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.

Bats, maybe, and some other stuff

I visited Carlsbad Caverns many years ago and watched thousands of bats streaming out of the cave at sunset. I've wanted to find a cave full of bats out here so I could see that again. I see bats at sunset all the time. I just don't know where they all spend the day. I thought I had found one such place on a recent hike.

A possible bat cave.

The picture shows an abandoned mine that has been covered with a grating to keep people from falling in. That box on top is about 15 feet from the (visible) bottom and the sides are vertical, so a fall would most likely be fatal. I saw a couple of rattlers down there the first time I was out there, too. A narrow opening at the visible bottom goes deeper, but I have no idea how much deeper. The box is designed to allow flying animals to get in and out. I hiked out there just before sunset recently and took along my bat detector. At first, I thought I was picking up some interesting stuff with the bat detector.

It was like something in there was turning on and off.

A little later, I noticed there was something suspicious about the way the detector was going on and off. I had noticed before that the detector is very sensitive to EMI. For example, it goes nuts if you hold it close to a CFL.

Demonstration of interference.

Anyway, with all the electronics I was carrying, I'm not sure how much of the things the detector detected were other stuff or just me and all my gadgets. I finally saw two bats fly out of the hole. That was disappointing. But, I also saw three owls come out. That was really cool. It was much too dark to get photos by then. One of the owls kept circling over me and screeching. It sounded kind of like a zone tailed hawk. I guess it didn't like me, so I left. It didn't stop screeching until I was about 200 yards away from the mine.

The reason I was hiking in that general area in the first place is because of something I noticed on Google Earth. There are saw-tooth like lines in the desert along Bush Highway there. I went out there to see what they were. They are channels cut into the ground to direct water so that it only crosses the road in a few places.

Channel cut into the desert.

Horseshoe Mountain, bees, snakes, wasps, hawks, lizards, etc.

This is what I call Horseshoe Mountain. I don't know if it has a real name.

In my continuing effort to lose some weight, I've been re-visiting a lot of places I've hiked before. I was on Horseshoe Mountain a couple of days ago. I hadn't been up there for a few years. There was a saguaro next to a rock wall on the way up, and you had to go between the two. The saguaro had no spines on the side facing the rock, up to about shoulder height. I thought that meant that a lot of people had been through there and a lot of those got saguaro spines embedded in their sides. I guess it's more likely that some kid with a stick knocked the spines off, though. Anyway, that saguaro has fallen over.

A saguaro that had guarded the path up for many years has fallen.

A beehive a little further up the trail. I don't know if they are killer bees or plain old wild honeybees.

I was standing near the fallen saguaro enjoying the breeze and cooling off a little after the steep part of the climb when I became aware of a humming sound that was not traffic. Snakes, scorpions, centipedes, wasps, and heat are some of the things you have to be careful of when hiking in the desert. The thing I fear most, though, is killer bees. You read about people being attacked by them in the Phoenix area every now and then, sometimes on hiking trails. Once they decide to attack, they don't stop until you are gone. You have to run a minimum of 300 yards to get away from them. They attack the eyes, nose, and mouth of their victims in order to blind and asphyxiate them with swelling from their poison or with their dead and dying bodies. Imagine trying to run down a mountain with angry bees stinging your eyes and flying into your mouth.

Killer bees are most likely to attack in the spring, when the swarm is searching for a new place to nest. Swarming season is over. They also don't like loud noise. I'm normally pretty quiet, but I decided to walk very softly. They don't like strong fragrances. That's one of the reasons I use unscented soap, shampoo, shaving cream, deodorant, laundry detergent, and no fabric softeners. I decided that it would be safe to walk around them if I didn't get too close. I restrained myself from swatting at anything buzzing around me. Bees frequently check me out while I'm hiking. They buzz around at belt level about 2 inches away for a minute or so. Swatting at it could cause it to release pheromones that would bring the whole hive to attack you.

I think I've photographed this view from just about every possible angle.

