Heat, humidity, bugs, and things

I didn't reach my weight goal by June 25th, so I've kept up the hiking. Still not losing any weight. Fortunately, it's been a mild summer so far. Very few days over 105. I've been going up Lone Mountain a lot. It's 2.3 miles round trip and about 850 feet of ups and downs. Sometimes there are some nice things to get pictures of along the way.

I've gotten lots of pictures of the sun setting behind Red Mountain.

It's been interesting watching the bugs change with the seasons this year. Bug season starts off with gnats. I have a strong dislike for gnats. I'm always looking for ways to keep them off of me that doesn't involve smearing smelly chemicals all over me or hiding under a blanket. I thought I might have discovered something amazing this spring. I have a medication that I take occasionally and one day I took some before a hike thinking that it might make it easier for my body to cool itself. What I noticed, though, was that gnats hardly bothered me on that hike. Wouldn't it be amazing to take a small pill that doesn't even taste bad, and it would keep gnats away from you? I was shaking with excitement at the thought. However, the gnats didn't bother me on my next hike, and I hadn't taken any of the medicine. Then I took some and they did bother me. I eventually concluded that if the medicine did keep me cool or drive gnats away, the effect was too small to be easily recognized. Rats.

The gnats seem to go away when the highs are over 100. The honey bees and flowers that attract them are still abundant, though, and you are accompanied by the constant background buzz of hundreds of bees everywhere you go. Bees don't bother me. I'm not allergic to them. I like to see them busily doing their bee-thing all day. They are the thing that causes me the most concern out in the desert, though. Coyote, mountain lion, and bear attacks are so rare they aren't worth worrying about. Rattlesnakes and Gila Monsters move slowly and won't do anything to you unless you step on them or pick them up. You have to run a minimum of 300 yards to get away from killer bees, though, and they will be doing their best to stop you from running. I try not to do anything that would anger or even attract the attention of bees.

When the monsoon rains hit, the termites send forth queens to start new colonies. Hundreds or maybe even thousands emerge from a termite nest. They were doing that on top of Lone Mountain recently. I went up there to try some (new to me) HDR techniques which involved standing in one spot for several minutes at a time. After taking 2 pictures, I got tired of the flying termites getting stuck to my sweat or tangled up in my hair and left.

This is where colonizing termites were emerging from a nest. They were all over the top of Lone Mountain. When I went back up there a few days later, the bodies of dozens that never got off the mountain were still there.

I wanted some different scenery on a recent hike so I went down Black Canyon to First Water Creek, and then on to Canyon Lake. I forgot that I shouldn't do that in such warm weather. There never seems to be a breeze in Black Canyon. As I stood motionless near Canyon Lake, sweat ran down my temples. It was really humid down there without a breeze.

This is where First Water Creek enters Canyon Lake.

Black Canyon is where I first encountered a bug I don't remember from previous summers. Maybe that's because they aren't obnoxious enough. They are extremely small gnats. They have a very high-pitched whine. They like my hat and my cell phone more than me, so we get along just fine.

Mid to late summer is also millipede season. I guess their season is drawing to a close soon. I saw several in Black Canyon that had curled up (literally) and died, their procreation duties having been fulfilled.

From 2014_07_19

A live millipede in First Water Creek.

I saw something very unusual in Black Canyon that day; a dead kangaroo rat. I've seen a few live ones at night. The only dead animals I've come across out in the desert are just bones. The kangaroo rat looked like it had died that day, in the middle of the trail, which seemed strange. The strangest thing was that nothing was eating it. There weren't even any flies on it. What would make a dead kangaroo rat so unappetizing to all the other critters? I saw it on the way down the canyon and it was still there half an hour later on the way back up. The vultures aren't doing their job.

A dead but unmolested kangaroo rat in the middle of the trail.

Here's a nicer picture that I took when I was being lazy and driving around instead of hiking.

We had a little rain for a few days and then it dried up again. I climbed up the Boulder Canyon trail and Lone Mountain on those humid days. Sweat poured off my face like rain and I drank twice as much water as I usually do. Humidity is a killer if you have to do anything more strenuous than scratching your butt.

A picture of Pass Mountain on a humid day.

