Musings from Mark

The inversion (warm and clear skies above, cold and cloudy in the valley) has now persisted for eight days, with one more day predicted tomorrow before rain moves in with enough wind to mix the air.  We might see some freezing rain at first with the cold air still trapped at the valley floor.  Temperatures have gradually been cooling in Corvallis, with the last three days failing to rise above freezing.

I made it my goal to get above the inversion at least once each day.  With the cloud tops around 1400 feet, that didn’t prove too difficult. On Friday I set out on bike for McCulloch Peak (2155 ft.), the closest 2000-ft. mountain to town.  The gravel roads have grades of around 16%, forcing me to stop frequently for air despite pedaling in first gear.  (Wider mountain bike tires would probably help as well.)

Semi-obstructed southward view from McCulloch Peak.

From there I descended to a saddle at 830 ft before climbing much gentler 8-10% grades to Dimple Hill (1493 ft), a high point on the north edge of town with a broad south-facing meadow.  With the cloud tops just below me, I appeared to be on the edge of an inland sea.  Perhaps this is what the view would have been like 30 million years ago, when the Willamette Valley was a large marine bay similar to today’s Puget Sound.

Southwest from Dimple Hill. Marys Peak and a companion mountain are on the right of the pass over which Hwy 34 travels to Alsea. Flat Mountain (see below) is among the lower mountains in the center.

Straight south toward Eugene. Coast Range on the right, Cascade foothills on the left.

I followed mountain bike trails down from Dimple Hill, finishing at OSU after 20 miles and over 3000 vertical feet.  Definitely a good workout.

On Saturday I opened my GIS program in search of more highpoints, and settled on the closest 2500 ft+ mountain to Corvallis: Flat Mountain in an area I’ve never explored – a heavily logged mosaic of BLM land and private forests to our southwest.  The roads proved to be surprisingly passable, with minimal snow until the last quarter mile to the top, which we decided to hike.

Marys Peak from a different angle, looking northwest.

Three Sisters! We could see (just barely) all the way to Mt. Rainier.

Mark on Flat Mountain. The top is a bulldozed loading area for logs, and the northern slopes were recently clearcut - not great from an ecological perspective but good for views. The island just left of my head is Dimple Hill, and McCulloch Peak is the highest point farther to the left.

Moon! It's been about 10 days since we've seen it down in the valley.

Layers of blue looking toward the coast. The coastal valleys are also cold under the same inversion, but without the clouds and fog.

Last night we slept in our friends’ cabin near Alsea, cozy warm thanks to the woodstove despite a crisp 20-degree night.  In the morning we woke to find everything covered in heavy frost – ice crystals up to an inch long.

Frosty morning.

Ice formations on grass blades.

Unfortunately for those who enjoy sun and warmth, the Willamette Valley is prone to inversions.  This means that on the ~30% of winter days that it isn’t actually cloudy or raining, the valley is often trapped in cold, clouds, and fog while the mountains bask in springlike weather.  About once a year or so, this process gets really carried away.

The last time this happened was on December 17, 2011, when at 2:15 pm Corvallis had 39 degrees while the top of Marys Peak had, briefly, 75.6 degrees.  I don’t entirely trust that number, as there was no wind at the time and it’s possible the sun was adding a few extra degrees.  If we accept the numbers, that was a 37-degree inversion.

This week has been setting up as a similar pattern.  Subsidence (sinking air) high in the atmosphere warms as it descends and compresses, creating an odd warming-in-place with no big south winds required.  The sun is the ultimate source of the energy, but in this case sun-warmed air rose and cooled far away, drifted over our region, then settled under high pressure and warmed again.  At the surface, especially in mountain-bounded valleys, cold air is trapped beneath the warm air aloft, condensing into fog and clouds and preventing any sun-driven warming.  Without significant wind to mix the air layers, this pattern can persist for many days, with endless gray and 30-34 degrees in Corvallis.

Looking at the weather models, today looked to be a pretty good repeat of that day exactly 13 months ago, so I determined to leave work early and pursue the Marys Peak summit.  As it happened, at 2:30 pm the temperature on the mountain reached 73.0 degrees, while my weather station recorded 33.  That’s a 40-degree inversion, a record in my time here and like nothing I have seen weather-wise back in Minnesota.

