Spring Wildflowers and Trout: Montana Awakes from Winter's Slumber

Our weather along the Continental Divide in southwest Montana has warmed but it's still very dry. On a recent family hike, dark clouds filled the sky and lightning flashed along the mountain ridges. But only a light rain graced the land, barely enough to make donning a jacket worthwhile. Outstanding sky, though, as with this "sun hole:"

Each spring at this time, I fish a small tributary of the upper Big Hole River. The main fare is brook trout--I like a mess or two dusted with cornmeal and fried, with a plate of sauteed dandelion greens on the side. Here's a tasty trout for the table:

The creek this year is lower than I have ever seen it in early May. Still, the rainbow trout are spawning (they run upstream from the larger river). I saw several very large fish (20"+) and caught a few nice ones, too--always exciting to hook up with a big fish in a stream you can jump across:

The high prairie, at first glance, looks desolate. But let's take a closer look. In this photo, you can see an arc of higher grass that defines part of a tipi ring:

Inside the ring, you can find buttery-yellow and blood-red flakes of jasper, knapped off by Indian sharpening their tools:

A friend I grew up with many years ago and with whom I've reconnected via FaceBook, suggested I try a test on the yellow jasper: heat it to see if it turns red. So on my way home from fishing I stopped at a local jasper mine used by Indians and picked up a few chunks of yellow jasper. Sure enough, at home in the kitchen over a gas flame, the heated yellow jasper turned red:

A close look at the bunch grass prairie also reveals many wildflowers.  Though they seem stunted by this spring's drought, there are many varieties to be found, including:
 
Hooker's Townsend Daisy (Townsendia hookeri):

Mountain Douglasia (Douglasia montana):

Cutleaf Daisy (or Dwarf Mountain Fleabane;  Erigeron compositus):

Sagebrush Buttercup (Ranunculus glaberrimus):

Wyoming Kittentails (Besseya wyomingensis): 

Pretty Shootingstars (Dedecatheon pulchellum), both purple:

and white: 

Sagebrush Bluebells (Mertensia oblongifolia): 

and Hood's Phlox (Phlox hoodii): 

Daughter Emily passed through on a cross-country drive to the East, so we set off on a family hike to a favorite place: 

It's near a now-abandoned ranch established c. 1900:

There are always interesting artifacts to be found (strictly catch and release): 

This is a calving area for elk, and they time their return for "green-up." Here are a few early arrivals (they begin calving here c. 20 May): 

Along the creeks and willows, a few white-tailed deer can usually be found: 

Molly-The-Dog enjoys the remaining snowfields, but they won't last long with another 80-deg F day or two:

See you in the hills! 
EcoRover out. 

High and Dry (and Cold): Butte, Montana Springtime

You would never know it's spring according to the thermometer, with daytime highs in the low 30s deg F and nights in the teens or even single digits. Still, the land tells us a different story. The quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) buds say, "Let's go!":

Mountain bluebirds are in the nesting boxes, though I don't know how they can possibly find enough bugs to eat with this weather:

Biscuitroots (Lomatium cous) are in bloom, though the cold weather has stunted them. Normally the stems are 4" or so, but these are like a dwarf variety, barely an inch long:

Bitterroots (Lewisia rediviva) are more plentiful than ever, and must have some sort of antifreeze in their tissues, for they seem totally unaffected by the cold:

Why are there so many bitterroots in the past few years on the hill behind my house, whereas 20 years ago I was hard-pressed to find even one? Walkerville (near Butte Montana) is part of a historic mining and smelting district, and was heavily polluted by a century of this industrial activity. I live in a recovering ecosystem. Many people seem to think you can just plant grass and flowers on minewaste, and the ecosystem will magically restore itself. Like many things in nature, it's not that simple or easy. My botany expert friends, Grant Mitman and Martha Apple, tell me it's all about the moss as a critical step in making the way for vascular plants:

In the photo above, you can see the bitterroot rosette poking up through the moss, apparently supplying the nutrients and micro-climate the plant needs. The photo below tells an even bigger story. There is the bitterroot rosette and the moss, but also some cottontail rabbit droppings, dried spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) stems and seedheads, and a chunk of milky quartz. Quartz veins were blasted by miners in search of silver and gold; knapweed came as invasive weed (perhaps even planted intentionally as ground cover) when nothing else would grow; and the rabbits and native forbs have come as the most recent stage in this process of biological and historical succession:

Here's MollyTheDog in a snowy spot where quartz was blasted out of the ground. Appropriately enough, this is called a "dog hole:"

Despite the cold weather, it has been exceptionally dry. We even had a little grass fire (a rare spring event) in the hills out back:

Walking in these hills behind my house a few nights ago, I yipped back and forth with a pack of coyotes. To my surprise, a booming howl came rolling down from a higher, timbered ridges a mile to the north. Hmmm... that's interesting. So I hiked up that way a day later, and lo and behold found wolf tracks in scattered patches of snow. This is the first time I have seen wolf sign so close to the town--usually, they stay back 5 or so miles:

We also ran into small herd of mule deer; their numbers seem to have increased markedly near Butte in recent years, which helps explain the wolf:

On a rare warm, sunny day, Mrs Rover and I took in the soothing waters at Boulder Hot Springs, a half-hour to the north:

On another of those rare warm days, I got out for a few hours of fishing (and a few trout) on the Jefferson River with little brother A.J.:

Well, as they say about Hell and North Dakota, "It's not spring yet, but you can see it from here."