There's a mine shaft up there that goes about 12 feet into the side of the mountain. I had hiked to it once before and decided to see if I could find it again. It wasn't hard to find.

An old mine shaft. I had hiked to it from below before. Now I don't see how I was able to do that. Nothing around there looks climbable from up here.

Looking into the mine shaft. There was a rattlesnake in it last time I was here. Didn't see one this time but I didn't look under that rock.

I have never been in that mine shaft. There was a rattlesnake in it last time, and that huge boulder on the floor makes me think that more might fall at any time. I think the bolts in the sides of the shaft are a recent addition, but I have no idea why they are there.

Another trail I hiked recently is Jacob's Crosscut up to the aluminum bench. I haven't been all the way up there for a while because it always makes me tired. It's the trail where I saw my first snake in Arizona. It was a red racer and it was wrapped around a bunny. I got too close trying to get pictures and it let the bunny go and zipped away. People say it was nice of me to save the bunny but I feel bad about making the snake lose it's meal. Anyway, just past the place where I had seen the red racer, I thought I heard a squealing rabbit. I got the camera ready and walked carefully along the trail. I eventually saw a zone tailed hawk fly away with what looks like might be a piece of rabbit. It's hard to tell.

Zone tailed hawk with what appears to be a piece of rabbit.

That was pretty cool. There was another hawk on a saguaro making screeching noises. That might be what I thought was a rabbit at first.

There are three benches along this trail. I adjusted my shoe laces on this one.

The trail gets a little steep towards the end. I trudged very slowly to the top, then stopped to take some pictures (i.e. catch my breath) and a guy ran past me. Show off.

Runner on the trail. It must take a lot of time to be able to do something like that.

Horned lizard. I also saw a deer but it was too dark to get a picture.

I like the way this turned out.

Zebra tailed lizard.

I saw a zebra tailed lizard that did the usual zebra tailed lizard thing. It sprints ahead of you for 10 or 20 feet and then stops and slowly wags its tail back and forth. I wonder if they are trying to make potential predators confuse them with the fellow pictured below.

Rattlesnake.

I saw that snake recently behind Phoenix Mountain, which is the mountain with "PHOENIX" written on it in large white letters. It was stretched out in the sand of a wash warming itself up. Just before I saw the snake, I had seen a tree covered with tarantula hawks. At least I think that's what they were. There were dozens of them. I don't know why they were all in one place. Must have been a mating party or something.

Tarantula hawk.

Let me know if you have any trouble finding the rest of the pictures.

Invisible lizards, talking flies, and other less wondrous things

No, I don't think the heat has gotten to me. Actually, I would probably be the last to realize if that were true. But I don't think it is. I thought of these blog topics in cooler weather. First, though, a brief discussion of more mundane matters.

We must start off with a picture.

Since about 2002, I've been saying that I need to loose a few pounds. Of course, my weight has slowly crept up in the years since then. A few weeks ago I decided it was time to get serious and do it. I've been out hiking (to burn calories) every chance I get. I have cut back severely on cookies, cake, and beer. (I know what you are thinking now. These actions have NOT caused me to start hallucinating.) My weight loss has not been as rapid as I had hoped, considering the sacrifices I am making (you would understand if you had ever tasted my Sweetum's chocolate cake). I like to think that I'm not losing much weight because I'm putting muscle on my legs. Yep, that's it.

Cactus wren feeding its chicks. I could hear them.

So I've been hiking a lot to burn calories. That hasn't left much time to work on pictures or write this blog. I haven't put much effort into exploring new areas, either. I've been hiking in a lot of places that I've been several times before.

Julia and Willie went with me on one hike. Julia manages a smile despite being near exhaustion.

I took pictures of the same old things on that hike. Well, it's just so pretty.

I made a half-hearted attempt to hike to the mushroom rock one day. That wore me out for some reason.

