The Imp

What would I do without our impish R, making me laugh daily? Since he was a young pup, we've had a battle of wits, with him scheming to steal my slippers or articles of clothing, and me trying to stay one paw ahead by developing new strategies to thwart him. I've learned to shower with the bathroom door closed so that R doesn't steal my clothes. If I don't fully latch the bathroom door, I emerge from the shower to find the door nosed open and an article of clothing missing. I can't get angry when I find R snuggled with my clothing on his bed.

Yesterday, he tried a new strategy. He planted himself IN the shower stall and refused to budge. When I finally spurred him to move from the shower stall, R grabbed my shoe on the way out of the bathroom and sprinted away while impishly peeking back at me. He won that round!

I went exploring with the Labraduo yesterday evening. They started by romping in the meadow.
On one recall, K forged ahead of R, a rarity these days!
After the Duo burned off some energy, we disappeared into bear territory, with leashes restraining the Duo. As we explored, I found a bear tree - a scent post that they rub their backs on.
It's different from the saplings that the bears marked during courting season. It's a full grown pine tree, and I wonder if the bears rub their fur on it all summer long like researchers report that bears do on certain appointed trees. I might try putting a remote camera here. The fur looks white due to the sunlight - it was actually black fur.
We found a lot of fairly fresh signs of bear activity like ripped up stumps and rotting trees. However, we didn't find any undeniably extremely fresh signs so I'm still trying to figure out where the bears are spending their time right now.

K and I headed out for our mountain bike ride this morning. In contrast to her impish brother, she looked at me with serious sincerity. It astounds me how different these two Labradors are from each other.
K frolicked and never alerted on any animal scents over the whole ride. I watched her closely because she often gives me my first clue of where in the forest the ursines are foraging at each time of year.
After K and I finished our joint ride, I continued my "soft pedaling", trying to let my legs recover from their fatigue. They were much better than yesterday but I'm hoping that the weather allows a mountaintop hike tomorrow so I took it easy. I also nursed some seriously sore bruises after my crash yesterday but my spine seems to have emerged unscathed.

I did some more exploring in territory where more wild animals roam than people. I glimpsed a hulking bull elk with massive velvet antlers. They were so heavy that the elk had to point his nose into the air to align his antlers with his spine. This pose is classic during the elk rut but I've never seen a bull with such big antlers months before the rut. I didn't get a photo but I found a similar looking elk photo on the web, except that the photo shows an elk whose antlers have lost their velvet.
After seeing the elk, I checked out the bear den that I found a few weeks ago. It looks promising enough that I'll probably put a remote camera there as soon as bear hunting season ends this fall. I'm worried that the camera pointed at the den might be too obvious for bear hunters to miss and cause the demise of one of my favorite animals.
After emerging from the deep woods where the den is, a meadow filled with Horsemint shimmered purple with a deep blue sky behind it.
By the end of my "soft-pedaling", the mountain sky looked angry. I'm voting for those storms to go away for tomorrow so that I can hike up high in the alpine tundra without worrying about being struck by lightning.

Caves, a bobcat, and Zen riding

Yesterday evening, I became an evil being in the dogs' eyes because I cleaned their ears and clipped their nails. R had such a vocal conniption after his ear-cleaning that it sounded like the dogs were fighting (which would be a first). I hurried to break up what I thought might be a fight and found R rolling around, rubbing his ears in a frenzy while making growling and snarling noises.This morning, the endurance race of summer hit me hard. I rolled out the door with aching legs, and found that my quads and calves had the strength of jello when I hit the first climb on my mountain bike. So, it turned into a day of searching for interesting animal signs and not riding far or hard. Somehow, in the midst of not riding very much, I had my first jarring crash since my surgery, probably because I was tired. The good news is that, contrary to my irrational fear, I didn't shatter into a million pieces! I endured... and hopped on my bike to ride home with only a few scratches. It's now been more than 6 months since my surgery so the fused neck joints are probably indestructible, although they'll keep getting stronger for another 6 months. I'd been dreading the inevitable first crash so I'm glad that it's behind me.

