Day off

Rare Wyoming Old Growth Doug Fir

I took the day off from work today.  I slept most of the morning away.  Eventually I woke in the afternoon and went hiking, so this post is less of a landscaping and more of a nature walk post.

Since there is still so much snow in the high country, I went hiking above Half Moon Lake on the Sweeney Creek trail.  I will hike into the high mountains if they are passable, so being here at this time of the season forces me to do more low country hikes.  This is one of my favorites.



What a giant specimen of Mules Ear!  This is about 3 feet wide

Larkspur (blue), Buckeye (yellow), and Phlox (white)

I noticed incredible wildflowers on this hike.  Again the mules ear flower dominated the landscape.  The aroma of the flower smells to me like a combination of cinnamon and cracked black pepper.  Walking through a field of them is beautifully overwhelming.  On the far slopes of Fremont lake, the area that burned is covered in them right up to the burn line where it changes to dense sagebrush.  I have some fear that I am miss-identifying arrowleaf balsamroot as mules ear.  I will go back up with a reference book tomorrow to be sure.  If I have made such a mistake I will update all posts.



Another lovely larkspur

Alpine Phlox, one of the earliest blooming wildflowers

I also saw larkspur, dandelions, alpine phlox, some other kind of phlox, buckeye flowers, blue bells and lupine (though most of the lupine is not yet blooming).  There were also a number of flowers I couldn't identify.  Unfortunately my mother was not there to identify them for me.  She has a log of a walk she took around Green River Lake in 1991 where she identified and wrote down the names of more than 40 species of flowers.  I am still trying to learn mine.

Brown Mourning Cloak butterfly


All these wildflowers bring out my favorite insects, the pollinators.  I saw many monarch butterflies and a few of the more exotics.  I also saw and heard the buzz of many bees.  A giant bumblebee bumbled over to my orange ball cap and rode along with me contentedly for a few dozen steps.


Sweeney Creek Ford

Lodgepole deadfall crossing

Classic Pinedale landscape: sage, granite boulders, aspen, lodgepole

Sweeney Creek was raging with water.  I could hear the rapids well before I came upon the ford.  Last year some of my family and I backpacked to the Sweeney lakes from which this creek originates in early August and it was barely a trickle.  Right now I think it is a dangerous torrent.  I once took a girl hiking here and she lost one boot when we tried to cross the ford at a similar time of year.   We saw a recent mule deer placenta a short ways upstream of the ford.  This is certainly the time of year for the big game births.  I saw a pair of pronghorn kids on the drive out that appeared born very recently.  The doe allowed my truck to pass within just a few feet of her which is rare for this skittish species.

Just before crossing on a lodgepole deadfall, I walked across the remains of an ancient beaver dam.  It looked to cross the whole creek at about 80 feet long, and 4 feet high and wide.  They are truly an industrious species.  Sufficient sediment has built up behind the dam to create a great berm that is now sporting lodgepole saplings.

Tall thin stand of mostly dead lodgepoles

Ancient Beaver Dam Remains

Across the Sweeney Creek is the perfect place for timber harvesting, a large grove of dense beetle killed lodgepoles.  Tree pros jokingly describe such a place as being so available we could "fell 'em right into the truck bed".  In this case truly no log skidding would be required to harvest several dozen cords.  I might have risked the crossing with my truck and harvested here if I had done this hike before we had gathered logs for the gazebo. 

Here, as in most of Colorado, the rocky mountain pine beetle has done its damage and disappeared.  That lack of dead needles on any of the beetle kill indicates that they died several years ago.  Even in the worst hit stands it doesn't look like they took more than 50% here.  There are advantages to this so called scourge in that it performs natural stand thinning.  Lodgepole is an apex tree species so this allows many of the others to have a chance.  I saw one Douglas Fir surrounded by beetle killed lodgepole.  Since its competitors for water have died, the canopy of the fir looks full and vibrant.

Deep into the hike there is a giant lichen covered granite boulder that overlooks Half Moon Lake.  A large marmot has taken residence here and scolded me loudly when I ascended it to take a picture.  I made my intrusion short.

Half Moon Lake view from a boulder