Getting up the mountain proved a bit of a challenge, as my plan was to drive as far as possible, then ski.  There were two miles of road around 3000 feet that were good for neither driving nor skiing – bare pavement interspersed with deep snow.  I managed to make it to 3300 feet in the Subaru making full use of four-wheel drive in slushy ruts, though I did get stuck twice trying to turn around at the top.  I brought a shovel with that in mind, and with the snow not quite deep enough to get high-centered I got out fairly easily.

Spinning up the ruts on the last two miles.

I'm actually parked on a paved road here.

I stepped out of the car into summer – around 60 degrees and warm enough that I could comfortably ski in just a shirt and pants.  The first section was sticky with fallen fir needles and cones, but skiing conditions were pretty good closer to the summit with a thin layer of soft melting snow over a firm base.

Road peering through between drifts. I wish the Forest Service would close the upper gate to keep out the big rigs and preserve the road for skiers.

Unmarked snow near the base of the summit meadow.

Skiing the wide-open meadow is a joy. It was soft on ascent but crusted over when I came down after sunset.

4:00 pm. 66 degrees at the summit (though it felt a bit more like 56 down on the snow). Looking over the sea of clouds that is the Willamette Valley, to Mt. Hood (left, 109 miles), Mt. Jefferson (center, 87 miles), and the Three Sisters (right, 91 miles).

The air was about as clear as I have seen it - I could just make out Mt. Rainier, 184 miles distant. I'm not sure if it's ever possible to see Mt. Shasta (224 miles) or if the Earth's curvature prevents it.

A self-portrait attempt at Kelly's "uncle Dave pose."

West toward Table Mountain (top level with the ocean) and the Pacific Ocean horizon.

Sunset with atmospheric lensing (light reflecting off of the inversion boundary) flattening the sun.

The atmospheric lens effect kept the sun appearing on the horizon long after it had actually set. Here the last rays are about to disappear, a full 10 minutes after the last photo.

The ruts were deeper going down as both I and a big jeep had dug into the soft snow going up. I'm not sure I could make it back up in this state. Might have to hike next time, or wait for new snow to ski this stretch.

Drove back down into cold cloudy winter, where Ebba and John had delicious homemade pizza waiting.  As I write this (11 pm) it is still 54 degrees on the summit, 31.7 down here.

Despite mostly rave reviews, Cloud Atlas has failed to pull in much money at the box office.  That seems a shame for a big-budget movie with a cast full of famous actors that also happens to be the best movie I have ever seen and the only movie I have seen twice in the theaters in one week.  It is also the only movie that had tears running down my cheeks for about 20 minutes.  So, my small audience of perhaps three, give the Wachowskis some of your money and prove to Hollywood that we the people are willing to support more than just superhero, vampire, and pirate stories.

Cloud Atlas is a movie unlike any other.  It weaves six equally stunning narratives set in three past times, one present, and two future times into a plot that is ultimately about the interconnectedness of human lives, and the ways in which all of our actions and choices are both influenced by the past and influence the lives of those in the future.  There is something about the premise that every action is meaningful and interconnected that rings true to my soul and touches my heart more than any simple love story ever could.

There is no time travel, with all of its impossible paradoxes, but there is an undercurrent of reincarnation, suggested by having the same actors play different roles in different times, and especially by Tom Hanks who plays a murderous doctor in 1849 but overcomes his demons to become a hero in the far distant future (~2342).  The movie also manages to incorporate plenty of action (and some fighting) without becoming dualistic.  Each period has its dark characters (many played by Hugo Weaving i.e. Elrond, Agent Smith), but there is no coherent evil that stretches across time.  Rather, we see that even when lives end without apparent resolution, the grand story marches onward and the products of all lives become woven in.

Story aside, Cloud Atlas is a cinematic work of art, showcasing the flexibility of its actors as well as beautiful sets and Matrix-esque action in the future scenes.  Parts of it will have you laughing, parts will have you crying, and if you watch closely you will notice both the endless web of interconnections (follow the blue stone and the birthmarks) and some Easter Eggs (future movies in “3x4x3D”, future religion whose deity was birthed by a “god o’ smart named Darwin”).  Andy and Lana spent $100 million putting this together, and so far they’ve only got about half of that back.  So treat yourself to a life-affirming three-hour masterpiece and support one of the few truly visionary teams of directors in Hollywood.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog; sorry to those who have been checking!

Our summer drought (only 0.12″ of rain between July 1 and October 12) came to an abrupt end, with nearly continuous rain since October 13.  We had nearly 5″ of rain from November 17-21, with 24 hours of high winds along the coast.  The highest reported gust was 114 mph up in Washington, with 97 mph at Marys Peak.  I drove up the mountain to experience 83 mph wind in driving rain and found it quite exhilarating!