Lately I've decided that since I'm just trying to burn calories, it's ok to keep hiking in the same places. I've been up and down Lone Mountain 3 times in the past week or so. On one of those hikes a guy in better shape than me zoomed past on the way up. He was still at the top when I got there. When he started down, he went fast, kind of between a walk and a run. I decided to try that and was amazed and how quickly I got down the mountain. It continually surprised me how much distance I could cover in a single step. My next hike was on the Boulder Canyon trail, which is also a big climb. It took me an hour to get to the top. When I realize the sun would be setting in half an hour, I hurried down. It reminded me of those dreams where you are running and you jump and can glide a long way in the air and you keep holding your feet up longer and longer and going further and further between putting your feet down. Then when you slow to a walk, it feels really humdrum. I think there were actually very few times when both my feet were off the ground at the same time and that only happened when I caught my toe on a rock or something like that. I tried going fast again on my last hike, on Lone Mountain. It's quite a workout for the quadriceps and I don't think mine had recovered since the last time so it didn't feel so much like flying that time. I looked at the GPS track for one of those hikes and saw that I was only going a little over 3 mph when I felt like I was flying. Well, I guess it seemed fast because I was going 2 or 3 times faster than I usually do.

I hid from this copter on a recent hike on the Lost Goldmine trail in case they were planning to tell me to go home.

Let's see, I need to tell you about that invisible lizard. I saw it near the Salt River. Well, I didn't see it, of course, but I saw where it was. I was walking across an area of flat, clean sand when something kicked up a bunch of sand, went a foot or so, and then stopped. It looked just like a startled lizard, except there was no lizard. Just sand being kicked around by tiny invisible feet. It must have thought I was about to step on it (I was) or it wouldn't have moved. An invisible lizard would know that it's better not to move unless necessary. "So", you say, "How come I never heard of invisible lizards before?" Well, ain't that obvious? "So", you say, "I heard about the Higgs boson long before anybody 'saw' one. How come I never heard about your invisible lizard before?" Obvious, again. The existence of an invisible lizard is not necessary to complete anybody's theory of the universe. However, believe it or not, I did find evidence that somebody else was looking for them.

Somebody marked off a grid with rebar in this area.

Each rebar post is labeled.

The rebar grid shown in the photos shows that somebody was conducting a detailed flora and fauna survey in this area, which happens to be very close to where I didn't see the invisible lizard. What does the survey have to do with invisible lizards? Well, somebody noticed that things weren't exactly balanced in this area, as if more bugs were being eaten than could be accounted for by the lizards and birds in the area, and so they set up and conducted this detailed survey to try and figure out what was throwing things out of balance. I imagine this was part or all of some students doctoral research. Of course, they never figured it out because they never thought to look for invisible lizards. (Who would?) Because they couldn't account for the missing bugs, they were derided by their professors for doing sloppy work, took up drinking, dropped out of school unpublished, and now run a meth lab in the back of a '68 VW bus somewhere in Gila county. But I extrapolate. All the evidence points to invisible lizards.

After reading that, you probably can't wait to hear about the talking flies. Well, I'm sorry, but they're much more mundane.

Salt River. I promise.

On many occasions when I've been out hiking, I've heard indistinct voices in the distance. You know what I'm talking about. You can't understand them, but you know they're voices, and they stop and start. Many times, I've been able to spot the people that the voices belong to. This frequently happens around the Superstition Mountains because there are lots of people out there and there are parallel trails far apart. Recently when I was out there I heard voices and finally spotted a couple of people on a trail about half a mile away. They stopped walking. Since I was standing on top of a ridge I figured they could see me against the sky, so I waved as I zoomed in and took a picture. It wasn't until I got home and looked at the picture 1:1 that I saw that one of the women had stopped to pull out a wedgie. I guess they hadn't seen me after all. But I digress. Back to the flies. There have been several occasions when I was sure I heard voices and stopped to find their source and discovered that it was a fly that was buzzing around nearby. They fly around near the ground, their wings are loud (for fly wings), and they maneuver around in such a way that their buzzing sounds like indistinct voices. It isn't just me, either. Other people have heard them. Either that or they were just humoring me. "Okaaaay. Sure, I hear them. Shouldn't we be getting back to town?"

