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Category Archives: hike

Tiffany Mountain on Thursday

How many of my posts start with ‘The dogs and I’? Well here is another one.

On Thursday, the dogs and I hiked to the top of Tiffany Mountain. It’s a favorite hike I do most years. This is early in the season and I’ll do it again, maybe next month when the wildflowers are in bloom. Well, when most of the wildflowers are in bloom. Some were blooming on Thursday but the snow has only recently melted leaving behind last years brown grasses and the starts of some flowers. Even the larch are not fully leafed out.

On the rocky mountaintop there was some extra color from Ladybugs! Technically, I think they are Lady beetles but whatever you call them, there were thousands, probably millions of them. As I understand it, they migrate up in the fall and hibernate under the big rocks and emerge when the weather starts to warm up. It wasn’t really warm in my opinion. 52 degrees at the car when I started and colder still on top with a stiff breeze. The sun came out as I went down and it was warm enough to lose the jacket before I returned to the trailhead.

 

Along the road to the trailhead, scarlet gilia, various penstemons and lupine were blooming
Roger Lake from the trail
Roger Lake in the distance
Spring beauty
Clark’s Nutcracker. These birds have excellent spatial memory, which enables them to cache up to 33,000 seeds in the fall, and then locate a large percentage of those during the winter. Information from http://www.birdweb.org
Looking back down the trail
A good rock for a break. About halfway up and it has a nice depression that collects water
Sky wonders if we are really going to the mountain top. Or maybe she is watching Luna.
Someone named this rock. I think they call it Troll Rock.
Buttercups
Sweet yellow flower growing out of a crack in a lichen-covered rock
The top is over 8000′ elevation and there it is.
Sky waits while I catch my breath
Hmmm, another one I need to learn.
Clark’s Nutcrackers cache seeds from whitebark pine trees and here under a rock outcrop, there were two whitebark pines growing. I wonder if the nutcracker planted the pine nuts and forgot them.
Little Tiffany Lake with ice on it.
Tiffany Lake
Lunch time at the top. They ate half of my sandwich.
What are those red areas?
Ladybugs! Thousands of them emerge from the rocks when it warms up in the spring
Ladybugs and orange lichen
Horned Lark nest
Horned Lark
Sky rests while I photograph flowers.
Larch needles emerging for their short season.
Jacob’s ladder, Polemonium sp?
Luna’s turn to rest. She needs a bath
Bark peels evenly from a tree killed in the 2006 Tripod forest fire that burned nearly 200,000 acres on the Okanogan Forest
Another challenging yellow flower
Roger Lake
Lupine
Wild rose. Can you smell its perfume?
I should know this one too.
Boulder Creek
I sat on a boulder in Boulder Creek and cooled my sore feet.

Cache and Cougar

Yesterday MA and the dogs and I had a breathtaking walk in the hills above the Twisp River. Breathtaking in more ways than one. We are in the midst of one of those cold snaps where the early morning temperatures are below zero; where the dogs don’t waste much time when they are sent out to do their business; where it takes some time to get dressed just to go outside and you wonder how the dogs do it without any extra clothes. But they go out happily and wish I’d take them on more walks. The cold wasn’t the only breathtaking topic. So were the views. Cold weather is often accompanied with blue, blue skies and snow-covered mountains. A surprise, not so much breathtaking but a surprise none the less, was finding a geocache on top of a hill. To me it seemed altogether too obvious even without the help of a gps and coordinates. Maybe it would have been harder if we’d been searching for it. We opened it and left a note and a dog cookie. We had breathtaking views of birds – a Kestrel kiting (hovering) in search of prey: Common Ravens soaring and laughing: three Red-tailed Hawks soaring and falling together – maybe a sign of choosing their territories. Breathtaking was seeing a cougar loping across the hill below us! Luna had erupted into her serious bark and Frida had her hackles up. Luckily Sky was behind us and didn’t rush to see what all the fuss was about. She knows that bark means danger ahead. MA and I watched for a moment before the cougar came into our field of view maybe fifty meters away. Maybe less. I expect that when Luna first saw it, the animal was much closer than that. We regrouped and made a swift retreat, back the way we came from, stopping to leave another note in the geocache.