Early in our ride, K and I checked out a Green Gentian (also known as Monument plant) and saw a bee feeding frenzy. I captured one bumblebee in mid-flight, ready to land on the plant.
Then, he settled in for a meal on the green understated flowers.
These plants live for 20-80 years before they flower for one season and then die, going out with a big bang. In the photo below, the tall stalk-like plant is in the far left and is slightly downhill of K.
Later, as K and I rolled through the forest, I kept stopping and hiking to check out boulder-strewn north-facing slopes for bear dens. No luck, but at least I satisfied my curiosity about a few places. K stood in front of one of the boulder outcroppings that we'd explored. Bears tend to make their dens on the downhill side of boulders on steep and snowy (i.e., north-facing) slopes.
We stopped near the top of one of the boulder piles for a photo. K is multitasking in the photo - using her right ear to listen to a sound behind her while still looking at the camera. Talented girl!
After I dropped K off at home, I continued on the same theme, investigating every perceived den opening as I passed boulder fields - I spent more time hiking than riding. As I rode past one such opening, an animal floated out of the cavern. The 3' tall triangular dark opening is in the middle of the photo below but the animal is not.
The animal moved like a cat - not bouncy or flashy but rather like liquid gold oozing across the rough terrain. I stopped in my tracks thinking that I might be blessed to see a mountain lion on this summer day. I stood perfectly still because the cat's trajectory would take him into the open if he didn't perceive me. When he emerged, he hurried across dangerous open area without noticing me and then resumed his saunter once he entered the forest. My eyes immediately examined his tail - a short tail means a bobcat and a long tail means a lion. He had a short tail and the distinctive black and white patches on the back of his ears that I've seen in my wildlife camera photos of bobcats.
In an instant, he vanished like a magician. I back tracked him to look at the path that he'd taken and the cavern that he'd emerged from. It was a shallow cave with only a small covered area. The cat had used his hind paws to scrape the sandy floor of the cavern and deposited a scat in the middle of the scrape. So, then I knew why he'd visited the cavern - to scent mark his territory. This spot sits very close to where I found a dead bobcat early last spring. The presence of today's cat tells me that a young cat has claimed the briefly empty territory.

I stood still for a long time, feeling lucky to have seen a bobcat in his natural habitat. I find natural sightings, in the midst of the forest, so uplifting.

The next event in my ride wasn't so uplifting. To make my ride into a loop, I cut through a recreation area, spending about 10 minutes riding through an area frequented by messy campers, ATVs, and gun shooters. Today, I found a burning campfire with flames still leaping from a large log that was OUTSIDE the fire ring. I was out of cell phone range so I couldn't call for help. I searched the wide swath of garbage left by the campers for water receptacles. I found two small containers that I used to fill with water in a creek, pour on the fire, and repeat.
Here's the fire after 5 trips to the creek.
Then, I managed to very carefully drag the still burning log back into the fire ring without hurting my back or burning myself. Another 10 trips to the creek plus heaping rocks on the smoking embers left me satisfied that our entire forest wouldn't be ignited by the campfire. I have to admit, however, that I felt disgusted with my fellow humans. I also felt disgusted with our Forest Service who I knew wouldn't really care about the mess based on my many conversations with them. I realize that they're understaffed but our national lands are being trashed while we wait for them to get adequate funding.

I have this Zen-like thing that I do when one event threatens to ruin a whole day. I simply focus on my breathing and pedal strokes while I soak up the beauty of nature. Whenever my mind starts to swing back to the upsetting event, I realign my mind toward my breathing, pedaling, and nature. That simple exercise usually helps me to leave a lousy event behind me, where it belongs. I learned this technique for spine pain management but it also works for psychic pain.

After about 15 minutes of Zen riding, I stopped in a ridge-top meadow to appreciate the flowers. A Harebell nodded on its impossibly thin and flexible stalk.
And, Locoweed bloomed with yellow flowers as background music. Although it's beautiful, this brilliant pink flower is deadly poisonous.
Then, I hit the high point, where I could see a field of Mariposa Lilies (the white dots) with the mountains behind them. The campfire and garbage were cleansed from my brain. Another good day...
By the time I was almost home, it looked like rain would reign this afternoon. Then, I'll feel completely comfortable with the campfire situation.

Life is good

We had a wonderful, cool but sunny, hike with the Labraduo yesterday evening. They rambunctiously practiced recalls.
I love K's ear position in the next photo. I wish that there weren't a shadow on her face!
Yesterday, I mentioned R's "conversations with coyotes". In contrast, last night, R gave vociferous speeches to a bear. We were sitting on our deck, just after dark, watching a recording of the day's Tour de France stage (an infuriating stage...but that's another topic), when our dogs started ferociously "bear barking". We scanned the forest edge with our headlamps but saw nothing.

Later, just after I drifted to sleep, our dogs went certifiably nutso. They reserve this level of insanity for bears. We scanned again with headlamps and spotted a small black bear wrestling with our bearproof garbage can. With the spotlight on him, he started to roll the can into the forest to work on it without an audience. We shouted and clapped our hands, prompting him to flee. He didn't return again last night. The good news is that he didn't even come close to opening the can. I think that these bearproof cans are the real deal. The bad news is that he must be getting garbage someplace to trigger this behavior... Oh how I wish that people wouldn't set up bears to get killed.

