April 20, Marys Peak
Kyle and I set out for the summit of Marys Peak on bikes from the closed road a few days before the road opened for the summer. We found plenty of snow on the shady north slope.
Willamette Valley
Kyle, in sandals, crossing a snowfield
Kyle in the last rays of sunshine.
Old growth explorations (4-26-09)
After noticing some old-looking trees on the east slopes of Marys Peak using Google Earth, I set out to explore down one valley and up another. The first valley was really steep, and I tried to avoid muddying the water since I was within the Corvallis protected watershed (the source of the city's drinking water).
Jungle and steep slopes.
Beautiful cascading stream.
Trillium!
Crawling down a log.
I found my ancient trees when the valley leveled out, and I spent a while there before following a grown-over logging road and climbing up to the main Marys Peak road through more old growth on steep slopes.
Setting transects with Ali, 5-10-09
I don't have many opportunities to do field biology anymore, but since I live with three field biologists I can occasionally help out. Ali wanted help stretching transects across his field site on the north side of Marys Peak.
Delicate-looking orchid in bloom.
Calypso Orchid, the most beautiful of our spring ephemerals.
Ali and his field equipment.
Lab instruments, 6-3-09
As part of my instrumentation class, we were assigned to study and report on some of the equipment in our lab. That gave me an excuse to take pictures of our apparatus.
Membrane-inlet mass spectrometer. Used to measure hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide production in real time. The cells are in the black chamber on the right, and the gases flow through the silver tube (and through the dry ice flask) into the vacuum chamber (all of the stainless steel parts). The triangular box on the left ionizes the gases, separates them by mass, and measures their concentrations.
Gas chromatograph. Gas samples from vials of cells are injected on the left and move through a long, very narrow heated column carried by a steady flow of argon. The gases are separated based on their interactions with the column lining, and they are detected by measuring the heat conductivity of the emerging gas mixture (different gases have different heat conductivities).
Middle Santiam Wilderness, 6-13 and 6-14-09
Ali, Kyle, and I were planning this hike for a while, but we all had various agendas for the day. The result was that we left home at 4 pm and, after finding the road to our trailhead permanently closed and finding an alternate route, starting our hike at 7 pm. We chose this area of the old Cascades for its old forest and its absence of snow - much of the high Cascades still had 3+ feet on the ground on this date.
Chimney Peak (4800 ft) through the clouds.
This is an amazing shot taken in a hurry. We were aiming for Donaca Lake as a campsite in the falling darkness, with barred owls beginning to call overhead. We crossed this beautiful stream, and I wanted a picture. It was quite dark already, so I steadied the camera on a rock and let it take a five-second exposure. Here is the surprising result!
Ali, Kyle, and an old-growth hemlock.
We camped near the lake, and barred owls called overhead for about two hours, at one point carrying on in a raucous chorus of competition, mating, or some phenomenon of owldom. The next morning brought much more old growth and this most interesting aspen swamp.
One of the unique swamp plants.
Stately Amanita mushroom. Ali says this is not one of the deadly Amanitas, but he still doesn't recommend eating it.
Wild iris.
Kyle and an old-growth tree. We could have counted rings here for most of an hour. Just based on the ring spacing and the diameter, I would guess this tree was at least 600 years old when it fell.
Parasitic orchids that feed off of underground mushroom mycelium.
Getting ready to filter water.
Filtering from a tiny ridgetop spring with a flow just barely sufficient to match my pumping.
Ali doesn't travel light when it comes to food, and he prides himself in his backcountry gourmet meals. This one was Ethiopian spicy lentils, coconut rice, and kale from our garden.