The last time I was on Lone Mountain (June 7), I looked across Usery Pass road to the mountains on the other side (which look kind of boring, so I may not have uploaded any pictures of them) and saw a trail going up the middle. I went up that trail yesterday. As I walked along it, I remembered seeing a rusted out jeep up there somewhere many years ago. Wow, I had been there before and had completely forgotten it. As I got near the end of the trail, something reminded me of a picture I had taken from up there all those years ago. It was a picture of Red Mountain. It stirred up a lot of conversation. It was the first picture I had ever taken that more than one person said they liked, and I decided that maybe I was capable of taking a decent picture now and then. I guess that's where all this hiking and picture taking really got started. BTW, I'm not ready to upload the pictures from yesterday yet. I'm still working on pictures from 5/31.

Here's a picture I took in my front yard. I used a ladder. (To stand on; I used a camera to take the picture.)

There are pictures from several albums in this post and I'm not going to try to link to all the albums. Those of you that can figure out how to get to the albums can see all of the pictures.

A better view of a hole in the rock

Several years ago, I had made an attempt to hike up to a hole in a rock that could be seen along the unofficial trail to the back of Garden Valley. I seem to vaguely remember that I didn't have a very good view of the hole when I got there. Mostly what I remember is that it was a windy day and there were rain storms around. Anyway, I did not have that in mind when I set off on a hike a few days ago. What I had in mind was getting some exercise and seeing some nice scenery. I didn't want to do a lot of climbing so I started out on the unofficial trail just mentioned. If follows a creek bed for most of the way.

Part of the beginning of the trail is in fine sand, which is great for showing snake trails. I couldn't find the snake.

I had mostly forgotten about the hole in the rock until I spotted it from the trail. It's easy to miss. You have to look up at just the right time.

The hole in the rock isn't easy to see from the trail.

Somebody also dug a hole in the dirt on the side of the creek. Strange.

I would like to see this when water is flowing.

I walked until I got to a scenic spot and "stopped" there to take a few pictures. Actually, what I did was start up a hill to get a better angle on a shot. Then I went a little further to see what I could see, all the while looking across the creek bed at the taller hill on the other side until I couldn't stand it any longer and started up that other hill. The view was much better from the taller hill.

This is a bare-rock kind of place.

I was wandering around on the larger hill taking pictures of various things when I turned around once to find that I had a perfect view of the hole in the rock. Now, finally, years after I had intended to do so, I have a decent picture of that hole in the rock.

The hole in the rock.

Click below for all of the pictures.

2014_05_21

To the Mule Ears

I don't know if that's what it's really called. It reminds me of Mule Ear Peaks in Big Bend National Park, so that's what I call it. It's one of those places I've been meaning to hike out to for a few years. You can see it as you approach Canyon Lake on Apache Trail. Just last year I found myself very close to it and realized it wouldn't be very difficult to get to.

My destination. It was a dusty day.

I saw some Iron Cross Blister beetles near the beginning of the hike.

The wind had been blowing for a couple of days so the air was kind of dusty. It was cool and the wind would keep the gnats away, so I went hiking despite the dust. Between the dust and being out there in the middle of the day (I had no idea how long it would take, so I started early), the pictures aren't very good.

It rained just enough to make some small puddles out here the night before.

There was a faint trail out there the last time I had been there. It seemed better defined now, and there were more cairns. The trail seemed to go where I was going most of the time. I stayed on it because the grass was downtrodden there. That grass is almost as annoying as gnats. I had my gaiters on but the seeds still worked their way through my shoes. I had to stop three times to take my shoes off and remove seeds. It's really aggravating to have something jabbing you in the foot with every step.

There is a trail all the way up to the far side (the side you can't see from Apache Trial) of the Mule Ears. It's possible to climb up to the saddle between the peaks from the far side. It's about a 10 foot climb. I'm sure I could have done it but since a slip could have been disastrous, I didn't.

