Small animals and killer hikes

We could start off the small animals category with birds.

This one has been parked at Moffett field for several days, near the levee trail, where I pass it on my bicycle route home. The tail says Travis (AFB). I have to admit that this bird probably doesn’t count as a small animal.

Well, how about genuine small animals? When Friedrich and Petra were here a week ago, I discovered a mommy long-legs in a corner of the dining room ceiling, complete with egg sac. I was not expecting results so soon, but…

If you don’t mind my saying so, I think this is really cool!

Saturday, 11 May

More small animals later, as we get into the killer hike. Bottom line first: 19.3 miles, 4970 feet of climb. What? It’s less than 20 miles, less than 5k feet? How can that be a killer hike? Maybe because it was 90 degrees plus today?

It didn’t start out at 90 degrees. It was a bit foggy when I started, right at 7. Lots of people out; I had to park almost at Mission boulevard, further from the trailhead than ever before. As always, the street was busy with people who came here to hike, driving up to the parking lot, hoping for a spot, then turning and coming all the way back. For me, I just take the first place available and hike.

I took Horse Heaven trail, as per usual. Most times, it’s practically deserted, but today was fairly busy. I was coming up behind a group of four hikers; we had just made a right-angle turn in the trail below a heavily vegetated embankment, when from behind came a long, loud, melodious Moo-oo-ooo. Startled, the hikers in front spun around. The only animate object anywhere in sight was … Dave.

When I passed them a few minutes later, I remarked that I could claim no credit for the entertainment.

By the time I reached the shoulder of the ridge, it was a sunny, pleasant day. The top of Mission Peak is to the left; I go down the slope to the right, to Sunol.

This is an industrial-grade hike by default, just to Sunol park headquarters and back to Mission Peak. If I go past the park headquarters, on up Flag Hill (above), it becomes a killer hike, at least on really hot days.

This TuVu is today’s first comparatively small animal. It was perched in a tree where I’ve seen them before, sometimes two or three.

Crossing the bridge between Sunol park headquarters and the Flag Hill trail, I see the stream full of mossy pillows. Pretty, but I don’t think I would want to go wading there.

Here’s how Flag Hill looks from near the bottom, about 900 feet above the stream.

Small animals, as in really small.

Coming up just below Flag Hill (above), which was populated with half a dozen other hikers (below). I perched on a rock and enjoyed the view and some calories.

Looking down from Flag Hill. I emerged from the Mission Peak trail into the Sunol headquarters parking lot just above and to the left of center.

The red roof just about dead center in the picture above is a house about 200 feet above the level of Flag Hill. The trail runs very close past it. Mission Peak is the high point about two thirds of the way to the right. I come over the shoulder just to its left, and go back over a trail to the right of the peak.

Came down Hayfield road, which runs past the old JB ranch. I understand the venue is sometimes used as a group camp, but it was not occupied today, except by hikers and a couple of mountain bikies.

Unlike Sunol headquarters, drinking water is available here. Though probably not from that tank.

Ok, small animals we want, small animals we get. There were zillions of earwigs. They didn’t like posing for photos, though, so I didn’t get pictures as good as I would have liked.

While I was shuffling around in the tall grass, I acquired a tiny spider. Here’s my little friend, finding its way through the hairs on my knee.

When I started looking closely at this thistle, I discovered all kinds of small animals in addition to the bee and the earwig.

And just to break the monotony, the Goodyear blimp flew over. This is tail number N10A, named the Spirit of America.

Back to the small animals…

I dropped back down to Sunol headquarters, where I drank as much as I could from the bottled water they bring in, then refilled my water bottle. It was enough to get me back, but I would have liked more. A lot more.

And what should to my wondering eyes appear, but an alligator lizard. Their defense mechanism is to freeze, which makes them good subjects for photographers. Nice colors!

Two things to notice: first, the really interesting shapes to its scales. Second, the blue-ish bulb behind the head is an engorged tick. Often they have more than one. I’m told that there is something in lizard blood that immunizes the tick from Lyme disease. Well, and third, look at the middle toe on the front foot!

