Maintenance crew

Keeping the trail weed-free:

Black slug, hard at work. Elk Falls trail.

The crew was out in full force, mostly black slugs, with the occasional hurrying banana slug.

Water carriers

On the way from the John Hart Project parking lot to Elk Falls, the trail crosses the 1947 wood-stave pipes, still in use. They carry water for the city of Campbell River and the John Hart power station.

Three pipes, 12 feet in diameter each.

View downstream, from the bridge.

The pipes carry water for 1.1 kilometers, from the John Hart dam, below the outlet of John Hart Lake, to a shorter, high pressure, steel pipe leading in to the powerhouse, which empties into the Campbell River.

The dam was built in 1946-7, and provides electricity to the northern half of Vancouver Island (Nanaimo-Port Alberni tothe northern tip) The pipes and the generating station are in the process of being replaced, due to concerns over earthquake stability. During their construction, back in 1946, the area suffered a quake that measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, and the pipes were deemed strong enough to weather one like that back then. But that was 70 years ago.

The pipes will be removed by next year, and will be replaced by a tunnel through the bedrock, their channel infilled and reforested.

Wood stave construction: long, Douglas fir staves (bevelled boards, like those used to make wooden barrels), paint, and steel bands.

Occasionally, these pipes spring a leak. This bit looks like it has been patched with tar. Sometimes a steel plate is installed where boards have been broken through.

Stave wood pipes had the advantage of being pieced together somewhat like tongue and groove joints of staggered lengths, building a continuous pipe and lessening the number of joints. These pipes also swelled when soaked with water, forming tight seals. Tar was applied to the outside and the pipe was wrapped with metal bands to keep it stable. Interestingly, water coming from these pipes didn’t taste like wood since the tree sap was soon flushed out and thus the taste went with it. (Tri-State Museum)

Ferns on a rock face

Throughout this long, hot, dry summer, mists from the falls keep the opposite rock wall moist and, wherever there is a toe-hold for roots, green.

Even on the sheer face to the left, constantly spray-blasted, two or three ferns have found a safe shelter.

Green light

Reflections, above Elk Falls:

Trees reflected in a puddle on the rock around the head of the falls.

Above the falls, the river widens into a quiet pool. Looking out from the shady side of the ravine.

Elk Falls hike

Sooner or later, every Campbell River resident ends up at Elk Falls and the suspension bridge. It took me over a year, but I finally made it.

From the new parking lot at the project interpretive centre, the trail leads down, down, down, and down again, (the ravine is deep) to the bridge, hanging high above the falls.

View from a lower spot on the trail. Still above the falls. Note viewpoint at right.

View from the viewpoint. (Photo from my old pocket Sony, now defunct.)

I wanted a view from the side, so I went on down, down, down. (Hard on the knees)

The suspension bridge from slightly above.

And down some more, on a switchback trail along the side of the canyon, through dark green, old-growth forest.

"Old Mossback"

Just about level with the falls now. The river drops 75 feet into Trout Pool below.

View from another turn in the trail. Note viewpoint at the left. I didn't stop there, though.

And down some more. I wanted to reach the rocks at the top of the falls; I had seen them from the suspension bridge, and there were people on them. I knew the trail would get me there sooner or later. If my knees held out.

Made it! The river flows along, then falls into a hole.

Looking upstream.

Campbell River leaves Lower Campbell Lake, drops over Ladore Falls (22 feet) to Irene Pool, then pours down the ravine and over Bear Falls, Moose Falls, Deer Falls. Elk Falls is the final drop before Trout Pool. From Irene to Trout, in about 5 miles, the river falls 320 feet. From here, it still continues downhill, but not very steeply, until it opens into the flat Campbell River mouth.

The worst about a long hike downhill is that you have to scramble back up again. I took a wrong turn and climbed to the top of the ravine where there was no access to the parking lot, grumbled my way back down, and plodded back up. I caught up to some tourists from Italy on the way, got talking all along the rest of the trail, and completely forgot my sore calves.

I'm tougher than I thought.

Fireweed, going to seed

Late August. It's almost the end of the season for wild flowering plants. Fireweed still carries a few blooms at the top of the spikes, but the air is full of flying seeds.

Long seed pods, pink and green.

Curling, almost ripe. A few seed starting to escape.

And away they go!

Seen at Snakehead Lake.

Street lessons

Deer, like pigeons, spiders, and rats (this last, unfortunately), somehow adjust readily to urban environments. I've seen them in downtown Greater Vancouver, tripping unconcernedly across the street. Here in Campbell River, they browse in vacant lots, in neighbourhood gardens, in the weeds beside the highway.

