flaming tumbleweeds

Sometimes the river is very cold, lately around 5 degrees celsius. On these days lighting a lunch fire is a fabulous thing. It can be hard to find good firewood by the fiver, so the other day we just lit tumbleweeds on fire and they produced four foot tall columns of flame. Awesome.

Sometimes there are big muddy holes along the river. Sometimes we fall in them.

Yum, fresh bass. We have to remove non-native fish we find, and what better way than to eat them whole?

Fish get into places you'd never imagine. So to sample, we have to crawl down storm drains, through irrigation ditches, and so on.

During breeding season, the speckled dace gets bright red lipstick markings... the male speckled dace that is.

This bullfrog was found dead in the river. He was snuck into a backpack as a joke and carried several miles down the river, carried in the bed of our truck over 20 miles of dirt roads back to the office, thrown on the windshield of one of our cars...

It's incredible how entertaining a dead bullfrog can be when you're freezing cold from being in the river.

Three happy fish techs and one happy chub.

Save the Woundfin! Kill the Red Shiner!

So finally, here are some pictures of what I actually do for work. We have two endangered species in the Virgin River, the woundfin, and the Virgin River chub. These woundfin have little neon green tags in them so we know when and where we stocked them if we catch them during monitoring.


The Virgin River chub is one of the bigger fish in the river, and feeds on the smaller minnows. Both of these fish are found nowhere but the Virgin River, and the woundfin is confined to only 16 miles of river, making it one of the rarest fish in the world.


These fish are in trouble because of human water consumption and because of this fish here, the red shiner (we sometimes call them red devils). Introduced from the Mississippi into Lake Mead as a bait fish, the shiner has moved up the Virgin River, breeding 12 times a year, eating native fish eggs, and outcompeting natives for resources.

To get rid of red shiner, we treat the river with rotenone, a poison which kills fish by damaging their gills (so people, birds, cats, etc. are safe as we have no gills). Before treating, we salvage what native fish we can and move them upstream. Then, we work crazy long days to make sure we treat every backwater, puddle, and ditch along them river so there are no refuges for red shiner. Fish can survive in places you'd never imagine, like inside this rock wall that I am spraying with rotenone treated water.


We also stock hatchery bred native fish to boost population numbers. Here Laura is checking the temperature on a cooler full of woundfin being acclimated to river temperature.


Go out into the world, little woundfin! And make lots of woundfin babies!

Zion Narrows

As the upper part of the Virgin River (the one I work with fish on!) has flowed through Zion National Park, it has cut an amazingly deep, narrow canyon that is one of the parks quite famous hikes. There's no trail, you just start walking up the river where the road ends. In the river specifically, as the canyon is too narrow to have riverbanks.


The forecast said the water temperature was about 51 degrees fahrenheit. I attempted to figure out what this was in Celsius...as I have a science job all our work thermometers, and hence my reference points for how cold is too cold, are in Celsius.

Ah well. I headed up the river wearing my shorts and sandals. As I walked by other hikers, I noticed that all of them were wearing drysuit pants and canyoneering shoes that they had rented. Many of them looked at me askance and asked me whether I was freezing. It was a quite cold, I definitely could not feel my feet so well by the end of the day.


As I hiked further up, the canyon got narrower and twistier, with walls rising a thousand feet above and crazy shapes carved by the river. The water was perfectly clear, much different than the muddy lower Virgin River where we work. It was quite nice being able to see the rocks so I didn't destroy my shins on them as I normally do. It was also neat seeing the river I work on upstream, in an area that isn't full of invasive fish, crowded by tamarisk trees, and diverted for irrigation.


I ran into an amateur photographer who wanted a subject for his pictures - his are the two lovely pictures with the really nice light from long exposure times and tripods, they are quite nicer than the dark, somewhat washed out pictures from my little camera.

Moab!

from a guidebook "Mesa Arch would be excellent to walk over if it weren't for the thousand foot drop off one side."

Oops. Good thing Laura and I didn't fall a thousand feet into a canyon.

The first day we hiked in canyonlands, a national park hard enough to get to that it is gloriously empty of people. Our trail led us through this breach, where our voices echoed off the rock.

Quite often, I felt like I was inside the set of an old cowboy movie.