Not long after, I found a lizard on a mossy tree trunk. Usually they scurry away, but maybe the alligator lizard had been on the horn to his buddy. “Just freeze. It works every time!”

The shoulder behind Mission Peak is a fire road with a hundred feet or so of ups and downs. A hiker came along, trailed by his dog. At the low point of a roll in the trail, the dog decided it had done enough work for one day, and laid down.

The hiker went back and picked it up. Nice of him. Just as well it wasn’t a really massive dog.

There were quite a number of these little guys. Doris tells me they’re horned larks, with their horns down. Inconspicuous: I might have stepped on a couple of them if they hadn’t moved!

At the bottom, looking back up. Not so much fog at this hour, and most of the people coming down rather than going up. Two or three hang gliders at the top, and another one had just landed near where I took this picture.

A nice day.

Rose peak

We start with two pictures of the garden spider outside the kitchen window. Very colorful, but as we see in the second picture, he (definitely a he!) is a shameless exhibitionist!

We’re shocked! shocked! or well, I suppose we ought to be.

Saturday, 6 October 2012

I spent most of today buying a Kia Soul+. How long does it take to buy a car? Longer than you would think… I did get a loaner from the dealer and disappeared for a few hours to get a new battery for my watch, and get a computer for my new bicycle. But if I had intended to do anything else today, well, it didn’t happen.

Nice car. The first automatic transmission I have ever owned. Six speeds, better gas mileage than the manual, which is not available on this particular model.

Sunday, 7 October

No exercise yesterday, so I’ll do the Rose Peak killer hike that I deferred last weekend because of hundred-degree temperatures in the east bay. I haven’t been here since May, and I had remembered that the gates didn’t open at a reasonable hour. So I got there a few minutes after 7, and the gates only open at 8.

Preposterous!

Drove up Welch Creek road, which I also remember as suboptimal. Yes, well, it’s one lane (if you like narrow lanes) and mostly blind. Not a good choice. But I parked at the lower Eagle View trailhead, and was on the trail by about 7:40.

The commercials always feature their car in some exotic adventure locale. Well, why not? Here’s the clean and shiny new Kia, looking better than it ever will again, high above Sunol.

An hour later, along Cerro Este road:

She was out of her den, sunning herself. “Please god, send me a horny male,” she thought. And the next thing she knew, there was Dave, taking pictures and being a general nuisance.

She retreated into her burrow. “Clarification: please god, send me a horny male tarantula.”

A sexy rear-view shot. Tarantulas rub hairs off their abdomens in defence. The little clouds of hairs cause distress in the nasal passages or eyes of predators. She has a fairly bare rump. I wonder if this is how she fights off horny males of the wrong species.

Today’s only other interesting small animal was a beautiful gopher snake.

Dry grass, not a whole lot of animal life. When I was last in the east bay, in early or mid September, there were only one or two early calves among the free-range cattle. Today, almost every cow has a calf, and the calves are old enough that the cows are beginning to lose their agressive protectiveness.

When I came over a little rise, three turkey vultures flew up and started circling. Circling me! Ha! Optimists.

But after a while, I saw a dead cow, and it was upwind. Fortunately the trail turned off a hundred meters away, so it was only mildly unpleasant, instead of revolting.

The scream!

There is a section of trail that runs along the clifftop, and it slopes outward. Nothing below the trail but low bush, probably enough to catch a hiker who slipped, but I can certainly imagine a horse sliding on over the edge, and maybe a bike, too. Part of this trail is loose, steep and narrow, and is bordered with poison oak. Not really the best place to hike.

This is the first time I have done Rose Peak from the top of Welch Creek road. I had originally thought it would be substantially less work than the usual route from Sunol park headquarters. When I got back to the car, I was dragging my butt, and thought I was more out of shape than usual. But the GPS tells me it was 19.7 miles, while the normal route is only a shade more than 19 miles, and both routes include 5 000 feet of vertical gain.

A good day. Home for a shower, after which Jacky and I drove the new car to Menlo Park and wandered around looking for a restaurant. Found a Polish place on a side street, pretty good.

