walked back to the car. This lad (or lass–my non-farm eye didn’t see evidence one way or the other) was one of the many bovines along the trail. Nice place to be a cow, or a bull, or whatever.

Vulture Beach Drama

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Saturday in Fort Bragg: Just north of the mouth of Pudding Creek, a couple of dozen turkey vultures were hanging out around a low bluff above the beach–sunning themselves, taking off on short flights to check out the local offal, then back for more sunning, and grooming, and occasional dramatic wing spreading and beaking (if “beaking” is what you call it when two birds go beak-to-beak).

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Motel View

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A discovery of 2011, by way of Thom Brekke: The Beachcomber, a motel in Fort Bragg. Here’s what you see right out the back of the place, which is built adjacent to an old logging road (and before that, a rail line) used to carry logs to the Fort Bragg mills. The mills are gone, but the road persists as a trail that runs from the motel, on the north bank of Pudding Creek, for seven miles or so up the coast. Along the way, there’s lots of beach and bluff frontage. It’s an amazing place, really.

Road Blog: Mendocino Vineyard

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Back home in Berkeley tonight. But at noontime today, we stopped on our way south at Toulouse, a vineyard and winery along Highway 128 in Mendocino County. We went into the tasting room and bought some wine, then walked up through the vineyards briefly. One bird note: We see robins down here, of course. They’re everywhere, right? But up at Toulouse today, their presence was a little more than we see around the city. hundreds if not thousands of robins filled trees around the harvested vineyards. Checking one Mendocino birding site, the county seems to be a major wintering locale for American robins (Turdus migratorius; yes, “Turdus”; it’s Latin for “thrush”; you know there’s a whole story about why it’s called “robin,” but some of us can’t stay up all night to tell it).

A general explanation for the robin swarm around the vineyards comes from Cornell’s Birds of North America: “The diet of the robin is … highly variable, changing from primarily soft invertebrates, especially earthworms, in spring and summer, to primarily fruit in autumn and winter. During the nonbreeding season, large flocks of hundreds or thousands of immature and adult birds migrate to lower elevations and latitudes, where they form roosting aggregations from which they track sources of berries.” Cornell also notes that the robin is a relatively recent arrival in much of California west of the Sierra foothills, not pushing into other parts of the state until irrigation and well-watered lawns (and thus a richer supply of earthworms near the surface) made it possible for the bird to extend its range. And one more note from that Mendocino County site: robins (and some other abundant songbirds) are favored prey of some raptors (peregrine falcons and sharp-shinned hawks, among others).

The sound of the birds near the vineyard was remarkable enough I recorded some audio and will try to post that later.

Road Blog: Mendocino Vineyard

toulouse120411.jpg

Back home in Berkeley tonight. But at noontime today, we stopped on our way south at Toulouse, a vineyard and winery along Highway 128 in Mendocino County. We went into the tasting room and bought some wine, then walked up through the vineyards briefly. One bird note: We see robins down here, of course. They’re everywhere, right? But up at Toulouse today, their presence was a little more than we see around the city. hundreds if not thousands of robins filled trees around the harvested vineyards. Checking one Mendocino birding site, the county seems to be a major wintering locale for American robins (Turdus migratorius; yes, “Turdus”; it’s Latin for “thrush”; you know there’s a whole story about why it’s called “robin,” but some of us can’t stay up all night to tell it).

A general explanation for the robin swarm around the vineyards comes from Cornell’s Birds of North America: “The diet of the robin is … highly variable, changing from primarily soft invertebrates, especially earthworms, in spring and summer, to primarily fruit in autumn and winter. During the nonbreeding season, large flocks of hundreds or thousands of immature and adult birds migrate to lower elevations and latitudes, where they form roosting aggregations from which they track sources of berries.” Cornell also notes that the robin is a relatively recent arrival in much of California west of the Sierra foothills, not pushing into other parts of the state until irrigation and well-watered lawns (and thus a richer supply of earthworms near the surface) made it possible for the bird to extend its range. And one more note from that Mendocino County site: robins (and some other abundant songbirds) are favored prey of some raptors (peregrine falcons and sharp-shinned hawks, among others).

The sound of the birds near the vineyard was remarkable enough I recorded some audio and will try to post that later.

Road Blog: Fort Bragg Xmas Extravaganza

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We drove up to Fort Bragg with a plan of driving someplace in the interior of the county–Montgomery Redwoods State Reserve, near Comptche in the back of beyond, was one candidate. But in the full light of day and looking out at the coast right outside our window, it seemed to make a lot more sense to just hang here. So we went for a long walk up a coastal trail to MacKerricher State Park north of town, then back. The Dog, for one, was delighted. Then we went and had a bowl of clam chowder down by the Noyo River harbor. We started back to town, then Kate remembered a plaque about the local salmon fishery she wanted to show me. The plaque was on the outside wall of a restaurant at the harbor. When we pulled into the parking lot, there was a pickup truck parked there towing a dory festooned with Christmas lights. A woman wearing a Santa hat was standing next to it. “Making your rounds?” I said. “Yeah, I start early,” she said. Then she told me that the boat was decked out for the town’s annual Christmas parade, starring local working vehicles like logging trucks and yes, a few boats. “Seven o’clock. You should come out. It’s a big deal for our little town,” she said, adding that it has been going on for something like 75 years. So after going back to our room, taking a nap, watching part of the Wisconsin-Michigan State game, we walked across the pedestrian trestle from our motel into town and found the parade. The vessel pictured (at the corner of North Main Street and East Redwood Avenue) is the one we saw down by the harbor.

Road Blog: Asti

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Headed north on U.S. 101 for a couple days in Mendocino County, I pulled off at Asti, just south of Cloverdale. The wine valleys are full of fall color. Today’s bonus: Despite my earlier post on drought anxiety, it must be said that today was incredible. In the mid-70s in Berkeley and everywhere else around the Bay Area; new records were set in San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Rosa. Up here, on the coast, it’s supposed to get down to the mid-30s tonight.

PM Getaway, Holiday Eve

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I almost never drive to work in the city (San Francisco) at regular commute hours. I go in at midday, usually, and return home well after the last of the evening commute. But today I drove because it was the day before the holiday and the morning rush hour was light. I waited a little too long to start home, till almost 3:30, and this is what happened: a long (but standard) jam on the western approach to the Bay Bridge. The stop-and-go and merge after merge after merge slows you down so you can reflect on why you love living here.

High Country: Carson Pass and Beyond

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Since the automobile-borne traveller can’t and doesn’t want to do straight-line trips in the Sierra (lots of river canyons, ridges, peaks, valleys, and rocky defiles of every description in your way), our trip last Saturday from the Calaveras County outback to the alpine embrace of Hope Valley was roundabout. Employing our usual late start, we made it to Carson Pass (elevation 8,573 feet) just as the sun was setting. Just east of the pass on Highway 88 there was a turnout, and we pulled over to take in the scene. Above: looking north: Red Lake Peak (elevation 10,063). Below, looking east, across Red Lake (elevation 7,800); I think the mountain in the left-center distance is Hawkins Peak (elevation 10,024).

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