I climbed Lone Mountain day before yesterday (I'm not climbing anything today; it's over 110 out there). I could tell the air was much drier because my throat was too dry to talk. Also, even though it was blazing hot, the sweat never got all the way down my face before in vanished in a puff of steam. That's the way the desert should be.

I've been talking about Lone Mountain a lot, so here's a picture of the top of it. I'll try to remember to take a picture of the whole mountain some day.

Still to come is tarantula season, when the males go wandering around in search of love (or something). That will pretty much wrap up this year's bug season.

I like this view. The only way to see it is to go all the way to the top of Lone Mountain.

There's probably more pictures out there. Find them if you can.

Exploring Willow Creek

May 2 was one of those bad gnat days. Not only that, but I didn't put my gaiters on because I didn't think there was much grass where I was going. (I was wrong about that.) The gnats still have a preference for my right forearm so I killed at least a couple of dozen there. It was a beautiful late afternoon but it was hard to enjoy with bugs in my eyes. Every time I bent down to pick grass seeds out of my socks, I could see 30 or 40 gnats hanging around my legs. They aren't annoying there, but they were just working their way up to my head.

Several of the pictures I took have gnats in them. They're out of focus, of course, since they were right in front of the camera.

OK, no more BMWing. I went for a short hike over to the location of the tinajas I had seen from across Willow Creek a few weeks ago. At that time, I thought they were in a tributary of Willow Creek. According to DeLorme maps, they are in Willow Creek. Anyway, I got close to where the tinajas were and wanted to hike down to them, but I just couldn't stand the gnats anymore.

There's a tinaja there that I hadn't seen before.

I found this as I hurried back to the truck.

We had some company over the weekend and the weather had cooled off a little by the time I got back out there. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. I carried my gnat net in my pocket but the gnats weren't bad enough to put it on.

Someone was using the corral.

I made some HDRIs from single RAW photos. I like the way they turned out.

The bed of Willow Creek was mostly solid rock where I entered it.

I didn't go very far down Willow Creek before I got to tinajas I had seen from the cliff a couple of weeks ago. There was no way around one of them and even if there had been, there was a large drop right after it. I couldn't go any further in that direction.

Sometimes it's hard to take pictures of these things, so here's a video.

In Willow Creek.

I went up on a cliff above the tinajas next. This is a view of them from above.

There were some nice fluffy clouds around. The rocks look kind of extreme in some of the HDRIs but I was mostly interested in getting nice looking clouds.

Nice view of Four Peaks.

Here's a view of the tinaja by which I had been sitting a couple of weeks ago.

I couldn't remember exploring Willow Creek upstream of this area, so that's what I did next. I started out in a familiar area and before very long I got to a spot where I could remember turning back because it looked like the scenery was getting boring.

I've been here before.

I think this is a pretty area.

This is close to where I had turned back before.

The scenery soon got very interesting again. There were several tinajas, too. I spent a few minutes at one of them figuring out how to get around it and how to get back. I didn't want to drop down somewhere that I wouldn't be able to climb back up.

It was almost too dark for pictures in parts of the creek bed.

Tinaja from upstream.

Same tinaja from downstream.

A short video of one of the spots where I almost had to turn back.

I bet there are lots of animals along here at night.

I kept thinking that I should turn back because the sun was getting low and there were several places where a wrong turn could mean spending a lot of time wandering around in the dark. Well, I could follow GPS breadcrumbs back, but relying on high tech stuff is risky. It breaks too often. I decided to go around just one more bend in the creek and when I did, I realized I was in the spot I had been in a couple of days earlier. Rather than take a chance of making all the right turns on the way back, I took the easy route to the road and then it was an easy stroll back to the truck.

You can see that I move a lot faster when I'm on pavement and it's too dark for pictures.

The pictures are in three groups below.

2013_05_02

2013_05_06

2013_05_08

Gnat wars

The main reason I haven't been hiking much lately is the gnats. I'm so fed up with them I actually bought some insect repellent. I've resisted doing that because I don't like putting noxious chemicals all over myself, but I'm desperate. I got some non-deet stuff, thinking it might not be as harmful to me. Then I read the warnings on the package. It says it can cause serious but non-permanent eye damage. That's rather odd. I'm going to try really hard to not find out exactly what that means.

Does this look familiar yet?