Elizabeth’s parents John and Glena drove up for Thanksgiving.  Our dinner goal was to highlight as many garden foods as possible.  All of our veggies were home-grown.

• Grilled salmon
• Stuffing (with garden celery)
• Garden beets
• Roasted carrots and parsnips with coriander and marjoram
• Roasted potatoes and garlic with rosemary, thyme, and oregano
• Roasted onion and salsify with garden hot peppers
• Roasted oca with butter-orange glaze
• Kale with chanterelles and green beans
• Frozen corn-on-the-cob
• Quince pie
• Acorn squash pie
• Glena’s cookies
• Mark’s Marionberry mead

Quite delicious!

No, not the events that we all are watching these days, but the Olympic Mountains of northwestern Washington where I spent last weekend hiking with Steve and Nora.  We did two overnight, 9-10 mile trips, the first one along the ocean and the second in the high mountains.

It was about 200 miles from Olympia, where I got off the train, to Ozette Lake in the far northwest corner, but when we got there we found at least a hundred cars in the parking lot.  It seems to be a popular spot.  We set off for Sand Point, planning to hike three miles up the coast to Cape Alave at low tide.

Looking north from Sand Point.

There are very steep trails with ropes leading over headlands for use during high tide.  The tide was plenty low to go around, but we decided to try the ropes for the challenge of it.

And in the fire appeareth the tablet which bore the Commandments...

Nora scrambling down from the headland.

Petroglyphs at Wedding Rocks

Sunset from Cape Alava.

The coast in this area is strange – narrow rocky beaches above a half-mile-wide platform of rock that is exposed at low tide and connects the mainland to rocky islands covered with trees.  The next morning we had an exceptionally low tide, so we explored out among the rocks.

A creature waiting for the tide to rise.

We hiked out as the weather warmed, becoming a bit uncomfortable for backpacking.  This was a good day to be up north, as it was 99.3 in Corvallis but only low- to mid-80s where we were.

After stopping in Port Angeles to replace my crapped-out water filter, we drove up the constant-grade Hurricane Ridge road to 5000 feet, then turned off on an eight-mile cliff-hugging one-lane gravel road to Obstruction Point at 6100 feet.  From there we started a 9-mile loop down Badger Valley, up Grand Valley, and along a ridge back to the car.

Looking down Badger Valley from 6100 feet.

Western Pasqueflower, Anemone occidentalis, in an area recently melted out.

Wildflowers!

Tiger Lily, Lilium columbianum.

The lowest point of our hike, crossing Badger Creek at 4100 feet.

We camped at Grand Lake, a most beautiful spot inhabited by four deer (two does, one buck, one fawn) that had become accustomed to humans and continuously poked around the edges of our camp.

Grand Lake in the moonlight, 60-second exposure.

One of the too-tame deer at our campsite.

Veratrum viride, Indian Hellebore or Corn Lily, a plant that brings back fond memories of Colorado.

Grand Lake in the morning sun.

As we hiked out, we made a side trip to Moose Lake, another popular camping spot, where we found this goat munching on alpine grass.

Mountain Goat!

We knew we had 1500 feet of climbing ahead, but we didn’t know it would all happen in less than a mile, about 10-15 exposed switchbacks in the hot sun.  I drank through about 2 1/2 liters of water on the climb and realized that I’m a bit out of shape.

At the top of a grueling 1500-foot climb in less than a mile.

Crossing the snow at 6400 feet.

Looking southeast towards Mount Constance.

Looking southwest toward Mount Olympus.

Mount Olympus, at 7980 feet the highest mountain on the Olympic Peninsula.

High plateau.

Upon arriving back at our car, we made our way back to Olympia, stopping at Port Townsend and at the Fish Brewery.  We made it to the station about two minutes ahead of the train.

My blog has fallen silent, or so it seems.  I have quite a backlog of photos which may never get posted – more spring wildflowers, a hike in Opal Creek Wilderness with Kelly, the annual morel hunt adventure (we found 10 pounds!), Elizabeth’s and my birthdays, Oregon Country Fair, and a few more.

With summer comes long evenings, so we tend to eat around 8 pm and by the time dishes are done it is 9:30 – not much time for blog posting before bed.  But as the days grow shorter (already it is getting dark around 9), I hope to post more regularly.