"When I got into town here, no one could understand what I was saying, and I couldn't understand what they were saying either. So I walked down the canyon, and sat by the river, and walked back out again, and I realized that no one has to say anything here." Peter Rowan

We went into town for the Moab Folk Festival and saw an awesome concert with Peter Rowan and Ramblin' Jack Eliot (above) and others.

We camped right by the Colorado River. Neil and Eric decided to take advantage of this and jump in the freezing cold river.

The next day we headed to Arches National Park.

Delicate Arch. This arch shows up in so many photos that I know this one doesn't really show how neat it was to be there. Even though its one of the most popular spots in the park and was swarming with people it was still amazing.

Dry ramen noodles are delicious for hiking!

Weekend Adventures

Three of us headed up to Bryce Canyon for a backpacking trip one weekend. Here are me and Neil at an overlook on the Under the Rim Trail.


The park ranger told us that the trail we planned to take was "boring and not that scenic because you're in the trees all the time." Bah. He was wrong. Trees are very scenic, particularly turning maples, and we still got plenty of views of hoodoos and rock formations. Apparently, most of the visitors thought the same as the ranger, and we had the trail to ourselves, which was excellent.


It was ridiculously cold. Karen and I were hoping for snow so we ripped snowflakes out of our trail maps and hung them on the tent window. Sadly, it did not work.

And... to red rocks Nevada to go rock climbing! Even before we reached the crags we had to find our way through a crazy landscape of carved sandstone and deep gullies and washes. We got lost a few times.

More red rocks, Karen leading a route on the Magic Bus Wall. After the sun went down (we got caught in the dark without headlamps hiking back to the car) we went back to our campsite and grilled steak, asparagus, and garlic bread. I had forgotten this glorious part of car camping, the ability to bring vast amounts of food too heavy to carry in a backpack.


And last weekend, the Grand Canyon. The best thing about the canyon was how the Colorado River cut through layers of rock laid down over time, and walking down it you travel through the different ages of the earth, from recent times at the top all the way down to bottom rock layers formed when only bacteria lived on the planet.



The ponderosa pines that line the North Rim smell like butterscotch. Kaibab squirrels with huge rabbit ears and white fluffy tails run around the forests too.

Pine Valleys and Pomegranates

Living in the desert, we miss trees. So my first weekend here we headed for the Pine Valley Mountains, where there were aspens, pines, and even oaks! Here's me with Neil and Laura, my roomies.
One stream we worked at a few weeks ago had a pomegranate orchard nearby... here are the 33 pomegranates that Laura and I managed to obtain and are still trying to eat. They are sitting on our lovely ten dollar thrift store coffee table.

There are some very neat rock formations right outside of St. George. Although these views of red rocks also include views of housing developments, its very neat having slot canyons and climbing right in city parks.

Sacred datura, or moonflower. Apparently this flower is hallucinogenic, and can also kill people.

But, the best part of where I live is not the town itself - it is the short distance to amazing national parks like Zion, where we spend our weekends.

Unfortunately, Kiira and i fell into a cave while hiking up Hidden Canyon on our Zion trip.

Sandstone

Totoro's Adventure

Totoro and I set out from Yellowstone and stopped in the Tetons for a hike up the Middle Teton, the highest peak in the park that can be reached without technical climbing skills. Here, Totoro scrambles up a slope that is considered an off-trail scramble in Wyoming but might be called the Madison Gulf Trail if it were in New Hampshire.

Summit! Totoro at 12,804' with the Grand Teton visible behind.

We drove further south and took off over 40 miles of dirt roads (my little car was not happy) to reach the Wind River Range. I explored granite cirques and cliffs carved by glaciers, and subsisted off pop tarts and box macaroni and cheese for a few days. By the higher alpine lakes, colorful climbers tents were set up, and I could hear shouts of "on belay" echoing down from the walls of the mountains, though any climbers must have been too high up to see.

We set up camp by Big Sandy Lake, next to a group using pack llamas. Yes, pack llamas. I want one to carry my pack!

After bouncing back over the dirt roads, we made it to Utah! Here is Totoro at the Great Salt Lake. You really do float when you swim in it - and little brine shrimp were swimming all around, it was like the world's largest pool of sea monkeys.

Into red rock country, where I'll be spending the fall! Here are the hoodoos and rock formations of cedar breaks national monument.

Cedar Breaks also has bristlecone pines, including this 1,600 year old tree. As totoros love big old trees, I thought it was very fitting for Totoro to sit in this one.