Chama and the railroad

Moab adventures

So it's been about a week since I visited Moab, but time to catch up. I had four days off, which really translates to three days with travel, but I managed to jump from the Ephraim area to Moab area. I was still pretty tired after a full night's rest in a hotel, so when I made it to Arches in the afternoon I did more driving than hiking.

     I've been here before, because I remember taking pictures of some of the landmarks. But unlike Kirk and the Enterprise I don't always have to keep boldly going to brand-new places. Saw lots of col fins, petrified dunes, and (of course) arches. I ended up puttering around the Windows, walked up to the North Window and the Turret Arch. Turret Arch is definitely my favorite, mainly because to me it looks like the entrance to a Hutt Palace or some sort of hole-in-the-wall hideout from a Zane Grey.

Three Sisters at Arches

Turret Arch at Arches

North Window with a troop of people

After Arches I camped out on BLM land north of Canyonlands' Island in the Sky entrance. Island in the Sky is the most accessible of the Canyonlands' three districts, so there were people but not really a crowd like at Zion or Bryce Canyon. Again took it easy and focused more on the scenic drives and overlooks, absorbing the sprawling views and that eerie sense of depth that never really makes it through the pictures. Saw the Mesa Arch and enjoyed a breakfast of graham crackers at Grand View point. Packed it in after the afternoon got scorching and had the near mythical salad for lunch in Moab.

Two tailed side-blotched lizard near a Canyonlands overlook

Near the Mesa Arch overlook

Buck Canyon at Canyonlands

     In the evening I meandered down south and took another hotel in Monticello, setting up to trek into the Needles district the next morning. Didn't realize until I got down there that there's actually another National Monument down there, Bear's Ears, which was only created during the Obama administration. A park with already a weird and tangled history, it's new enough not to have any visitor center or facilities. So I ended up skipping it for now, and hopefully it'll survive current policies.
     Anyway, next day I took a leisurely morning drive into Canyonlands' Needles. It's a curious area that focuses less on the wide view and more on the up-close-and-personal view to the formations. I did way more hiking, saw an old granary at Roadside Ruin, skirted under mushroom rocks and an abandoned cowboy camp at Cave Spring, and clomped around the slickrock hills around Pothole Point. After picnicking back near Elephant Hill, I drove back to check out Newspaper Rock, a fascinating and detailed example of rock art.

Needles of Canyonlands, near Elephant Hill

Newspaper Rock

     So those are my park forays. Afterwards I was able to get in contact with the other techs and hold a rare, blue moon of an event. With all of us roving around it's almost impossible for all of us to be close enough and off work to meet up, and this time we actually managed it for half a day. It's kind of nice to be able to talk and get drinks and hang out with humans again after a couple of months of semi-isolation. We picked a helluva mosquito-ridden camping spot, but the rest was pretty good.

     Now I'm off again for a day and an office day, just enough for a shower and a soft bed. After this, I've got six transects to go. The end draws near...

Tough hitch

Since I'm a little behind on posting, I'll make this a quick set of posts. In brief, my past hitch was short but exhausting. All the sites needed a steep walk-in at way too early in the morning. Also plagued by high winds during the day and oppressively hot nights. I was to do one more grid before taking some days off, but after driving two hours over hair-raising roads I got stymied by one bad rocky slope. Couldn't get my car over it after rearranging rocks and retrying approaches, and in reflection if I hadn't been exhausted I wouldn't have even tried. Impractical to walk in from there, so I backed off and saved it until the next hitch.

View from campsite at Steve's Mountain site

Columbines at Steve's Mountain

So before that I managed to do some pretty grids, Steve's Mountain and Thickets. Steve's Mountain, from the shots above, was a nice break from the heat, getting me up into deciduous forests, fir forests, and montane meadows. Also oak thickets and steep slopes. And my backup grid to the impassable was Thickets, which also granted a nice camp spot on top of a sage ridge. Not actually that bad thicket-wise, but again with tortuous slopes mixed in with a little shrubbery, which does not go well.

Sage ridge from Thickets campsite

Wild roses (Woods' rose?)

Anyway, I did finish the sites, got a vacation, and currently back to work. I'll post about the vacation days when I can.

Three parks, three days

So I've managed to get a few days off unhindered by car repair. So what does a birder with spare time in southwestern Utah? Visit national parks, of course. So first on my list was to see Zion. Originally I'd planned to spend a few days exploring, but for all its beauty and majesty it's also incredibly overcrowded. The Park Service manages by restricting visitors to using shuttles, but it can still be a bit like waiting in lines at Disney World. Still a worthwhile trip. Saw a lot of big rocks, got some great views of mule deer, rock squirrels, yellow warblers, and waded a little into the park's main summer attraction "the Narrows". Finally ditched the crowds and meandered back to the visitor center on foot, and then ate a giant burger and drank a nice porter.

