May 10, 2013

Columbia River Gorge, Day 2:

Only her bulging eyes
hint at the pain this
snake feels after
being hit by a car.

The California Mountain Kingsnake. The only one I've
ever found. It's a shame it will almost certainly be dead
shortly.

Fence lizard on a fence. Living up
to his name.

This morning we left camp early to go searching for reptiles at Catherine Creek, on the Washington side of the gorge. On the way there, my Dad spotted a snake on the road, so we pulled over and a couple of us ran back to see what if Dad's guess of California mountain kingsnake was right. It was but, sadly, the reptile had already been hit by a car and was close to death. Externally, she appeared fine but the only movements she could make were slow writhing shoves of her coils. I gently moved her off the road, but I doubted she would live another hour. She was probably the most beautiful snake I'd seen up to that point, and its sad that it had to be a roadkill specimen.

Fence lizard on rock, not living up to
his name.

Do you think she's pregnant? This
ground squirrel's teats were swollen.

Driving on from there to the trailhead parking lot, we pulled out our "snake sticks" and trekked out poking our improvised paint rollers into holes and under logs. Soon, we were catching southern alligator lizards and fence lizards around the creek's edge.
We stopped for lunch at a large pile of timber and watched a large male fence lizard do pushups on the highest plank to impress his females. It was pretty impressive. A ground squirrel soon showed up on the stack as well. It almost seemed like she was trying to stalk the lizards. She would have taken food from us I think if we had given her any. Daniel, my brother, tried catching the male fence lizard but he was outwitted.
I was beginning to think we wouldn't see any living snakes today but, thankfully, that proved to be wrong. My brother, moving ahead while we finished lunch, soon made up for his humiliating experience with the fence lizard. Calling, he alerted us to a gopher snake that was crossing the path. Gopher snakes are a species that one really cannot get enough of. They have beautiful faces and beautiful personalities, and are extremely photogenic. I took plenty of pictures and handled it a little, but it seemed to be fairly aggressive for a gopher snake. It mustn't have liked my camera.

Isn't that the most beautiful face you've ever seen? I'm not sure what subspecies of gopher snake these are. They might even be hybrids between the pacific and great basin subspecies.

He's saying, "I'll bite you if you come any closer!" Of course, it's just a bluff. I picked him up and he didn't follow through.

Only a short ways further I caught a second gopher snake and this one was really cranky. Striking at my lens and lunging at the family when they got too close. It is amazing how each snake has it's own personality. They certainly aren't programmed robots. They are individuals with their own likes and dislikes. Though I was hoping for a more complacent individual, it's nice to see some good, old-fashioned fear of people in these two snakes.

Lupines in a pine grove.

This gopher snake was pretty cranky.

Can anyone tell me what kind of
wildflower this is?

More lupines.

The trail led us into a beautiful grove of deciduous trees and a variety of wildflowers sprang up from the grasses. It was a beautiful place and I employed my camera on the purples of the wildflowers. And nearly all of them were a shade of purple! I photographed lupines, paintbrush, blue-eyed grass (I think) and other species that I couldn't identify. One of the flowers had a pretty little flower longhorn beetle on it. While the young of this species bore into trees and feed on the wood, the adults enjoy feeding on the pollen and nectar of flowers.

This is a flower longhorn beetle on an
unidentified wildflower.

This must be an alpine paintbrush.

Mount Hood stands out behind the
Columbia River Gorge.

After some time of beating around in the lush forests in the Catherine Creek valley, the trail carried us out onto a bare hill for a better look at the at the Columbia River Gorge. It was amazing to think that, as we stood there in the blistering heat of the hill with only a few scant and withered pines around us, that we had just come out of a relatively lush forest. Looking toward Mount Hood and its frozen Eliot Glacier my eyes drifted down into the temperate rainforest that surounds the mountain and finally to the rocky basalt shores of the Columbia River. So much diversity in such a short span of distance.

Florescent lichen.

There was a beautiful piece of lichen on an old sun-dried pine log on the hill and, though I tried, I couldn't seem to capture exactly how brilliantly florescent it was with my camera.

A tiny taste of things to come.

The trail led us back into the valley shortly and I took a few more wildflower pictures and practiced using slow shutter speeds with my camera on water. The mossy rock amid the foaming stream made a nice shot, but scarcely compares to our next destination today.

For the second half of the day we explored the waterfalls of the temperate rainforest which plummet into the Columbia River. One of the first we stopped at was Horsetail Falls and, while it was difficult to get a good vantage point on the falls that would exclude humanity from the shot, I did get some beautiful shots of my family on the picturesque wall before the falls. The Upper Horsetail Falls, or Ponytail falls, are accessible by trail. We didn't hike to see that.

Horsetail Falls.

Multinomah Falls.

Top half of Multinomah
Falls.

Next was the famous Multinomah Falls with the classic bridge arching across the centre cascade. There were many people at the falls so it was inevitable that some pink shirts appear on the bridge in my shot. There is a trail that winds up the right side of the falls and permits one to stand on the bridge. This provided some great photo opportunities and made up for the crowded view down below. Multinomah is the tallest fall in Oregon at a total of about 620 feet.

Lataourell Falls.

Shepperd's Dell
Falls

Sheppard's Dell from a
different angle.

Honeysuckle. There are a variety of
wildflowers in the rainforest too.

Candy flower.

The Bridal Veil.

Closer to Bridal
Veil Falls.

We also stopped at the spectacular Latourell Falls. This was probably my favourite of the falls since it was the only one that truly dropped the whole distance (249 feet) without touching a stone. The curving rock walls behind the falls provide an epic backdrop to the volcanic natural history of the area. In some places, the basalt forms columns.

Some species of forget-me-not I
think.

Shepperd's Dell Falls was also difficult to photograph but I managed two good shots. One of these, higher up on the short trail to the falls, had a curious mossy curved branch which framed the falls splendidly, almost as if it had been put there on purpose. I wonder how many other hundreds of visitors have taken that exact shot.

Me at the Bridal Veil.

Roadkill pacific aquatic garter snake.

Our last stop today was Bridal Veil Falls. By then, it being late in the day, I had already suffered a pretty serious overdose of waterfall photography and not much was making me "wow" anymore. When I got to Bridal Veil, I started trying all kinds of crazy pictures and angles on the falls. I even had my brother take a picture of me at its base. Certainly it wasn't the most spectacular fall we'd seen, but it was probably the most photographed. On our way back to the car I came across another dead snake on the road. Once again, it was a species I'd never seen before in my life; the pacific coast aquatic garter snake. This was a major disappointment. Why are all the rare snakes roadkill? Maybe I'll have more blessing with snakes tomorrow.

An interesting angle on Bridal Veil Falls that illustrates the lush nature of the rainforest better than the nature of the falls themselves.