Keystone day 3 photos

[jinian]

Keystone day 3 photos

The resort, Granlibakken, has a tiny ski area and a "snow play" hill. Apparently some people are still moving pretty quickly at the base of these, because this poor tree has clearly gotten bashed around quite a bit. It's recovering just fine, though.


Tiny pine tree!


There are meant to be trails that go all around the resort, but the only ones that were cleared or groomed at all were those leading down to the river and up to the top of the hill. Not knowing that, I went up the hill looking for the loop trail.


My reward at the top of the hill: the corner of Rawhide and Bonanza! Just houses, no more trail. I headed back down.


But the view from up there was beautiful. Look at the contrails!


And I found a little fir friend. Since the name of the resort means it's surrounded by firs (after a place in Norway), I was glad to see something besides the constant pines.


The trees did support an extensive amount of lichen, albeit with a lot less species diversity than at home. This bright chartreuse stuff was the only kind I saw on trees, though I assume some of the bright colors we saw on bare stone as we left were other lichen species.


More trees and sky.


Next, I walked down to the river. Disappointingly, some of the trail down was paved, because someone had built a house most of the way down it and made it their driveway. I suppose it was less tiring than walking on the mushy snow all the way, but it wasn't as pretty and I felt distinctly awkward when I found some guy hanging out in their driveway with about a dozen vehicles. (I minded my own business and he didn't bug me.)

Beautiful old snags like this weren't as common as I would've thought. Probably groomed away by people who don't get it.


Down by the Truckee River again, from a different vantage point. That's the tiny town of Lake Tahoe in the distance.


The pines down by the river (Jeffrey pine? Didn't check fascicles.) were very frequently infested with parasitic dwarf-mistletoe plants.


Here's a closer shot of the dwarf-mistletoe.


Also down there were Steller's jays. There aren't many of these in Seattle compared to where I grew up, so I was happy to see and hear them all the time around Tahoe. I really need a better camera if I want to photograph birds. This one's better than the hooded mergansers I tried to catch, but it's not actually any good.


By this day it was outright drippy in most places, with considerable patches of bare earth. Magical springtime thaw! I kept wondering if this was really it or there'd be another snowstorm later. Skiing was still pretty good, if soft -- there was a lot of snowpack to start with.


Look, things melt little holes around them in the snow, like this adorable striped seed. (Ponderosa pine!)


I did not go to town, just sat at a picnic table by the river for a while and headed back up to the resort to rest. The pussy-willow photos didn't come out at all, sorry!

Comments

[pameladean]

I haven't had any luck photographing Stellar's Jays either, even when they are sitting on the picnic table a foot away from me eating my sunflower seeds.

I love very young evergreens. I always want to give them a dollhouse so they can play grownup.

P.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Ooh, mistletoe squee.

Some trees in Florida, I forget what species, were winter-bare of leaves and hung with round green balls of mistletoe.