Desolation Wilderness IV - flora/ponderosa pine

My favorite conifer in the US, so far the world, is the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). They can become huge, living 300-600 years. They grow in elevations that I tend to enjoy most -- since I first learned of them in Colorado, I always thought of their home range as around 7,000 feet. But sources say it grows from sea level to about 9,000 feet.

Above all else, they invite a passerby to sniff them. When one pokes his nose into a furrow of the bark, he is rewarded with the smell of butterscotch (some say vanilla). 

Unable to capture the smell on film, this time, I bring you a photo of the photogenic female cone of the ponderosa. These lined the path in places of Desolation. It's hard to imagine there's a function of the 2-tone color of the inside of the scales on these cones. I wonder if that is just an effect from the materials used for that part of the cone. Or is it a pattern designed to have a certain effect on wildlife? Although I'm not sure, I believe they are wind pollinated -- in other words, they don't rely on birds or insects to move their pollen from male to female tree. So that would exclude any reason for the cone scales to attract the attention of a pollinator.

Ponderosa Cone, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

Desolation Wilderness III - flora

Wildflowers boomed in early July in Desolation Wilderness this year. I don't know whether this is typical for the area, but figure it probably is. High elevations yield snows into early June, and summer is brief, so it's game on once days lengthen. At just a few weeks past the solstice, the sun is hot, pollinators abound, and every new step yields a new flower.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the ability to look up this plant before leaving, and didn't bring any flower identification tools with me to Europe. And I am typing painfully slowly! So - I think the plant pictured below is a penstemon. This showy flower decorates the rocky hillsides and was very abundant. This one, situated next to an ancient down log, seemed to point both in the direction of the log's spiraling grain and the path we walked upon.

Penstemon and down log, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

And more ancient wood, this snag still of use to woodpeckers before it topples. I think these holes are the work of pileateds, although I am not sure if they hang out at high elevation. There were definitely hairy woodpeckers around, which also could have been responsible.


Woodpecker work, Desolation Wilderness, 2012.

Desolation Wilderness II - Panorama

I should not give away the name of this lake, our hostess for both nights we backpacked. Especially since a friend recommended this place. I will say that it's a woman's name that previously, I would never have thought to give to a daughter, if I ever have one. But, after this experience, I would reconsider. (OK, it's Middle Velma Lake.)

Middle Velma Panorama, July 2012.

This is a stitch of three photos that overlap about 15%, then were, digitally meshed with each other using Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor). You can tell it's three separate photos by looking at the borders -- seeing the curvature of the lens in each.  My coworker Lew discovered this program and we have used it for our site photos. We do photomonitoring at our restoration sites for a visual depiction of the sites' progression over time.  Taking a picture of the same site, from the exact same perspective over the years can yield staggering results.

This was shot at dusk. I got out the tripod and braved the mosquitoes, with every possible piece of my skin covered as protection against them.  My merino wool biking gloves that I brought in case of cold nights were essential.

 

Desolation Wilderness I - Day and Night

Perhaps each stunningly gorgeous and pristine area such as this should have so foreboding a name as this to keep it so: Desolation Wilderness. The next series of posts will be dedicated to the experience of backpacking in this fantastic place. 

To begin, the contrast of city living to wilderness camping is, well, day and night. What a welcome change. You must bring food, create your own water supply, pack out all of your waste (except that for which you dig a latrine pit), and use just your own legs for locomotion. You must plan diligently, prepare for worse than you expect, and work hard while there. But your payment is beyond generous, almost unfair and seeming undeserved. Every turn of the head will take your breath away if you're not careful. (That is, at this high elevation, if you have any breath left to take.) The silence is at times deafening -- and if you don't know what I mean, please let me try to explain. It is a phenomenon where your mind expects sound, since it nearly always detects it. You are so confounded that you hear nothing that you do, actually, believe that you've lost your hearing. Cover your ears and you will sense little difference.

Day and Night, Desolation Wilderness, July 2012.

And the visual experience, from plants to rocks, sky to water, wood to birds, is very difficult to capture. Tiny fragments captured on film will serve as just enough to remind me to go see and breathe the real thing, again and again.