Some of us are seriously spoiled!

The grand vistas of the Rose Peak hike

The out-and-back hike from Sunol to Rose Peak was the original inspiration for my term Killer hikes. I have recently expanded the category by stitching together trails from adjoining open space areas, but even though it’s less than 20 miles (19.00 according to the GPS), Rose Peak is still the classic (5004 feet of climb).

I haven’t been there for a couple months; time to do it again. The wildflower season is fading fast: quite a bit of green, but already fading to the white of new grass seeds and the golden hills of summer.

This little wildflower is about the size of a smallish pea. Flowers like California poppies grow pretty much everywhere, but this species showed up only in a stretch of maybe 100 meters of trail. Dark enough that you might not even realize they were flowers, if you weren’t keeping an eye out.

Cloudy and chilly. I left my jacket in the car, expecting to warm up as soon as I started uphill (true) and to break out into the sunlight fairly soon (not true). Lots of backpackers on the way down from last night’s camping, probably thirty or more by the time they had all straggled past. I kept thinking each new one or two represented the lanterns rouges, and then I would meet yet another one or two.

Because the day remained cloudy, there was a lot of dew on the vegetation.

I programmed the image processors in my brain to match against mantis. No hits among the millions of images that flowed past, all day, but the filter did pick up one of these pretty little orange spiders.

He figures that, if he can’t see me, I can’t see him.

The filter spotted a wolf spider. I like the 747 upper deck, complete with rear window, as well as the four parking lights just below the headlights.

I noticed a second wolf spider, so small it could have gotten lost on the nail of my little finger. The one above would have sprawled well beyond the nail of my thumb, but if it does well this season, it will be twice as big (8x as massy) by fall.

This little guy was almost invisible on a stalk of milkweed. I am delighted with the fine detail visible in the photo (and this is the low-res version!).

Near the top, a bobcat, something we don’t see very often. No photo, sorry; it didn’t want to stay around and pose for me.

On the way back, I stopped for calories at the little pools where McCorkle trail crosses the W-tree rock scramble. Water striders, and the opportunity for almost abstract photos.

And under water, a larva of some kind, very likely preying on an even smaller larva under its left foreleg, while just under its tail section, another larve would be breathing a sigh of relief, if only it could breathe.

As I drove out, late afternoon, I saw a car stopped off the road ahead, people out in the traffic lanes. I slowed and passed in the left lane, and saw that they were protecting a large gopher snake as it crossed the road. Good for them!

Rose peak killer hike

Sunday, 16 October 2011

Today is for my first killer hike with the new pair of shoes. Nineteen miles, five thousand vertical feet.

Up early, on the trail before 7, in time to see alpenglow, both east and west, as the sun rose on a partly cloudy, cool, perfect day. Horizontal sunlight is one of the secrets of the photographer, and today was a good opportunity to take full advantage of it.

The first tarantula of the day was dead. That doesn’t count, not at all. Shortly after, I saw one that was hunkered up, possibly semi-dormant from cold or darkness. A little surprising, because I thought they were primarily nocturnal, and it really isn’t very cold this morning. Whatever…

Over the course of the day, I found four more, including a final tarantula crossing the road as I was leaving in the late afternoon. Here we have a good look at his fangs, which you will notice are retracted, even though he is admittedly under extreme provocation.

And here we get a reasonably good look at a minimum of six and possibly eight eyes. In this picture, it is also obvious that the eyes are lensed, not compound.

It’s the season for the full glory of poison oak, here shown in an Italian flag motif.

Open country that goes on forever. I wouldn’t want this to be the only choice, but it’s quite attractive as one alternative.

As well as a personal record of five tarantulas, I saw four gopher snakes, out sunning themselves. And I don’t know what kind of snake this one is; what we need here is a serious taxonomist! I took about a dozen shots, got the tongue in only this one.

