Finally in the woods

Friday we went out with Eric again. This is the view of Gross Reservoir from the hillside where we collected data. You can see all the trees in the foreground killed by fire. We gathered data on the vegetation so that the Forest Service knows how to treat the area to prevent out-of-control wildfires (fire prevention is the main job of the Forest Service in this area. They reduce the fuel load either through controlled burns--more ecologically friendly--or through thinning). Another view from the city park overlook.

This is the view from an overlook in Boulder Mountain Park. Not bad for a city park, eh? Kind of puts Patriarch Park to shame. You can see Longs Peak, it's the snow-capped one on the far right.

Pasque flower, very pretty.

Oh, yeah. That's right. I now live where cacti grow naturally. Pretty cacti.

This is a hillside that succumbed to forest fire a few years ago, pretty typical in these mountains.

On Thursday Christian and I went with Eric, who is on the fuel reduction crew, to scope out some plots for vegetation sampling. After driving around for two hours, trying to figure out how to get the car to where we needed to be, we decided just to park and hike. This is Gross Reservoir. Notice how incredibly low the water level is. The muddy bank was dotted with animal tracks: deer, wild turkey, coyote. I also found some coyote scat filled with seed from someone's bird feeder--just goes to show that coyotes will eat just about anything.

Ok, so this doesn't have anything to do with field work, but my roommate Emily is dog-sitting for someone and earlier in the week she brought Pua to the bunkhouse. Pua is the sweetest dog I've ever met. Sweeter than Maxwell, even, because she doesn't try to play-bite your hand when you go to pet her. She just head-butts you like a cat starved for affection, tail wagging furiously.

Here, Christian and Will (who works for the city of Boulder) check out the ruins of an old farmhouse that we stumbled across.

Above is a wildflower (I haven't been able to identify it) that grows in dry Ponderosa woods like those at Heil Ranch.

This is a random pond in the dry Ponderosa woods where we were setting up plots. It is full of cricket frogs, which were loudly chorusing away until I got close enough to take this picture.

Here is the creek that flows through Heil Valley (I forget its name at the moment).

So on Wednesday, I finally got the chance to go out and do some field work. The day was absolutely gorgeous (as most days have been here), 65 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We went to Heil Ranch, a Boulder County park, to assist a Boulder County and a Boulder City employee in setting up some points for cowbird monitoring. Above is our trusty field vehicle, a Chevy Blazer. Around here, I think people are justified in having SUVs, because some of those mountain roads are, well, lets say, my fuel-efficient Honda Civic wouldn't stand an icicle's chance in hell.