To test it out, I went out to that spot in Bulldog Canyon where the gnats have been really bad lately. It was kind of breezy, though, so it wasn't a very good test. Still, the gnats were in my ears almost as soon as I left the truck. I put a little of the repellent on my ears and they mostly stayed away from my ears for over half an hour. I was wearing sunglasses to keep them away from my eyes so I wouldn't have to risk getting any serious eye damage. BTW, if you get it in your eyes, you're supposed to rinse your eyes with water for 15 minutes. I don't think I can carry that much water. The gnats were buzzing around my nose and mouth, too. I snorted about 3 but was unsuccessful at biting them. I wonder if I would be able to tell if I bit one. They might not be flavorful enough to tell.

It was only about 94 out there. It's been up near 110 lately, so it felt cool, especially with the breeze.

On top.

I made it to the top of the cliffs in the middle of that first picture. I wanted to go further but my legs were already wobbly after a week of hiding from gnats.

I'll have to go up there another day.

As I stood up there enjoying the breeze, I thought I could see a shortcut down. It's the kind of thing that gets some hikers in trouble. If I had taken a shortcut because I was tired and wobbly and then found a 10 foot drop in my path, I could have done something stupid like try to make it down that 10 foot drop. The more tired you are, the more you need to stick to a known path to get back. Click below for all of the pictures.

BC_2012_05_24

Missed flowers

It's hard to get pictures of saguaro flowers. That's because they are rarely less than 12 feet above the ground. There's a saguaro near the Superstition Mountains that has a couple of droopy arms that curve down to within a couple of feet of the ground. I've always thought that would be a good place to get pictures of the flowers. I was out there a couple of weeks ago, but it was too soon. I went out there again on Saturday and they were completely gone, like something ate them. Maybe that's why saguaros usually put them up so high.

We still had smoke from the Sunflower fire on Saturday.

I'm going to have to come up with a different plan for getting pictures of saguaro flowers. I have a few ideas, and most of them do not run the risk of serious bodily injury.

Four Peaks hiding behind smoke, dust, pollution, and saguaros.

There were no gnats on the way out to the saguaro, but that must have been because I was fresh as a daisy and was walking into the wind. They were somewhat bothersome on the way back to the truck. I was hoping high temperatures the previous week had singed their buzzy little wings but that's not the case. Click below for all of the pictures.

2012_05_19

Sunscreen failure

No, I didn't get sunburned. I wanted to try sunscreen to see if it would keeps gnats off of me. I put some on after work yesterday and headed for the same spot where the gnats drove me away last time. At first I thought it was helping, but it turns out that it was very breezy and the gnats were just getting blown away. When I got to a place where the breeze was blocked, they closed in.

I got a picture of a female gilded flicker before the gnats attacked.

I also saw something I had never noticed before; new growth on a saguaro that's red.

I was talking to a guy at work and he was surprised that there were gnats out in the desert. I guess he's used to gnats that cluster around water, and he hasn't been out in the desert much. He was also surprised they could be so bothersome. Imagine a dozen little bugs trying at all costs to get into your nose, eyes, and ears and a dozen crawling on each arm. It is very annoying. You can't enjoy the scenery because you're constantly blinking and swatting. The gnats are so bad this year I may even resort to insect repellent.

I took a few pictures of this rock hoping that the crystals glinting in the sun would show up. I didn't even notice the circular patterns because the gnats wouldn't let me look at it long enough.

It's a shame it was so gnatty this week. The highs have only been about 90, which is very nice for hiking (if you're in the desert, where evaporation effectively cools you).

There's got to be something I can do about them that doesn't involve coating myself in noxious, irritating chemicals. Maybe if I made a paper mache head with big, watery eyes (saline solution) and waxy ears and a boogery nose (what could I use for artificial boogers?), they would be more attracted to it than to me. Sort of a Zaphod Beeblebrox look. I'll think of something. Actually, my favorite idea is a Tim the Toolman style of camera strobe that would vaporize their wings. I'd probably hurt myself, though. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2012_05_08

Gnats and rattle snakes

I was planning to hike up the side of a mountain in Bulldog Canyon on Sunday. I hadn't been up there for a while and I knew it would be pretty and I wanted to try to get to some places I hadn't been before up there. Before I even left the truck, though, the gnats were being very annoying. They were so bad that I wore my sun glasses just to keep them out of my eyes.

