High Peaks and Hot Springs in Idaho

Posted on 4 September, 2014 by ashawler

Our time in Idaho is winding down and Alexi and I are scrambling to finish up our projects and to go on as many adventures possible before we have to leave this beautiful area. The last several weeks of our internship has been focused on digitizing riparian photo monitoring sites and then checking them in the field. We also have been doing a lot of bat monitoring. After we finished the cave surveys searching for maternity roosts, we started doing acoustic surveys using a program called AnaBat to monitor the presence of bats.

Microphone mounted on the truck during the bat acoustic monitoring vehicle transects

Microphone mounted on the truck during the bat acoustic monitoring driving transects

We’ve set up passive stations and have also conducted driving transects. AnaBat reads the frequency of noise that the microphone picks up and graphs it on a PDA attached to it. Each bat species has a distinct call with different shapes and different minimum frequencies. Some of their calls can be really similar, so it has been a challenge differentiating each species. But it has been a lot of fun seeing how many bats are actually all around us and also uplifting to see that their populations out west are still doing okay.

AnaBat software recording bat calls

Silver-haired bat calls occur between 25 and 30k and have distinctive hook at the bottom. There’s also a little brown bat call at 40k

Last week we had the opportunity to attend the First Annual Eastern Idaho Bat Bio Blitz at the Sand Creek Wildlife Management Area, a tranquil area dotted with ponds. This was an awesome opportunity because we were mist netting bats and got to see them up close. I had the opportunity to do this last winter, when I was in the Chiricahuas, and was very excited to do it again. We set up the mist nets right in the water and had to wear waders to get them in place.

Mist netting bats at the Eastern Idaho Bat Bio Blitz

Measuring the little brown bat’s forearm. Don’t worry it’s not painful, he’s just being dramatic.

We had a lighting storm come through and we all had to jump in the trucks to wait it out, but as soon as that was over all the bats came out to feed. We only caught little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus), but it was still very exciting.

This past Labor Day Weekend was one of the most exciting weekends we’ve had so far in Idaho. For me it started out on Friday night with an outdoor concert with The Head and the Heart in Sun Valley. This was only my second concert of the summer (last summer I went to six), so I was pretty stoked. The next morning I met up with fellow CLM interns Alexi and Emily and some other BLM friends in Stanley, Idaho and began a day of hot spring adventures. We started out at this hot spring called Boat Box that is literally right on the side of Highway 75. The hot water feeds out of a pipe into a metal tub and then into other surrounding pools along the Salmon River.

Boat Box Hot Springs near Stanley, Idaho along the Salmon River

The tub at Boat Box Hot Springs

We lingered there for a while and then made our way to the secret Goldbug Hotsprings outside Salmon, Idaho. Alexi told me about Goldbug at the beginning of our internship and ever since then I’ve been dying to go. To get to Goldbug you have to hike up about three miles through private property and then BLM land. On our way up we noticed a plume of smoke on top of the mountain. Then we saw a helitack crew with buckets flying toward the mountain and witnessed them putting out the fire.

Small fire near Goldbug Hot Springs (which is situated at the notch)

Once we reached Goldbug I was not disappointed. There were about 20 different pools at various levels with waterfalls flowing into them. It was hard to believe this place naturally existed- it felt like a waterpark. The pools were all at varying temperatures and we hopped from one to another.

An oasis of pools at Goldbug Hot Springs

Goldbug Hot Springs

We met some interesting people while we were there, including two unabashed naked men who insisted on talking to us for a while. We stayed at Goldbug for a couple hours before driving down towards Mackay, Idaho to camp at the base of Mount Borah, the tallest mountain in Idaho.

The next morning we woke up to snow on the mountains and clouds hovering above us. We got up a little later than we intended because none of us slept well that night. This actually proved to be advantageous to us because in the morning clouds covered the top of Borah, obscuring the views. We met up with Jonathan, a fellow CLM intern and started hiking around 8:30am. The trail is only 3.5 miles up to the peak, but you ascend 5,262 vertical feet, which makes for a nice strenuous hike. As we got closer to the top there was a lot of Class 3 scrambling over loose rocks. The most difficult section is aa Class 4 arête (a thin ridge of rock) infamously known as “Chickenout Ridge”, since a lot of people will turn once they see it. Luckily we were with someone who has done the hike four times already and he knew exactly how to go. We actually ended up staying at that place for 45 minutes as our friend helped about 20 people get through that area.

“Chickenout Ridge”, the Class 4 arête near the top of Mt. Borah

We ended up making a lot of friends and we all reached the summit at about the same time. The clouds had cleared away and the wind stopped making for perfect summit conditions. We all basked in the sun, shared some honey whiskey, and took a giant group picture. We were the tallest people in Idaho that day and we were having a great time.