Springtime in the Rockies: The Snowshoe Rabbit Moon

Spring is coming to Butte America, my home in the northern Rockies. Weather has been colder than average, we seem to be paying for the very mild winter. Still, it's warm enough to hike on the snow-free hills of the lower Big Hole River (see http://ecorover.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-spring-hike-in-montanas-high-desert.html ), while at the same time the snow base on the hills just north of my home has set up, making for excellent -- and true -- cross-country skiing. The Snowshoe Rabbits (yes, I know, Lepus americanus is a actually a hare) are much more active now and seem to appreciate the endless terrain that is now open to them: 

Given the ability to ski anywhere, trails at The Moulton are merely a suggestion. Still, it was nice to run a "trifecta" one morning on the area's greatest trails--Buzzy, Big Nipper, and Yankee Boy: 

The good base makes for easy travel on Big Flat (aka "Moonlight Flat"), with great views to my little city of Butte and to the Pintler Mountain Range: 

Big Flat is a fun place to skate ski, although I can't keep it up too long on my heavy "back country" Fischer E99s:

A small ridge north of Cabin Meadow has open terrain and a slope just right for my downhill ability. Note the darker green, Douglas-fir ( Pseudotsuga menziesii ) on the upper slope vs. the lighter green, Lodgepole Pine ( Pinus contorta ) on the lower slopes: 

Many of our Lodgepole Pines are dead, killed by the global-warming exacerbated outbreak of Mountain Pine Beetles ( Dendroctonus ponderosae ). Luckily, lodgepoles are prolific and lot of seedlings are sprouting up to replace the lost generation:

Coming off the ridge, I enjoy making a few telemark runs, and find it easy on spring snow compared with the earlier season's deep powder that causes me to flounder: 

This month's full moon, which I like to think of as the "Snowshoe Rabbit Moon," will light up the snowy hills (view from by backyard): 

OK, let's go night skiing. Maybe my last ski of the season, though--the trail back down to the parking lot was super ICY, scraped a season's worth of wax from my skis!:

 Well, time to start trout fishing. Stay posted. Happy Easter!

A Spring Hike in Montana's High Desert Hills

Cross country skiing down a steep, ungroomed runof Buzzy Trail at The Moulton last week, I made the turn at the bottom, took in a deep breath, and looked up at the azure blue Big Sky. I love to ski and am fortunate for having legs that have served me well into middle age and for having a excellent trails virtually in my backyard. Still, I have skied about 50 days since late November and was ready for a hike in snow-free hills. 

Spring is early this year in Butte America. Already, on the hill behind my home in Walkerville, the snow is nearly gone, the frost is leaving the ground, and tiny bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) rosettes are beginning to green up:

My friend Dave and I, with Molly- and Jack-the-Dog in tow, headed for the high, sagebrush desert hills of the lower Big Hole River. The elevation is about 6,000 feet -- approximately the same as Butte -- but mountain ranges such as the Pioneers (shown here, with Torrey Mountain and Tweedy Mountain, the two most prominent peaks) create a rain shadow so the area is very dry--less than 10 inches of precipitation per year:

It's good Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep habitat, and we were barely parked and on our way when these three young rams ambled past:

Closer to the river, the carrying capacity for wildlife increases greatly, and it's common to see herds of Pronghorn Antelope:

The aridity means that bones, such as this rabbit skull, persist for a long time (note also the red-orange lichen that is common here): 

Luckily for the dogs, there are still some patches of snow that offer a welcome respite on a warm afternoon:

Limestone dominates the geology. Over time, the sedimentary layers have been lifted and tilted, and because it erodes easily, this makes for interesting patterns on the landscape:

Up close, the limestone proves equally interesting, sometimes eroding into feathery plates:

And sometimes showing a limestone conglomerate structure:

Though this area is very dry today, during the Pleistocene glacial periods from 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 or so years ago, it was very wet and experienced large run-off events during interglacial warming periods. At the mouth of coulees, the wash of sediments created alluvial fans:

Vegetation sorts out into very specific niches that you can read from a high vantage point like a book. Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), "a desert plant in search of water," likes the deeper alluvial or glacial till deposits. Curly-leaf Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius), a favorite food of mule deer and bighorn sheep, is a limestone-loving shrub. Here you can see the sagebrush on alluvial deposits in the foreground, and mountain mahogany on the limestone outcrop in the back:

A desert shrub, Curly-leaf Mountain Mahogany is remarkably good at weaving its roots into the limestone's joints and bedding-planes:

Dave and I like climbing the limestone ridge outcrops or "reefs" that define the landscape here:

At the top of this one, we found an old, well-aid, cairn--a "Stone Johnnie." Basque sheepherders that tended flocks throughout this region a century ago built these stone piles to mark their grazing routes:

Well, the corned beef is in the oven, and it's time to start the cabbage and potatoes. I wish I could recall all of the poem Gramps used to recite each year on this day, but a few lines went,
   "He drank like a fish
    And ate like a savage.
    The only thing he didn't like,
    Was corned beef and cabbage."
Happy St Paddy's!