This morning, K and I headed out into a misty world with a splattering of raindrops here and there. It was chilly - I wore mittens to protect against Raynaud's syndrome! That was very hard to believe after the scorching past 5 days or so.
As I checked my "bear-berry" remote wildlife camera, K charged a few steps into the forest while aggressively barking on two occasions. By her own choice, she guards me carefully while I check wildlife cams or take photos. There were no photos of wild animals stored on the memory card but, based on K's behavior, I think that a large animal was lurking nearby - I'm guessing either a bear or a mountain lion. The bear-berry cam is set up within about 100 yards of where the mountain lion cached his mule deer last January on an animal trail leading into an expansive berry patch. The next photo shows K on guard duty. She looks serious, doesn't she? Would you mess with her? As an aside, she once treed a mountain lion... so I put great trust in her.
I noticed a tiny pine forest gem, Prince's Pine (Chimaphila umbellata, Heath Family), which has finally burst into blossom. These tiny plants maintain green lance-like basal leaves all winter and bloom briefly in the dark pine forest in the summer. They're beautiful survivors!
When K and I emerged from the pine forest, the clouds that had enveloped us had begun to part, like curtains being opened to display the mountains.
I captured two photos of K while the mountains jutted up out of the clouds.
But then, the curtains began closing again.
K continued her upward health trajectory, carefully guarding me whenever I took photos or became distracted by nature, but then zooming around me while I rode. I love seeing my K feel better and better!

As I rode through the beauty of summer, I realized that I was obsessing over relatively trivial issues and not fully appreciating the world around me. I managed to drag my brain out of its rut and noticed a gorgeous juxtaposition - a columbine with buffalo berries emerging behind it. The part that I couldn't include in the photo was the best. The ground was covered in wild strawberries. I lay down my bike and sat by the trail eating strawberries while gazing at columbines. Once I quit obsessing over trivialities, I usually realize that life is good!

Smooth sailing

Everyone seems to have returned to normal after our weekend of veterinary events. R bounced back from his anaesthesia in the blink of an eye. K spent all day yesterday sleeping and snoring. By evening, she enthusiastically headed out for a hike, acting perky and excited about the scents.
She sat among the wildflowers in the setting sun's radiant light. R was much too busy zooming among rodent holes to sit for a photo!
Overnight, R practiced a new talent that he's refining. He has yipping conversations with the coyotes who visit our clearing in the dead of night. He's learned to sound just like a coyote, and I'd laugh about it if it weren't usually at 3 AM!

This morning, R went for a run up in the alpine zone with the Runner in our family. I decided that K needed a "normal" day so we headed out on our trails behind our house. I could tell from her first bouncy steps that she felt like a new dog!
You can see the dark clouds enveloping the Continental Divide behind K despite the early morning hour (it's usually clear in the morning). We dodged raindrops and enjoyed the cool air with K romping ahead of me through flowers that seemed to glow in the dark ambiance.
Gumweed flowers were one of the brilliant gems lighting up the meadow.
After a break at home waiting for the storms to pass, I headed out on my own, covering some known territory and some new ground. I kept waiting for parts to start flying off my bike and to tumble to a stop. You see, I replaced a bunch of worn out bike components yesterday, and I'm NOT a good mechanic. Thankfully, my bike held together and even seemed to glide along smoothly, except for the rubbing disc brake pads which I stopped to fix. In celebration of my well-functioning bike, the mountains briefly looked peaceful before a new round of storms invaded them.
As I pedaled along a new trail, pink fireweed blossomed gorgeously against a rock cliff and blue sky. Fireweed is a late summer flower... so it was bittersweet to see it, knowing that our short mountain summer is speeding by.
Another sign of summer's rapid pace is that the Rufous Hummingbirds have arrived. I know that they've arrived when I hear the distinctive metallic whir of the males' wingbeats that is very different from the high pitched trill of our male Broadtailed Hummingbirds. Here's a Rufous in a photo not taken by me.
These amazing birds migrate up the west coast from central America in the spring, breed in Alaska, and then return south by following inland mountain ranges in the "late summer" (i.e., now). Thus, by this point in the summer, these rust colored missiles have already flown to and fro Alaska. They're aggressive defenders of food sources so the ones stopping to rest here during their migration drive all of our breeding population of Broad-tailed Hummingbirds away from our feeders. Fortunately, the wildflowers are in full cry so the vanquished hummingbirds can sip nectar from natural sources.
So, we're getting multiple signs of the waning of summer. I'm holding out hope that it's not quite over!

Weekend woes

As soon as our regular vet closed for the weekend yesterday, K started displaying obvious signs of a urinary tract infection. K has had many of these infections in her life due to her hind end conformation. So, I started her on the usual antibiotics which usually help in 24 hours or so.

K felt good enough for a short hike in the evening. Then, the second surprise... as we hiked through a meadow, R started violently sneezing. He continued on and on and on. By 10 PM, we called the emergency vet to find out how rapidly foxtails can migrate from the nose up to the brain. The reply, "very occasionally, it can happen in less than 12 hours", meant a drive to the city to the vet. But, in the end, the vet discovered that R had sneezed out the sneaky grass seed in one of his hundreds of sneezes when she knocked him out to look up his snout.

