Hood Canal and Putvin Trail - 6/24

Tiger Lily

I had run around for 17-18 hours on the previous day, ending it in Gig Harbor in a camper provided by Cara Borre.  Maybe I was just really tired, but the mattress was so comfortable, I almost just stole it.  It wouldn't fit in my car, however, so nobody has to know about that plan per se.

I was up by six something, and effectively talked Cara and her partner Asta out of joining me on the next day of birding.  I had a hike planned that I knew would not be good for cameras (Asta is the photographer) or for bad knees, which Cara had hinted at.  We worked through it all over some coffee, and decided that I'd head out solo to tackle the Putvin Trail near Hamma Hamma. 



Lake of the Angels - from exotichikes.com

In my head... I really wanted to tackle this trail - like all of it.  It climbs up to Olympic National Park, where one has the option of summiting Mount Stone - the county high point - or the Lake of the Angels a place with flowery meadowy goodness.  Other points like Pond of the False Prophet, the Valley of Heaven and Saint Peter's Gate are all speckled around the top.  Spoiler alert - I didn't get up that far.  I'll have a lot of reasons by the end of the post, but if it's funnier to say I turned back because of thimbleberry, go for it.  It's partly true.

As high as it gets in Mason County -  Mount Stone (image from SummitPost.org).  This shot is from Mount Ellinor.
The range map for Golden Eagle extends south to that peak, and perhaps down to Mount Skokomish - I would love to
make it up to the saddle between the two of them next time - I wasn't all that far from it, but was turned back by rain.

Hood Canal morning

On the way up to the hike, I reached a wide pull out along Hood Canal, just south of Hamma Hamma oysters,  and thought I'd do a quick scan for alcids.  Bingo!  I found an Alcid swimming nearly half-way out in the canal and got kind of excited.  After looking at so many Pigeon Guillemots, I looked at this bird and simply compared it to them.  It was backlit, so I was worried that the absence of the white slash across the side might have been just bad lighting.  It seemed to be persistently not there, so I looked at the bill - comparing it to a Pigeon Guillemot, and the bill was not long and slender like the more common birds.  

Marbled Murrelet - Cara's picture of a bird from later in the
day.  The bird I had was even more backlit, and had its
head held more erect.  Is that because it was on stiller
water?  Not a clue!  This picture looked a lot like the MAMU
that I saw later in the day, and not different enough
from the Rhinoceros Auklet I though I saw.

So... my brain said "all dark alcid with a bill like that... Rhinoceros Auklet!"  Marbled Murrelets, which I have rarely seen in breeding plumage, had not even come across my radar, so it didn't bug me at the time that I saw no yellow on the bill... no horn on the bill... no white stripes on the face...The bird had its head held up pretty high as well, and I may have seen more of them on rough waters with their head tucked a bit lower. 

Was that a good bit of excuse making?  I'm sure that at least some other people could have screwed up this call, right?  You can feel better now!  Ha. 

The important thing is that I sent a text to Cara, who set out to chase it from Gig Harbor right about the time I turned off my phone and started up the trail.

Putvin Trail

Hamma Hamma River

The Putvin trail starts a little ways up past the Lena Lake Trail on Hamma Hamma Road.  There may be other destinations farther down the road, but I don't know what they are.  I arrived around ten o'clock after the stop above... and Safeway... and Starbucks...so my start was a little later than I had intended! 

The first excitement as I got out of the car was the view of wildflowers growing alongside the road.  Tiger Swallowtails quite appropriately were pollinating tiger lilies.  I snapped a picture before even getting my pack together.  I packed way more food and water than I used in the end.  I packed my binoculars and didn't end up needing them, and thankfully, I didn't need any of the ten essentials I brought along (well... may have needed, but didn't use, and was just fine in the end.)

The beginning of the trail brought me across a couple plants that were new to me.  The first was Peace Pipe, or Indian Pipe - it was just starting to emerge from the ground, and the pictures came out poorly, but I'm very tempted to come back in July to take a look at it!  The second was Candystick, which was different from any plant I'd seen before. 

Goat's Beard

Candystick



Tiger Lilies and Tiger Swallowtail

The trail started off easily enough.  It was steep at times, and it got me huffing and puffing a little, a normal occurrence at the start of a hike.  There were three rounds of descending to a creek bed, and rising back up - counting it out made it easier on the way back.  I was amazed at the number of Sooty Grouse along the way, and at the number of people complaining that the trail was much harder than they had expected.  "Should have been called the trail from hell..." one guy said, and I did a nice job of not suggesting purgatory instead. 

One couple I encountered got talking to me about birds, and I asked them about Ruffed Grouse.  They went on and on about all the places they had run into them in the previous day and that morning - at Lena Lake and along other gravelly forest roads - out with chicks, walking through campgrounds, kissing people on the cheek... well all but the last part, but I realized I needed to get to that habitat soon!

View from he trail - thumb included for perspective

I continued upward, and crossed into the Mount Skokomish Wilderness, where it became a bit steeper for a while.  I was happy to have poles along - something I had always laughed at in the past, but once I realized that my whole body could hurt a lot, instead of just my legs hurting injuriously, I was sold. 

I made stops... a good couple of stops on the way up, so the blister on my running shoe-clad feet didn't get too big.  The work eventually brought me to a clearing - about three hours in, and just as it started to rain.  My shirt was pretty wet here and there from sweat, so the light rain didn't really do much... but it did keep going! 