It has only been two weeks since we had several days of rain, but the grass has started growing green again with great enthusiasm, some of it perhaps as high as ten cm. Where there is no tall dead grass from last spring, even the ground shows green. It will be about March before the new growth completely overwhelms the dead grass and turns the entire world beautifully green.

Even here, we see that the areas that collect the most rain first are the first and most vigorous in the process of greening up.

I suppose it’s beyond hope to imagine getting back without sore feet, but I think these shoes will turn out to be okay.

A great tarantula season!

Saturday: I hiked Mission peak to Sunol and back (16 miles, 4300 vetical feet); as the weather cools off, it’s good to get out into the open country – which just happens to be where the tarantulas live.

I walked through a loose collection of maybe forty cows, almost all with newly born calves. A coyote loped along the trail a hundred meters ahead of me. The cows moved off the trail, but weren’t overly concerned. Both the coyote and the cows know full well that, whatever the coyote’s fantasies about veal for lunch, they just aren’t going to happen, full stop.

I saw the first tarantula of the day, crossing Calaveras road, not far from the Sunol headquarters. I helped him get across the road safely, my good deed for the day. After going on to Sunol, having some calories, chatting with the ranger at the visitor center – who hadn’t had many tarantula reports yet this season – I returned; saw the same tarantula (I think) in the same vicinity. Ten minutes later, I saw the second of the day. Two in one day – that’s pretty good!

But the most interesting spider of the day was the little orange one. I really like spiders’ eyes! In this picture, we see four on the left (and there may well be more that don’t show in the photo); they are lensed eyes, not insect-like compound eyes, and spiders are estimated to see about as well as we can, with the advantage that they can see in all directions at once. Hard to sneak up behind a spider.

Not a bit of fear in this guy. He’s the size to stand on my thumbnail, but if I’m a threat, he’s ready and willing to tear me limb from limb, chew me up and spit me out! Argh! Come and get it! And good for him!

Sore feet again, blisters. I think my shoes are sending me a message. Happily enough, REI is having a sale: 20% off one full-priced item. So I stopped on the way home and bought a new pair of shoes.

Saturday evening we visited Alex and Sigrid for their annual Oktoberfest. Yes, we all know that Oktoberfest is in September, but it was delayed this year because Sigrid was at the real one in Muenchen.

Sunday: I should go out and see whether these new shoes are going to be good friends. In case I need to take them back, I’ll stay on pavement today, or at least grass or duff. Stanford? Why not! Six or seven miles, a few hundred vertical feet.

Yes, the shoes are fine. I ran up the steeper parts of the dish trail and also some of the not-so-steep parts.

And I found four tarantulas! Outstanding: I have gone entire seasons without seeing that many. I wanted to see if I could get one to climb up into my hand.

Hmmm… on second thought, no thanks!

Rose peak

25 April 2009

A killer hike seemed like the right thing for today, since next weekend I’ll be at the tender mercies of Air France. The forecast was for cool but sunny, a good opportunity to go to Rose peak. I was already on my way when I realized that I had forgotten to take along a heavy pair of hiking socks. Moomph! Well, I’m not going back for anything less than risk of a house fire.

Hiking boots are the right thing for a long hike in the hills, but I wasn’t sure about only one pair of socks, so I stowed trail shoes in my backpack, just in case. As it turned out, the boots were fine except on the downhills, which bruised my heels. At about 17 miles, I changed to the trail shoes. Good idea; they had better padding in the heel, and just the change was a relief. I will still have pretty sore feet for a day or two.

Pretty country. The grass is already beginning to fade toward gold, even as the wildflowers are at the peak of their season and some of the late trees (oak, sycamore) are only just starting to leaf out. Doris tells me my little friend  is a horned lark, an early bird.

Wildlife: a gaggle of wild turkeys near the park entrance. One bunny. Lots of crane flies, a swallowtail. One frog in a pond, no sign of tadpoles as yet.

I frequently see no one all day on this route, but the trail was quite busy today, and not just the half mile from the parking lot crowd. Many of them were out near Rose peak itself. I like having the world to myself, but it’s good that people know about some of these great places and use them.

19.5 miles total, 4920 vertical feet