I was planning to go up there.

By the time I had gone 200 yards, my arms were tired from swatting at gnats. I had actually caught and killed 3 in my hands (which is unusual) and had smashed another 40 or 50 on my arms, but they weren't discouraged. I was, though. It was difficult to take pictures with gnats crawling up my nose and into my ears. That's very distracting, you know. It looks like it's going to be a bad year for gnats, so I'm going to have to find a solution. I'm hoping that the sunscreen my sister gave me will keep them away. I've used it twice (to prevent sunburn) and wasn't bothered by gnats at all on those hikes. I don't want to use insect repellent because I just don't like that stuff.

So I headed back to the truck and started driving slowly home. Just a little way down the road there was a snake stretched across the road. It rattled and got ready to strike when I got too close for it's comfort while taking pictures. Then it slithered away.

A little bit further and I came across another one. I'm pretty sure they are in the road to warm up (it was only about 89 out there), but this one was in the shade of a palo verde. As you can see in the video I made with my phone camera, it also started rattling before I was very close.

Western diamondback rattlesnake

The same snake on the side of the road, taken from the safety of my truck.

Then not too much further along the road, I came across a third snake. I got out of the truck to take some pictures and to shoo it away because I didn't think I could drive around it without possibly squashing it.

The third snake. This one's dangerous.

The third one never moved as I got as close as I dared to a rattlesnake. Not even the slightest rattle. As I moved around to it's other side to get more pictures the head followed me, but that was the only movement. It wasn't going to move, so I looked around for a nice, long stick. Longs sticks can be hard to find sometimes but there was a half dead palo verde nearby. I nudged the snake with the stick. It did nothing. I moved it a few inches toward the side of the road. I moved just a little. I started to wonder if it had already been run over. I was sliding it to the side when it decided that enough was enough and it gave its rattle a couple of feeble shakes and slowly slowly slithered away. I don't think it was injured after all. If I had stumbled on those first two snakes without seeing them (while hiking), they would have given me plenty of warning to avoid them. That last snake would have done nothing until I stepped on it. Then it probably would have bitten me. That would spoil the whole hike. It would probably be worse than hundreds of gnats.

I think I've come across 4 rattlesnakes while hiking (that I know of). Two rattled like crazy. Two sat there like rocks. I prefer the ones that rattle. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2012_05_06

Tilted?

I used to use a Canon S3 IS. It's a nice camera. I think I took over 10,000 pictures with it. One of the features that I liked about it was that you could have a grid of lines on the display (view finder or LCD). I frequently used that grid to be sure I had the camera level.

I got a good parking spot for this hike.

My XSi has a grid, also, but since it's an SLR, the grid is not displayed in the viewfinder. I never use the LCD when taking pictures (for several reasons). As a consequence, I think a lot of my pictures might be tilted.

Some nameless mountain.

It's hard to tell for sure, though. I thinking about holding the camera level, but then I look at it when I get home and it looks tilted, but maybe it's because I'm not pointed directly at a lake shoreline or a mountain range, or maybe the landscape is tilted.

It's pretty out here, and the nighthawks and coyotes were singing for me.

Sometimes I try to straighten them and they look worse. Sometimes the saguaros in them make it obvious that the picture was tilted. Sometimes the picture looks better with tilted saguaros.

One of those tricky pictures.

Anyway, if you've looked at some of my pictures and wondered why I can't hold the camera straight, you're not alone. I wonder about that all the time myself.

This desert is such a pretty place.

It was only slightly breezy on this hike, which turned out to be a not-so-good thing. We seem to have a bumper crop of gnats this year. I probably killed a couple of dozen. I wait until I feel several on my arm, then I sweep my hand up my arm from wrist to elbow. It's more effective and less painful than swatting, but their bloody little bodies get rolled up in my arm hair. That's one of those little things that makes me wonder if the fact that I usually hike alone is actually other people's choice and not mine.

Saguaro skeleton.

The first time I saw a cholla, I was impressed with how hostile it looked. I still like the way they seem to say, "Get as close as you want, but touch me and you'll regret it." It's not a threat. Just a quiet promise.

Now that's a peaceful scene. Imagine the coyotes howling in the distance.

Click below to see all of the pictures.

BC_2010_05_06