I was able to get farther up into the clearing, and I realized that this was a stretch I had hoped to get to.  It was open with scattered trees and plenty of wildflowers, and with talus slopes ringing it in parts.  In my head, I had decided that this was habitat for Townsend's Solitaires.  The rain made it difficult to do little things like walk around and look at things in binoculars, so I got situated under a tree and played for Solitaires.  I never got more than isolated calls that I thought held possibility, but I certainly was encouraged by the habitat!  There were Hermit Thrushes and Varied Thrushes, and an Orange-crowned Warbler came right up to my tree to investigate. 

Before getting to Olympic National Park - Putvin Trail

The flowers around me included more tiger lilies, Indian paintbrush, and thimbleberry.  Now... the thimbleberry is one of my favorite plants, but in this case, with it soaking wet and dangled across the trail.. Each step I took uphill was drenching me, the feet were a little sore, and I wasn't really prepared to get drenched by the water from above and below.  So I played for TOSO a little longer, then decided to head back down the hill. 


Tiger Lilies from the clearing

Drenching delivery system -
AKA Thimbleberries.

On the way down, I was passed by a man who had to be 70.  He was a mountain goat of a man who had made it all the way to Lake of the Angels.  The wildflowers were apparently in full bloom, and overwhelmingly gorgeous.  We had talked about the difference in our walking poles - he had an "old person cane" because of the ergonomics.  "I also made a few modifications."  He explained  "I have an ice axe attachment, and a bayonet attachment."  I raised an eyebrow at this, "For mountain goats... or people... I've never had to use it."

We talked about safety on the trail, and he bemoaned people that go too far - beyond their abilities.  "They don't understand... it's not the destination... it's the journey."  I accepted what felt like a stamp of approval on my year, and watched him zip down ahead of me. 

My shirt at the end of the hike.
I can't even guess on the rain/sweat ratio

Walking down the trail was manageable, I did have one time where I totally bit it, but I survived the fall just fine.  From there it was smooth sailing until the last quarter mile.  I tripped.  I got my balance.  I tripped again... I caught myself.  At one point I had a solid thirty foot stumble that stopped right in front of a small tree lying across the path.  All of this on the smoothest part of the trail - nothing but the occasional root or rock. 

This very well may be where I had my
thirty foot stumble - tree on the trail ahead

I stopped and asked God (or for readers that are so inclined... the Universe), why my life needed to end on a trail like this.  I enumerated all of the things that I was thankful for, and all that I needed to make it back to at the end of the trip.  All of this needed to be settled before I did anything hasty like... try to walk over a small tree.  Done... I looked up... waited for objections while I wiped tears from my eyes (don't judge... I was tired, and the time alone meant I had a lot of time to think... and I'm just a crier), then made my way over and finished my walk.

Hood Canal again

Once I got in cell range, I toggled the phone back out of airplane mode, and my phone lit up once again with texts. 

I called, and got the skinny.  The first order of business was to get a po' boy and a beer at Hamma Hamma.  I'd been thinking about them for months since my last visit here in the winter.  I found California Gulls roosting behind the store on the shores of Hood Canal (162!), a code 1 bird, but a little earlier than expected. 


View of Hood Canal through the oyster saloon at Hamma Hamma

Crab cake Po Boy - something they kind of just threw
together, and one of the tastiest sandwiches I've ever had!

The food required a small change in plans, as the oysters that were fried up for sandwiches in the morning were declared unsafe by the health department later in the day - not long before I got there.  Apparently, the lack of snowpack in the Olympics meant that very little cold water had been running down to feed the oysters.  Toxin levels had gotten too high, so for those particular oysters, we had just entered the bad months.

There were two pieces of good news - oysters from up in Jefferson County, and down in South Puget Sound (Hammersley, actually - the place I'd been just the day before) were safe for shooters.  I got a Fish Tale Pale, three shooters with a delicious mignonette, and a crab cake po boy.  The last item was an impromptu recipe that the fellows in the kitchen were pretty excited about, and it was delicious!

Jorsted Creek - Purple Martins nesting here, and
this was just south of where I had the Marbled Murrelet

I paid up, and started an hour long search for a Marbled Murrelet.  The birds had moved a bit, and.. for me, it felt like chasing.  I know... birders chase... but it just didn't sit well with me.  I rarely chase, and when I do... I end up standing there.. for hours... waiting for the bird to show up.  "It was just here." makes me so itchy, I can barely stand it.  Figuring out where birds should be makes it more exciting when I find them, and less frustrating when I don't. 

Nonetheless, after an hour of searching,  I located the bird.  It was slowly sinking in at this point that this bird looked an awful lot like the one that I had seen earlier in the day.  I saw the bird, and my mind started asking questions that finally had me scratch out the rhino from earlier in the morning.  Nonetheless, the tally was up to a solid 163 with the Murrelet.

It was also satisfying to find the birds where I did.  They are birds that nest in the Olympics in old growth stands.  Seeing them here in breeding season showed that there were some nesting not impossibly far away - maybe in Mason County, but likely not. 

I zipped back to Gig Harbor, enjoyed beer from the growler in a frosty mug, and made it home by nine.  I was encouraged by Cara to pass on Mason in July, given the even smaller number of possible birds for me out there.

HA!

The little penciled line at the very top of the county shows my route for the hike. 
With July coming, there is so much of the county that is open and hikable.
I'll be back next month - no worries.