We’ve enjoyed lots of free fruit, courtesy of John’s connections with university fruit researchers and Liz’s access to “reject” produce from the co-op.  So far we have a blackberry mead and a cherry mead fermenting.  Sadly not with our own honey, as it looks like we won’t have enough for mead this year.

Vigorous fermentation of blackberry mead. 3 gallons fresh blackberry juice, 1 gallon fresh honey from Ethan, 2 gallons water.

Speaking of honey, here’s a shot of our growing collection of beehives.  That’s three caught swarms and three from purchased bees.

Our six beehives, four of which are doing very well.

The annual da Vinci Days was last weekend, and I was busy explaining hydrogen to hordes of small children (who mostly just though the remote-control cars were cool) and their parents.  Our Hydrogen Trailer demonstration now has a sweet aerodynamic cover.

The Hydrogen Trailer, as displayed at da Vinci Days. Hydrogen stored in blue tanks, converted to electricity by fuel cell (black box) which supplies power to inverter and electric motor on bike.

Ed has been asking for a garden report for some time.  Here you have it, as of July 17.

Winter squash and potatoes, east of house.

Tomatoes, ground cherries, cucumbers in west bed.

Summer squash, blueberries, blackberries, dying raspberries.

Summer squash and peppers, eggplant, watermelon under plastic.

Artichokes and asparagus.

Greenhouse. Basil, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes.

Middle beds: strawberries, herbs, carrots, beets, parsnips, lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage, fava beans.

Lettuce, beets, parsnips, salsify in middle beds.

South end of north beds: lettuce, celery, kale, bush beans, onions.

Northeast beds: garlic almost ready to harvest, fava beans getting to the end of harvest.

North end of north beds: tomatoes, dry beans, pole beans, tall snap peas, sweet corn.

We get 1-2 thundershowers a year.  This one had some dramatic lightning, though nothing special by Minnesota standards…

Thundershower over the sunset, 7/19.

Elizabeth has been talking about getting ducks for some time, and we finally decided to do it, buying six Ancona ducklings from Boondockers Farm up near Portland.  I built a larger brooder box to keep them safe from raccoons and the two skunks we’ve been seeing around the property.  A day later they were joined by 16 chicks (our meat birds for this year), and there are 15 more chicks coming that we will be raising for Jesse and Eva.  Oh and two turkeys, but not until August 14.

My new brooder box for chicks, 7/26.

Lid lifted with pulley system.

Ducklings! Six Ancona ducklings and sixteen Red Ranger chicks.

Aren't they cute?

Geese! John's project, possibly our Thanksgiving dinner.

June 5th, in addition to being Elizabeth’s birthday, was the date of a most-rare astronomic occurrence: a “transit” of Venus across the Sun.  Every 1.6 years Venus “laps” Earth, passing between us and the Sun.  This is known as an inferior conjunction.  Since the two planets orbit in slightly different planes, most of the time this conjunction is out of alignment and Venus passes well above or below the Sun as seen from Earth.  The orbital planes intersect at two “nodes”, and when inferior conjunction occurs at a node we see Venus pass in front of the Sun – a transit.

The last transit of Venus was in 2004, but the next will not happen until 2117.  That means that most humans born in the next few years will never see it.  I taped two shade-12 welding lenses to the front of my binoculars as a solar filter, and I was amazed to see not only the dot of Venus but also five sunspots.  The transit lasted six hours and was still in progress as the sun set.

Sony SLR camera with 300 mm telephoto, shade 12 welding filter, 1/2500 sec, F/16. A bit dark but my sharpest photo of the sun. Five sunspots are visible.

Panasonic camera, shot through filtered binoculars. Impossible to get sharp focus. 1/2000 sec, F/6.3. 3:55 pm.

1/125 sec, F/6.3 with Panasonic camera through filtered binoculars. Close to sunset, 8:20 pm. Note how far Venus has moved.

We also stopped by campus to peer through two telescopes set up by the physics department.  One had a huge magnification and the other had a hydrogen-alpha filter that showed prominences around the solar margin.  Impressive, though I rather liked my binocular view.

Venus is almost as large as Earth, and it is 1/3 of the way to the Sun.  If Venus and the Sun were the same distance the Sun would be three times larger relative to Venus.  That is friggin’ huge!