A pile of rocks in the saddle. I didn't climb up there.

Four Peaks through the dust.

The wind was blowing so hard, I thought my exposure-bracketed photos might not be combinable into HDRIs. Photomatix is pretty amazing at lining things up, though.

Weaver's Needle is usually easy to see from this area, but not this day.

One reason I wasn't in any hurry to hike out to the Mule Ears is because you can't get pictures of something like that when you get close to it. I wanted to do it just so I could say I had been there. Well, that's out of the way now. As expected, I saw some other things I want to look into the next time I'm out there. It sure is nice having such a large area to explore so close to home.

Click below for all of the pictures.

2014_04_26

A return, of sorts

Two or three years ago, or so, I had hiked out to some large hoodoos at the northwest corner of the Superstition Mountains. It was a long hike and I was very tired as I returned to the truck after sunset. That was when my ankle first started bothering me. It twisted just a little a couple of times on the way back. Didn't really hurt, but it didn't feel good. It was a couple of days before I could walk normally. After that, any hike over 3 miles would have me limping or hopping on one foot the next day. This went on for about 2 years until one day when I was walking on a sidewalk I noticed that when I picked my foot up, it felt like the bones in my ankle moved apart, and when I put it back down, they got jammed together. It didn't hurt at all, but I decided that doing that thousands of times on a hike was probably why my ankle hurt. Then I figured out that the reason it did that was because of my boots. I really liked them because they came far above my ankles and kept them from twisting much. The problem was that, even though I did not lace them tightly, they would squeeze my ankles just a little. If an ankle was slightly swollen, the squeeze would force the bones apart, only to be pounded back together when I put my foot down, which increased swelling and caused more pounding and, eventually, pain. So I had to quit wearing those boots. After years of abuse, the ankle still gets sore, but not nearly as bad as it did when I wore those boots. Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is because I went back out to those hoodoos recently. I wanted to see something near them but for years I didn't think I could hike that far, even though I've hike greater distances since then. I decided to hike out to the rock I wanted to see one day and use crutches if I had to the next day. It turns out my ankle was barely sore the next day, though.

I haven't seen one of these for 2 or 3 years. I wouldn't have seen this one if he hadn't moved.

A little while later, I saw this one. Again, I wouldn't have seen him if he hadn't moved.

I saw 2 horned lizards on this hike. I don't think I had seen one for about 3 years before this year. I've seen 4 so far this year. I look around every time I pass a big red ant ant bed but if the horned lizards aren't moving, they are hard to see. Both of these were close to ant beds (they eat the ants).

Find the horned lizard in this picture. I have trouble seeing him and I know where he is. This is zoomed to how the scene would look if you were standing on the trail. You need to look at the picture full size, though.

There were some rain clouds in the distance. After 11 years in the desert, I knew I didn't have to worry about getting wet.

It is not unusual for a single prickly pear cactus to have 2 colors of flowers. I've seen two colors on one pad.

The rock I wanted to get close to looks sort of like a bent thumb sticking out of the ground. I had gotten pictures of it from a distance before but wanted to get closer. I was almost to the hoodoos before I thought I was close enough to the thumb to leave the trail and head for it. Unfortunately, I didn't see an easy way to get to it. I would have to go through steep-sided washes full of vegetation. I decided it wasn't worth the effort. Since I was almost at the hoodoos, I went on to them.

Nice-looking clouds over picturesque mountains.

Thumb rock. I still don't have a good picture of it.

I always seem to use that pointy rock as a gauge of how much I've climbed when I'm on this side of the mountains.

I didn't feel as tired when I got to the hoodoos as I remember being the first time I was out there. I sat in their shade and had a snack. I looked at all the other places I've explored since the last time I was out there and decided that I need to go to some of them again because they probably aren't beyond my reach now after all.

At the hoodoos.

I like the view from up there.

Click below for all of the pictures.

2014_04_19