People said that the rain would come this fall, and it is finally here! This weekend we are getting three days of rain. After finishing the Tahoe Rim Trail this past weekend, it is almost a reward to get to relax and stay at home. It is also nice to get the chance to use my umbrella and raincoat that I brought all the way from the east coast. Going out in the field next week should be interesting after a few inches of rain. We have mainly been working on water rights and juniper mapping for the past month. Our first snow on the mountains in town came on September 22, and we got to experience snow in Desolation wilderness on a backpacking trip over the first weekend of October. Earlier in October, we also got the chance to help run a session on pH and DO water sampling at the Lassen County Youth Camp for 6th graders. It was really fun to spend the morning with the kids and try to understand where all of their energy comes from. This was my second time at the camp, since the week earlier I had helped at the previous session with a binocular walk to look for birds. Lassen County Youth Camp is located on the east side of Eagle Lake, and is down a very long, bumpy road. The kids all walk in the last 4 miles because the road is so bad that buses won’t go down it. Even though the funding for the camp has been cut, there are still a few determined teachers who get help from parents and figure out a way to make the camp happen for a few days in the fall. While the kids are at camp, their studies focus on science curriculum and they have the opportunity to attend guest programs from people with the forest service, Cal fire, and other natural resource organizations. Over the past few weeks we have also packaged all of our seed and sent it to Bend. We have also packaged all of our herbarium vouchers. It is very satisfying to have completed our collections. All that remains now is to send in our photos.
A few weeks ago we went out to rake Atriplex seed in to the ground. The 4-winged saltbrush is a great forage plant, and a local rancher had given the BLM 6 large bags of seed. It was hard to find suitable locations for the seed, which was collected at around 5,000 ft. Hopefully it will germinate in the locations where we raked it in. The same day we were out scouting for sites, we found cows had been let in to an upland plant exclosure. Apparently ranchers will drive by, see their hungry looking cows, open the gates and then blame it on the hunters. We had fun chasing cows out of the exclosure; they knew they weren’t supposed to be in there, but who knows when someone will open the gate again. Last week we went to the pine dunes past Ravendale. Sand dunes formed in the middle of the sagebrush basin plant community from an ancient lake that dried up. There are Washoe and ponderosa pines up to 100 years old in this rare community, but there has not been reproduction in the pine stand recently. We walked the perimeter of the fence exclosure, which unfortunately had been cut in several places, and picked up cones that will be checked for viability. There was an eagle nest in one of the pines, and we got a chance to see it fly over us while we were walking in the dunes. The trip to the pine dunes was especially memorable because on our first attempt we ended up getting the truck stuck in the sand. To our surprise, a small kitten managed to find us out in the middle of no where, it must have come from one of the small houses out on the nearby road, and stayed with us until the BLM fire crew came to help us out. It was pretty skinny, so it probably would have died after a few more 30 degree nights if we had not happened to cross paths out in the pine dunes. Luckily one of the BLM fire guys decided to take it home with him!
With just three weeks left, the end is coming near. The days are much shorter, and the field work projects are wrapping up. There seems to be rain in the forecast more often now and it’s hard to get out on the roads when things are wet. The Diamond mountains in town have had snow on them for a week now. I am hoping to make a trip up to Oregon next weekend, which leaves just one other full weekend in November before we get ready to part ways in mid-November.
Alia
BLM Eagle Lake Field Office
Susanville, CA