Looking up the Twisp River
The Sawtooth Mountains in the swirling mists
A Kestrel ‘kiting’ in search of prey.
We have walked in those hills too.
Frida looks down at Twisp. This is just before we saw the cougar
Twisp
Balky Hill rock formations. That’s where the rattlesnakes live in the winter
We named this Cougar Cache Hill

New Year, New Trail

The new year started with a gloriously sunny day and after we gathered our wits and woke the dogs, we went out for a walk on a trail we have not walked before. It went up and down Bear Creek between Lester Road and the Wildlife Area headquarters. It was a pleasant walk, not steep at all, although if a person wanted she could easily climb lots of hills for more exercise. The creek has aspens on both sides of it and also some nice patches of water birch. These are punctuated with ponderosa pines and there was one deeply shaded area when we walked through some douglas fir. The hills above are covered with bunch grass, sagebrush and lots of forbs. With the low snowfall, the hillsides are brown, waiting for spring already. We heard and saw a few birds. Chickadees were making their spring ‘cheeseburger’ call that I associate with territory claims. A Hairy Woodpecker also seemed to declaring his ownership of the tall aspens.

three deer watched from above
Bear Creek
Sky – how do you get your ears to do that?
Sunshine through the forest highlights the lichen
What caused the damage to this tree to make it lose so much pitch?
pitch
aspens
What a treasure
I saw this eagle briefly til it saw me
We never get tired of the snow covered vistas
lone pine on the horizon
Evidence of past lives
Big rock
Reason with her.

Walking our Dogs

Four women and six dogs got together for a walk in the hills above the valley yesterday. We had a feeble hope that we might get up above the clouds and into the sun but that was not to be. There was an occasional ‘sucker hole’ that almost drew us up even higher but in the end we slipped and slid our way back down to the trail. The low snow accumulation is sad and we will surely hear about it more than we want come next summer if this weather pattern continues. Our region is dependent on winter snowfall for adequate water supplies in the summer.

Lots of hoarfrost from the semi-persistent fog
All six dogs in one frame
Looking back at the valley filled with fog
Wolf lichen provides some color
Catch me if you can!
Trip likes to take a toy on his walks and the other dogs know that it is HIS toy, not to be messed with.
Bree and Sky like sticks they find along the way
Jessi compares little 4 1/2 month old Sky to her full grown Nakana
Sky wonders if Bree will share her stick!
Something is always sticking to Luna
Bree approaches Sky politely
Would YOU share your stick?
High above Aspen Lake
Looking north to the North Cascades
This tree recently fell over
What is remarkable is that it was growing on this rocky ridge top with nearly no soil
Frosty lomatium
Aspen leaves like Christmas ornaments
Jessi said her dog likee to be held as a puppy like Sky does
Lynne with Bree
The two pups are beginning to show signs of friendship. We hope they can get over the barriers between sporting dogs and herding dogs!

Always Good to be Home

Back at home I was hoping I would be skiing by now however the weather is not cooperating. We have a minimal snow cover at best. Some trails up high are ready to go with least amount of snow possible for grooming. A snow storm is forecast for Friday so hopefully we can break out the skis soon.
Meanwhile, we still need to get out and do something so we continue to walk in the hills. The dogs and I joined MA and Frida this afternoon. Down in the valleys, we were socked in with fog but as I drove to their house, I could see a bit of blue sky and sure enough, when we got up to Frost Road, there was clearing! It was glorious.

Frost Lake looks like the ocean with the clearing mist over it
Sun rays
Hoarfrost from all of the recent freezing fog
My house is down there in the fog
No new snow in the mountains yet
Three good dogs. Look how much Sky has grown!
Slow down little dog
Frida always looks good for the camera
MA brought her ice skates
It’s not so good.
Where is Luna?
At least she’s having fun!
Her front feet kept wanting to slide away from her when she was sitting.
Catch me if you can.