doggy ate the rabbit
Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 11:21 am
Tuesday, 1-24-2006, I drove up the 185 miles into the Sierra for a couple days of skiing. After a challenging day of making turns, I left the ski area and drove out to the Martin Meadow area on state highway 88. An hour before sunset, I put on my snowshoes and 30 pounds of large format camera gear plus tripod, then hiked about three-eighths of a mile and 100 feet uphill through sparse forest covered in 6 day old snow towards Castle Point. That took about 50 minutes to hike as each step sunk in a modest two to six inches. Not nearly as exausting as hiking in fresh snow but certainly worse than walking in sand. The Castle Point area at 8000 feet is covered by the same volcanic mudflow rock geology as much of this part of the Sierra. I'd never been out to this area in the past so did not know what to expect other than from my topo analysis the ridge would get unblocked late sunset light.
Sky was mostly clear but to the west, the valley was shrouded in fog and it appeared the marine air further west was heavy. I tramped around a bit but found little except this little jeffrey pine to aim my camera at. Further up on the ridge above Castle Point were some junipers I seen a decade ago but I found few in this area. The previous two days had been very windy turning the snow surface to weird sastrugi forms. It had snowed six days before and the sun across this windswept ridge had transformed the beautiful powder snow.
As I walked about, I noted some critter tracks, a coyote or less common red fox?
At the nearby ski area, I sometimes have surprised snowshoe hares, lepus americanus, in pure white winter coats, skiing through forest glades. And the sound of coyotes is common at night where I sometimes overnight up the road near Carson Pass. I stopped to take a closeup of the tracks then a short ways further came upon an area of red stained snow.
Near the bloody snow was a very fresh dog dropping. Lots of fine white hair littered the area. I noted what looked like a fresh rabbit dropping that had white hairs next to it. ...David
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Sky was mostly clear but to the west, the valley was shrouded in fog and it appeared the marine air further west was heavy. I tramped around a bit but found little except this little jeffrey pine to aim my camera at. Further up on the ridge above Castle Point were some junipers I seen a decade ago but I found few in this area. The previous two days had been very windy turning the snow surface to weird sastrugi forms. It had snowed six days before and the sun across this windswept ridge had transformed the beautiful powder snow.
As I walked about, I noted some critter tracks, a coyote or less common red fox?
At the nearby ski area, I sometimes have surprised snowshoe hares, lepus americanus, in pure white winter coats, skiing through forest glades. And the sound of coyotes is common at night where I sometimes overnight up the road near Carson Pass. I stopped to take a closeup of the tracks then a short ways further came upon an area of red stained snow.
Near the bloody snow was a very fresh dog dropping. Lots of fine white hair littered the area. I noted what looked like a fresh rabbit dropping that had white hairs next to it. ...David
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