View from the top of Borah

Group picture at the top of Mount Borah

Descending Mt. Borah

Until next time,

Avery

Shoshone BLM Office

Fishing and caving in Idaho

Posted on 5 August, 2014 by ashawler

It’s August already and Alexi and I have crossed off a few more things on our Idaho Bucket List. The most exciting of these accomplishments is that we finally caught our first fish in Idaho over the Fourth of July weekend! And it couldn’t have been in a more beautiful place. We backpacked into the Sawtooth Wilderness up near Stanley, Idaho with Jonathan, another CLM intern out of Twin Falls. Our destination was Toxaway Lake, but unfortunately there was too much snow at the pass we were going to cross, so we decided to camp at Alice Lake.

Not a bad view from our campsite at Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness.

We were a little hesitant about camping there. On our way up we passed a man who saw our fishing rods sticking out of our packs and immediately began to tell us how the fish were not biting at Alice Lake. He told us he had tried everything and seemed to have fancier equipment than us. Then he proceeded to tell us how the mosquitos were so terrible that he spent most of the time in his tent. So yeah we were a little apprehensive. But as soon as we came upon Alice Lake we saw a woman who had already caught a few fish and was catching even more in just a half hour. Alexi and I immediately dropped our packs and ran for the shore. Within an hour we had both caught our first fish and it was glorious. They were beautiful brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) with their signature pink dots outlined with blue haloes and bright red/orange lower fins.

Brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) caught at Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Wilderness

As soon as we caught a fish immediately got out our knives and cut off its head so it wouldn’t suffer. Then Alexi taught me how to gut the fish by making a cut on the ventral side and then pushing the organs out. I was definitely not expecting the fish to still be moving during this process so I was a little spooked when it suddenly jumped out of my hand (this was a good 5 minutes after I had cut off its head).

The gutted brook trout-probably right before it jumped out of my hand!

We threw the gutted fish into a plastic bag, tied it to a rock and put it in the water to keep them cold while we kept fishing. I’m not sure why that man we had encountered earlier didn’t catch any fish, they were definitely biting! We brought some salt, pepper and butter packets just in case we caught fish and cooked them on our camping stoves. These brook trout were meaty and delicious.

Nothing like eating freshly caught trout in the wilderness!

Fishing at our campsite at Alice Lake.

Although they are an invasive species out here, we appreciated their contribution to our first successful fishing experience in Idaho. Since that trip we’ve also tried our hand at fly fishing and it turns out we are actually pretty good at it. We got the casting technique down and caught a few rainbow trout up near Sun Valley, Idaho. I’m currently looking for fly rods on Craigslist.

Catching rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) during our first try at fly fishing!

Work has also been very exciting lately since we have started doing bat roost surveys in lava tubes. Before entering the caves we have to put on jumpsuits, helmets, kneepads and gloves. We also have to make sure we have three sources of light. After exiting each cave we have to decontaminate to prevent the spread of white nose syndrome, which has decimated the bat populations in the East and is heading west. I’ve never been caving in lava tubes, so I wasn’t expecting everything to be so sharp. There were some places where we had to crawl around on our stomachs to squeeze through some tight areas, which resulted in many bruises the next day. Most of the cave entrances were blocked by a wall of Russian thistle (Salsola sp.), so we had to battle through them to find the entrances.

Had to battle through Russian thistle (Salsola sp.) to find some of the cave entrances.

Russian thistle (Salsola sp.) blocking some of the cave entrances.

At some of the caves we were greeted by Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) that flew right at us and over our heads. They build their nests at the entrance of the caves, which are littered with owl pellets and bones of small mammals and birds. I’ve got a good collection of owl feathers, which are the softest feathers. Altogether we’ve surveyed about 30 caves in our field office. I was super excited because about half of the caves had Lord of the Rings themed names- so I was nerding out a bit. We have found only one maternity colony in a cave called Aragorn. The maternity colony of Townsend’s big-eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii) was comprised of six adults and two pups. The pups were quite large already- about half the size of the adults.

Towsend’s big-eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) maternity roost with 6 adults and 2 pups.

One of the bats started to fly around us, so we quickly left so as not to disturb them anymore. Although we only have found one maternity colony so far, it is still very exciting since this is the first confirmed documented sighting of a Townsend’s big-eared bat maternity colony in the Shoshone Field Office.

Well it has been an exciting month since my last blog post. I’ve been applying to winter jobs like crazy (have an interview on Wednesday!), took a trip to the Tetons, did a trail run up to Sawtooth Lake and went home to North Carolina for a week. Yesterday I did a hike with the Idaho Conservation League up to Grays Peak in the Pioneer Range and saw some incredible views and met some interesting people. I know August will be just as exciting- I just wish it would slow down a little bit.

Until next time,

Avery

Shoshone BLM Office