This morning, K seemed much better so I tried taking her for a short mountain bike ride. We rode up high and stopped for a photo and a hug.
At times, she seemed almost like her normal high energy self.
But then, she gave me a look that told me that she needed to go home. No real riding for her today.
She seems tired but her symptoms are much better. Maybe she'll feel like frolicking tomorrow. I hope so. My day doesn't seem complete without a real ride with K.

I headed out to ride on my own, leaving K at home to work on a Kong with food frozen inside it. I didn't use my usual weekend strategy of riding only the most obscure and unknown trails. As a result, I seemed to spend more time chatting with neighbors than riding! But, I needed an easier day on the bike and I enjoyed my chats so that was OK with me.

I spotted a carpet of twin flowers in a lush green patch in the midst of a pine forest. They are tiny plants that each have two bell-like flowers hanging from the stems.
As I rode along a ridge, I enjoyed the views of flowers and mountains but heard the echoes of gunfire from a recreational area where people love to recklessly shoot at anything in their field of view - a very dangerous situation for those of us traveling on the heavily forested trails. I changed my route to avoid the shooting and headed for home. I think that I'll stick with the deep woods and obscure trails next weekend.
Here's to a day of healing with the clouds lifting from the mountaintops for the Labraduo while we humans enjoy a mountain stage of the Tour de France!

A moose!

Today, I began my day feeling certain that our Flycatcher nestlings would fly the coop today. So, I took one more photo before departing on our bike ride. Sure enough, the nest was empty when I returned. I can hear the flycatcher parents calling to each other in the forest around our house as they feed the young and try to keep them together. Yipee, a young quartet of flycatchers has entered the big world!
My morning started with a pack mountain bike ride/run, following the tails of the Labraduo on a tire-width thin trail through a meadow.
We climbed up high in the stifling heat of the morning, and the Duo agreed to just one photo in the hot sun. However, they didn't agree to keep their eyes open for it!
We kept the run short for the dogs due to the heat, and I headed out to explore on my own. Several of you asked what kind of blue flowers appeared in the lush aspen grove in a recent photo. Believe it or not, they were 3' tall Columbines.
The Columbines have peaked at our elevation and are starting to wane. At the same time, the Mariposa Lilies are going wild. This high meadow was a virtual forest of them!
I headed to an area that almost no people ever visit now that no motorized travel is allowed. Indeed, I visited there one week ago, and my mountain bike tire tracks were untrampled by any other people. Amazing! I've been searching this area for potential bear dens with some success. I first returned to the one that I found a few weeks ago. From a distance, the terrain covers the entrance.
Once I dropped my bike and hiked uphill, the dark opening became more obvious.
No doubt, bears had been all around it. They'd dug gaping holes into the hillside, about the right size for a bear who was searching for underground food. They'd ripped apart stumps, and they'd gone into the den. Coal black fur hung from the entrance rock. In the upper left of the photo below, the ceiling rock for the entrance has been rubbed clean of lichens and mosses by animals passing through unlike the rest of the rock surfaces. I'm learning that bears start searching for dens very early in the summer so I wonder if someone toured this one recently.
I found other caverns that initially looked promising but didn't seem quite deep enough for bear hibernation. This one looked promising from a distance. The entrance is in the lower right of the photo, next to the pine tree trunk.
But, close up, I realized that it was probably too shallow for a bear or a bear family. Moreover, the entrance is too big and would release too much heat. I'll keep searching... I hope to have a number of potential sites to check for inhabitants this winter.
To my utter surprise, a check of my remote wildlife camera on Black Bear Trail during my mountain bike ride revealed that a young cow moose has passed it twice in the last few days. Wildlife officials introduced moose to western Colorado in 1978 and 1979 by releasing about two dozen into the wild. They've gradually expanded their range and crossed the Continental Divide. In recent years, we see moose occasionally up high on the eastern side of the Continental Divide. However, I've never seen one on the trails that I mountain bike daily.

When I checked my wildlife cameras, I noticed huge two-toed hoof tracks on the sandy trail, and I assumed that it was a bull elk who was summering in our neighborhood. That's not unheard of - the big males stay down at our elevation until mating season when they migrate up to the high meadows near the Divide to find females. It didn't even cross my mind that a moose had meandered along the trail. So, now I've captured images of black bears, mountain lion, bobcat, mule deer, and a moose on this wildlife corridor. Wow!

Check out this video. Notice the "dewlap", a flap of skin hanging from the moose's chin and the gangly legs relative to the body. My guess is that this is a young female moose, perhaps a yearling, who is exploring new territory. Yearlings weigh about 300 lbs!



Remote wildlife cameras are teaching me things that I otherwise would NEVER know about our forest and its surprising inhabitants!