Zion's Court of the Patriarchs

Zion, heading along the Virgin River to the Narrows

Rock squirrel!

Mule deer near the Riverside Walk

So like I said, I was going to go back the next day to hike some of the longer trails. I could mostly blame the crowds, but I was also seized some laziness. Instead I slept in, and then journeyed north. I'd been around Cedar City, but I turned east on a little winding road up into the mountains to see Cedar Breaks National Monument. It's not a big place, and certainly not famous. They're pretty limited up there by the snow, so much so that most of the trails and the campground was still being fixed up or still snowbound. But it's a charming little place on the top of the world, cool air and alpine meadows and spruce, amber sand slopes and snowdrifts. I walked a little of the Sunset Trail, climbed over a couple of snowdrifts anyway. Spent a nice afternoon away from the heat of the dry desert valleys, and then headed out toward Panguitch and Bryce Canyon, camping the night near Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest.

Spruce forest in Cedar Breaks NM

The snow-covered slopes from Sunset View overlook

And today I finished the triad by touring Bryce Canyon National Park. I spent the morning hiking the Rim Trail to see the sights of the Amphitheater, where all of Bryce is laid open for the eye. It's been described as a cave without a roof, and there's certainly a merit to that. The "hoodoos", or pillars of curious sandstone, take on fantastic shapes. They are the forms of chess pieces, of trees, of bridges and arches, with names like Thor's Hammer and Queen Victoria. Afterwards, I had a picnic lunch and drove up the scenic drive, reaching the highest views in the park. The crowds and the thunderheads were rolling in later so, satisfied, I wandered the backroads to Cedar City. After a few days of adventure, I think I'll take the last day to be rather ordinary and get things ready for my next birding hitch.

Me and my face blocking the best of Bryce Canyon!

Bryce Canyon from Sunrise Point

Hoodoos of Bryce Canyon from Inspiration Point

North with the birds

I'm back in civilization again after a nine grid spree. After having fixed my tires and gotten things straightened out in St. George, I hit the road. Started out with a challenge, the first one I needed to backpack into. Although there were roads to get close, after awhile they deteriorated into tracks only a hard-core ATV or something could handle. Anyway I packed up everything I needed and hiked into the site the evening before. Not all that far, but two miles uphill wasn't exactly what I wanted to do at 3am in the dark. Set up with my bivouac bag and sleeping bag, and with the weather cooperating everything turned out fine.
     After that I started heading north, working in some hilly country outside of Kanarraville and Cedar City. The one in Cedar City had some crazy steep canyons, but on the plus side I could hang out in the library with all the other weird vagabonds. After that I headed out to Parowan Gap, remnants of an old waterway that became a library of petroglyphs. Lots of beautiful views and rolling sagebrush.

Petroglyphs at Parowan Gap

View of the Parowan Gap from one of my points

     I've been getting better at navigating hillsides, but it helps that I also ran into some good luck in grids. Parowan Gap, Lund Desert, and Desert Rat Grasslands all have been pretty flat and open, plenty of sweet sage.

Sunrise over the sage at Desert Rat Grasslands

My farthest ranging trip was out toward the Nevada border, not so far from Great Basin National Park. The drive to the Needles took me past old mining town, mountain ranges, and open country. Once in the Needles, I got back into pinyon-juniper slopes.

Pinyon-juniper slopes way out in the Needles

A species of buckwheat out by the Needles

     After a couple more near Beaver, which I got to name after fictional planets from an obscure science-fiction TV series (Ral Parthea and Tarn Vedra anyone?), now I'm relaxing in St. George. I've got four days off and plan to explore Zion, so more pictures should be forthcoming!

Weirdly, how I feel after changing a flat tire

The field technician's credo...

The Dark Side of the Shrub

As the title suggests, the first few surveys have been kind of rough. I swear I haven't been walking under ladders or whatever, but I've got a feeling I'm followed by a hundred little missteps.
     My first grid of the season is such a curse exemplified. I unwisely chose to attack the most remote of my sites first. I've driven my shared of forest service roads, but these tracks were perhaps the steepest, rockiest, and downright scariest bits I've ever driven. Couple that with sketchy maps and directions, and by the time I got to the site my nerves were fried. Normally I also ease into isolation, but this time it jumped me, so built up a little more anxiety. The next morning was a mixture of shrubby bits and steep hillsides, which led to a less-than-spectacular start. I did the survey well enough, didn't have any mystery birds or problems with the protocols. Driving to the next site I got another dose, ripped up a tire. Changed it in record time though.