Yesterday, coming out of a store, I met a doe and her fawn beside the parking lot.

The youngster still has his spots. And what big ears they have!*

This street is one of the busiest; there's always traffic. Just across the street, the machines are busy, tearing up the soil, preparing to build something large. A side alley leads to a parking lot, crammed with workers' cars.

And Ma Deer decided to take her youngster over there, away from me and my car.

Fences everywhere; no escape but by the street.

She stood on the side of the street, watching me, watching her fawn, watching the traffic, until it was safe to cross. Her fawn followed.

"Okay! Coast is clear; come on, kid!"

They crossed the road quickly, went towards the parking lot, then veered into a bit of bush, the fawn a few steps behind his mother all the way.

It was like watching a human mother teaching her kid to cross a street; good parenting, Ma Deer!

A store employee, going off work a minute later, told me that there's been a small family of deer among those trees across the street. She was glad the fawn is still fine.

*(I erased a couple of distracting cars out of that first photo.)

Blue again!

We had rain yesterday. A few minutes, is all, but a hint of a possible return to normalcy. And here in Campbell River, the sky was blue again, with white clouds. The brown smoke that hid everything farther away than the shore of Quadra Island, less than a mile away, has gone. I can see the white caps of the mainland mountains for the first time in weeks.

Good news, for us. And more rain is promised; good news for the rest of BC, still battling the Plateau fire, the largest wildfire in BC's history. But some people, in other areas, are being allowed to return home. September, with its rainclouds, is in sight.

And I was so glad to see a sunset against a blue sky, that I took its photo with the pocket camera propped on the roof of the car for stability.

So the roof is curved. But the sky is blue again.

Yay!

A Skywatch post.

Opportunists

I love pearly everlastings. Every summer, I collect a fresh handful to dry for winter flowers; they last all winter, and on into the next year, as white and delicate as they were the day they were picked.

Western pearly everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea

The plant is another of the asters; the "flower" is a cluster of tiny, yellow flowers, in a showy head of papery bracts. The flowers fade, but the bracts persist until next year's crop pushes them aside.

Each flower head is about 1/4 inch across.

I made a mistake this year. I always hang the fresh plants stem up in a dry place until the yellow flowers and the leaves are dry. Last week, I was in a rush, and plopped the whole handful into a vase where a broken hollyhock stem was being cared for. Then I forgot all about it.

When I looked at them again yesterday, the sap was still running. And the stems were covered in fat, dark aphids.

Where did they come from? I'm sure there were none when I brought them home.

When host plant quality becomes poor or conditions become crowded, some aphid species produce winged offspring, "alates", that can disperse to other food sources. (Wikipedia)

Oh. So they may have flown in. Or ...

From KULeuven

(Text: "Did you know? In one season, just one aphid could produce over 600 billion descendants. During their asexual reproduction, the aphids give birth to live young instead of laying eggs. These young already contain their own young, meaning that an aphid gives not only birth to their children, but also their grandchildren.")

They were born here. And they're just getting started!

One aphid, showing off her siphunculi.

Most aphids have a pair of cornicles (or "siphunculi"), abdominal tubes through which they exude droplets of a quick-hardening defensive fluid containing triacylglycerols, called cornicle wax. (Wikipedia, again.)

These aphids are probably in the genus Uroleucon.

Fairybells in the forest

In the woods beside Woodhus Creek, the summer flowers are gone; it's berry time.

These are Hooker's fairybells, aka drops-of-gold, Prosartes hookeri.

The berries start off yellow, and ripen to red. Some BC First Nations people ate them, but most think they're poisonous. I haven't tasted them. I will, someday when I'm feeling adventurous.

The berries are finely hairy.

Woodhus Creek after a dry summer

We discovered Woodhus Creek in 2010, after a rain. When we went back in 2010, (and again last summer) the sandstone bed was mostly dry. This year, 7 years and a day later, after this hot, rainless summer, it's even drier. Crispy, in parts.

Bare sandstone, and the bottom of the fish ladder.*

That same patch of stone, Aug. 16, 2012. The edge of the fish ladder is at the far left.

Shallow streams trickle down to the river below.

Alder leaf and evergreen needles, barely floating.

Near the edges of the creek, the stone wears moss This year, it's hard and crunchy. But down in holes worn through the sandstone, a few plants find moisture and shade.

And wherever there was water, there were water striders.

Two water striders. The shadows are always bigger than the insects, and usually a distance away, depending on how deep the water is and the angle of the sun.

One water strider, possibly an Aquarius remigis, on very shallow water. It has orange spots down the sides of its abdomen.