The honey flow, that is.  That’s beekeeper-speak for the time of year when nectar is sufficiently abundant that bees can collect more than they need on a daily basis.  Around here the main “flow” is blackberries, and they are just starting to bloom.  Standing at the hives I watched about 20% of the bees head straight south, toward our main blackberry patch (though I imagine some of those bees went much farther south).

Blackberry pollen is gray, as you can see in these photos.  Pollen comes in many colors in addition to the typical golden yellow.  In the past couple of weeks I’ve seen bees with pollen baskets that are bright orange, deep red, lemon yellow, brown, blue-gray, and almost black.  A few plants even produce bright blue pollen, though I haven’t seen any blue-basketed bees at our hives yet this year.

About 20% of the bees are heading south, but at least half make a bee line to the northeast.  Wanting to see what might be that direction I stepped over the fence into the neighbor’s pasture and found a solid field of white clover and daisies.  The bees should have plenty to eat these days, and I’m hopeful they will produce at least a little bit of surplus honey…

If you tried to check my blog last week, you probably saw an error message.  The site was down as I transferred luterra.com from Chris’s webhost to my own, replacing the now-defunct StoneConnection.net.

Last Sunday we set out to explore a wilderness area that isn’t too far away but that I had never been to.  Drift Creek Wilderness, small by wilderness standards, encloses a roadless, unlogged parcel of coastal rainforest.  It is split in two by Drift Creek – more of a river than a creek – which is impossible to cross except in late summer when it is low.  We hiked the southern (Harris Ranch) trail, and hope to return to the northern section sometime soon.

The trail was largely overgrown by salmonberry bushes, all in bloom and attracting the attention of hummingbirds.  The orange berries are not as delicious as some but are quite edible.  Wilson’s Warblers were the bird of the day, singing out over the bramble patches.  The forest is very old, but in this section the giant trees were few and far between – perhaps a testament to the winter storms and fires that keep the forest in succession.

We found four Torrent Salamanders along the creek, two of which were in the act of mating.  These critters are unique to fast-flowing streams in old-growth forests, and I had never seen them before.

All in all, a beautiful place to explore, and a spot to return to in salmonberry season…

I couldn't identify this plant.

Salmonberry, Rubus spectabilis

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Skunk Cabbage, Lysichiton americanum

Torrent Salamander (Rhyacotriton sp.)

Drift Creek

Shoe butterflies (cerulean blue with their wings open)

Old-growth forest

We returned in time to pick up a package of bees from a local beekeeper.  We shook them into the hive that died out over winter.  With drawn comb and about 50 lbs of honey, they should get off to a good start!

We had 80 degrees today, almost a record high and the third in a string of summerlike beautiful clear days.  The solar tank reached 161º yesterday, enough for about 20-25 minutes of showering.  Our bees were out in force, pollinating our pear blossoms and just-now-opening apple blossoms.  We are planning to till part of the garden tomorrow evening, ahead of the next batch of rain.  Wednesday on will bring more springlike weather, and a continuation of our wetter-than-usual pattern.

Yesterday (Earth Day) we joined Kelly and Rachael for a hike on a new (for me) trail behind Bald Hill, rumored to be good for wildflowers.  That proved to be very true, and it was also good for birds – singing yellow warblers, acorn woodpeckers, a gray jay, and a Bewick’s wren, among others.

Siberian Miner's-lettuce (Claytonia siberica)

Hooker's Fairybells (Disporum hookeri)

Western Trillium (Trillium ovatum) turning pink with age

Our species of trillium turns pink to purple as the flowers age.  We found these bluebuttons right across the trail from a patch of Calypso orchids.  At Kelly’s suggestion, we discovered that fairyslippers have a most delicious fragrance, noticeable only at close range.

Bluebuttons (Cynoglossum grande), also known as Hound's-tongue

There are several species of parasitic orchids in the forests out here, of which the striped coralroot is the most beautiful.  They have no leaves, no green parts whatsoever, and appear as flower stalks in spring.  They obtain energy by feeding off the roots of other plants.

Striped Coralroot (Corallorhiza striata)

Fairyslipper (Calypso bulbosa)

I took a lot of good photos of Calypsos, and it was hard to choose one for the blog.  The photo above is a good one to view full-screen.  I’m still very much a fan of the Lumix camera, though it now has some dust on internal lenses that appears as specks in some shots.

Finally, we have the western version of waterleaf, one of the spring flowers I grew up with blooming in early May behind Valley House.  Here it is not so common, and found in wet areas near streams.

Pacific Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum tenuipes)