From the cliffside of a shrubby grid, pretty if exhausting

     Since then it really hasn't been so bad. Still, definitely dominated by thick, stabby shrubs and steep hillsides. Stabby in that it easily through jeans and longjohns, leaving behind lots of little angry red scratches and pinpoints. My third grid was a decent walk-in before sunrise battling shrubs, and the rest of the grid was dogged by sulky weather and a few 45-degree scrabbles. As a brand new grid, I have the honor of naming it, but still debating their titles. "Dark Side of the Shrub," comes to mind, among "Shrub Wars: No Hope", "Return of the Shrub", "Attack of the Shrubs", "The Stabby Menace", "Revenge of the Shrub", "The Shrub Strikes Back", or "The Shrub Awakens". Looking forward to naming something "The Last Shrub". Hey, other people named their "Aspen Canyon of Hell" and "Thickets" (both of which I'm going to survey!). All our supervisors require is that is has no bird names or expletives.
     OK, I said it hasn't been so bad, and that's true. My most recent grid was a delight, after I boulder-hopped a stream and climbed out of a small canyon to get there. Mostly flat at the site and gloriously free of my unholy nemesis: desert holly.

Peter's Leap, the canyon at my nice grid

     I'm feeling sanguine again, owing to the two days I took off in St. George. Nice to be able to pick my own time off, even if we have a due date to get everything finished. Went into town to get new front tires, but also took the opportunity to research the rest of my grids, get some backcountry maps,  finish my paperwork, surf the internet, eat delicious food, sleep in a bed, take hot showers, and actually catch "Guardians of the Galaxy 2" in theaters. Saw the sights, or rather the sight, of St. George, the St. George Temple. Had a Mormon guy try to convert me, no juice. Pretty building though.

St. George Temple flocking with wedding-guests

This evening I drive into the site I put off, now that I'm rearmed with my spare tire and fresh groceries. I'm pretty sure it'll get easier (right?). To paraphrase Professor Challenger in a cheesy Lost World movie, "Science awaits! Unsheath the sword of intellect! Maybe bring a machete?"

Training with a new protocol...

When the experienced technician does it...

And we follow...

A new day, a new field season

It's May again, which means the bright new beginning of another field season. This year I've traveled to the majestic land of Utah, working for the Intermountain Bird Observatory (IBO), which collaborates on the larger project Integrated Monitoring in Bird Conservation Regions (IMBCR). If you wanted another bit of confusion, I'm actually hired by Boise State University, which is the home of IBO. Who or what I'm working for aside, the task is to travel southwestern and central Utah looking and listening for birds. Whatever I find can then help the project understand trends in bird diversity across public and private lands in Utah and ultimately the western United States.
     Exactly a week ago I arrived in Ephraim (locally pronounced EE-frem), to camp and begin IMBCR training. Besides myself there were the other two IBO techs, our two supervisors/coordinators, and about a dozen other birders from different organizations to learn the IMBCR protocols. The training went on through Saturday, so it's been a busy week. Mornings we visited different habitats and practiced point counts (bird surveys) and vegetation surveys. After a hodgepodge lunch, we'd head over to an obliging library for presentations explaining IMBCR goals, protocols, equipment, landowner communication, and potential field hazards.
     So now I've driven across the state to St. George, taking a day of rest before setting out to my first survey grids. Not entirely a vacation, since after this missive I'll be back to researching my sites. They're giving me a little anxiety, seeing as four out of five of them have never been visited. Which means I've got to figure out the best way to get there, where to camp, how long a walk to the site it'll be, if there's a giant cliff in the middle, where we don't have permission to go, where's the nearest gas, etc. Burning questions that won't really be answered until I get there. Just to be safe I think I'll survey the known site first, but in the mean time I'm going to get as much information from Google Earth and Google Maps as I can. Hope all goes well!

Sandstone formations near Dewey Bridge, northeast of Moab

Fellow birders trekking back to camp after morning practice

Me on the drive to Moab, with Colorado River to the right and the La Sal range in the distance

Moab landscape with sage, juniper, and pinyon pine

Side-blotched lizard caught near Moab by someone way better at "herping" than myself

A very patient eastern collared lizard caught by a lot of people herding it to and fro

Moonrise at dispersed campsite near the confluence of Dolores and Colorado Rivers

NEW SPECIES: Horned Lark, Indigo Bunting, Gadwall, Virginia's Warbler

Close Encounter: Golden Eagle on a fence post