And another. Look closely at the feet; see how the water fans out into round or long feathery shapes? The legs have thousands of hairs to grab the surface.

Last July, I found many caddisfly larvae in these waters. I looked and looked for them this time; there was nary a one to be found. Too late? Too dry? I'll look again next year.

Still, the shallow puddles, even without larvae or water striders, were interesting.

Needles and a wing of an unidentified insect, floating over bubbly algae and pond scum.

More bubbly algae.

*And a grumble: in that first photo, there are two extraneous objects. One is my bag, which I brought in and hauled out, of course. The other is a two-litre orange juice container, emptied and left on the fish ladder. I found its plastic lid down in a pool. Why, people; why? Is it too much work to cart your leavings out?

I took it, and the lid, out with me. I'll even get a few cents for recycling it.

Web and wall

At the fish ladder on Woodhus Creek, a spider takes advantage of the summer drought to build her web.

Cement, rocks, and fine silk, catching the sunlight. The spider is there in the centre, dazzling white in the afternoon sun.

So fragile, that web; I can brush it away with a finger; a frantic wasp can tear a great hole in it. And yet pound for pound, it's stronger than the rocks beneath, stronger than the heavy concrete wall.

And at the end of the day, the spider will eat it, and reprocess it for tomorrow's web.

Identify this moss

It's been hot and dry for so long; even in the shady woods, the mosses are crispy and dark. This one was struggling along on a rock beside Woodhus Creek.

Unidentified moss. The leaves are still trying to stay green, and it's making spores.

The sporangium (spore case) is barrel-like, with teeth at the mouth (the peristome), standing upright on a tall stem (the seta). And this stem is twisted into a spiral.

Zooming in.

I don't know what species of moss this is. I remember once seeing something about a moss stem twisted this way, but I don't remember where. And I haven't found it in several hundred photos on Google.

Help!

Limpet, snails, etc.

A few August aquarium critter shots: the residents who wander close to the glass, where bubbles and amphipods and bits of seaweed don't get in the way.

LImpet. The yellowish bits are limpet poop.

Limpets are built like snails; because they have retreated into a shell that opens only on one side or one end (snails), their anatomy has to be twisted away from the "normal" head to tail shape of other animals. For example, they have two kidneys, as do we. But the left one is tiny, because it just wouldn't fit otherwise. On the exposed bottom of a limpet, we see the mouth, two tentacles, with their eyes, the big foot, with the gills laid alongside. (Not visible in this photo.) And the anus is up near the head. Which could be a problem.

The anus of most molluscs and indeed many animals is located far from the head. In limpets and most gastropods, however, the evolutionary torsion which took place and allowed the gastropods to have a shell into which they could completely withdraw has caused the anus to be located near the head. Used food would quickly foul the nuchal cavity unless it was firmly compacted prior to being excreted. (Wikipedia) (My emphasis. "Nuchal" means near the neck.)

One of the tinier hermit crabs. The eelgrass is about 1/4 inch wide; half its width is visible here. So the hermit, shell and all, is about 3/8 of an inch long.

Channelled dogwinkle, Nucella canaliculata. It eats barnacles, prefers mussels. I don't bring many mussels home for them, though; they (the mussels) trap and kill my hermits.

Channelled dogwinkle finishing off a stonefull of barnacles. There is one still alive, still cheerfully trolling for supper, at the bottom right. Sometimes I feel sorry for them.

Bejewelled (or at least, be-sanded) Japanese nassa, Nasarius fraterculus. The fine sand must be stuck to the algae growing on the shell. Average sand grains beneath it: these are not stones.

Knobbly column of a pink-tipped green anemone. The neighbours are a limpet, a couple of Asian mud snails (invasive Batillaria), a hermit, and another pink and green anemone. There are 11 of these in the tank now; they keep cloning themselves.

And the chiton is still on his moon snail shell.

Pacific rose

Delicate blades of red algae:

Pacific rose seaweed, Rhodymenia pacifica

This seaweed, common enough among the scraps tossed up on the shore by the tides, but usually out-competed in the intertidal zone by the sea lettuces and rockweed, is the only one that loves its home in my tank. Other seaweeds float around, sometimes for a couple of weeks, until the hermits and crabs have worn them to shreds. Eelgrass holds out a bit longer, but eventually turns black and disintegrates, leaving only the roots.

Rose seaweed grows and grows and grows. I rip out handfuls every time I clean the tank. But it's a popular hangout; the handfuls always come with a crowd of amphipods, a couple of hermit crabs, and maybe a snail or two. I have to wash them out carefully and return them to the tank.

So I always leave a small clump, usually attached to a rock. And a few days later, it's grown and taken over half the tank. I think it likes it here.