8AM 4/27 - 6:30PM 4/28
Variable weather. Some light rain. Mostly in the 50's
I didn't get a chance to make it over to Yesler Swamp this week because I was too busy having a blast in the Olympic National Forest! This post will be 'log-like' so that I don't have to tell friends and family the same story over and over - I can just send them here! I'll definitely touch on some important natural history aspects though.
Day 1
We made our way down to Wallace Hall and loaded into 6 vans at 8AM to begin our journey west. After taking the Edmonds-Kingston ferry we took our first pit-stop on the Jamestown S'Klallam reservation. There was a beach there and on it we spotted a killdeer. It was a little bird with funny little legs that moved very quickly as it ran around the beach. We also spotted someone doing some kind of shellfish farming. That was my first 'I'm not quite in Seattle anymore' moment. Another interesting thing we learned at the reservation was that it had just recently been given back to the tribe from the US Government, and that they were having a hard time regaining their past culture. One specific thing that demonstrated that was the amount of totem poles located on the reservation. Totem poles were never a part of their past culture, but many of the younger people of the tribe did not know that when they went ahead with putting these up because their culture has been suppressed so much.
After that stop, we went the rest of the way to NatureBridge. NatureBridge is an organization that is set up for educational field trips like what we were doing. It's located on the shores of Lake Crescent on a piece of land that jets out into the lake. The water of Lake Crescent is very nutrient free, and apparently someone drowned in it and their body was found many years later well preserved and soapy-like. Aside from that weird story, the lake really is beautiful, has very clear water, and with the forest as a backdrop makes for a postcard-esque sight. There was a light rain when we got there, but the first thing we did once we arrived was eat lunch, and by the time we were done it had stopped raining! It was hard being patient and eating lunch because we had been traveling for so long and we had arrived and I wanted to go explore immediately. The food was important though, because I was in for a busy day.
Lake Crescent
After lunch we made our way into the forest as one large group. The first thing that really jumped out at me was how much moss there was. There was literally more moss than I had seen in my entire life. I was also surprised by the size of the trees. So many of them were so big that it just wasn't something I was used to seeing. The majority of the trees at the start were Western Red-cedar, Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, Grand Fir, Bigleaf Maple, and some Vine Maple's. The maples especially were covered in so much moss that it was a wonder that they were able to stand up with all the weight.
Shortly after heading out as one big group we split into two and my group was led by James, our lead TA. James stressed what it means to be an "old growth forest" and made clear that age isn't the only characteristic involved. For a forest to be old growth there much be a variety of tree ages and there must be big snags, fallen dead wood, and multiple layers of canopy. We also learned that when a place is dominated by sword fern that it is likely very nitrogen rich soil, as opposed to when a place is dominated by salal it's likely to be nitrogen poor soil. One of the last and coolest things we saw in James's group was the largest grand fir in the world! Seeing that really drove home the point of the uniqueness and utterly amazing piece of land we have right here near home.
Later on in the day we split up into even smaller groups and had the option to go on different hikes. I opted for the most physically challenging one in hopes of seeing a change in foliage as we ascended and hopefully a good view! On this hike I noticed an increase in salal meaning the soil was less nitrogen rich in this drier sloped landscape. There were some madrone trees as we got higher up, and there were shrubs called manzanita that looked a lot like madrone yet isn't very closely related at all. We also may have seen Silver Fir near the top, and Tim (my professor) took some to analyze closer later on, but I never heard what his conclusion was. At one point during the hike we came to somewhat of a clearing where they weren't as many plants growing. We noticed that on some of the trees that were standing there were burn scars from fire damage. This was a good example of disturbance, seeing that a fire must have come through and destroyed all the salal and understory, leaving just the big trees alive. We didn't quite make it to the top because we had to get back for a great pasta dinner, but we made it far enough to get an amazing view and to see all those interesting things along the way.
A few hours after dinner we had a fun lecture from Tim about the history of the Olympic Peninsula and some of the first explorers that came out to it. Then once it was dark a group of us went out and tried calling an owl, but didn't have any luck. Too make up for it, a few of us went down to the lake to stargaze which us city folk don't get to do enough of. We brought flashlights and when we shined them over the lake we could see quite a few bats flying around. Normally the thought of bats creeps me out a bit, but they were all just doing their thing so it didn't really bother me. After about 30 minutes of stargazing I made my way back to the cabins for some much needed sleep.
Day 2
I woke up at 6:20 to go on a quick birding adventure before 7:15 breakfast. I didn't take good notes, but I remember we saw plenty of American Robin's. We saw a few other species as well, but the only other one I can remember is the Barn Sparrow that was perched above the door of the dining hall. After breakfast we got to venture out with a little less structure as the first day in the sense that we weren't solely trying to identify plants and looking at species interactions. Instead it was more of a hike, but after a day of identifying plants it was hard not to subconsciously do that as you walked. I decided to hike to the waterfall because I heard it was really beautiful and not too difficult of a hike, which was nice because I was feeling pretty tired. On the way to the waterfall the small group I was with spotted either a downy woodpecker or a brown creeper, but I'm not sure which. It fit the description of a brown creeper because it would hop onto a tree trunk and make its way up the tree, but it didn't have a curved beak. After taking the best picture of it that we could, Ross (TA) said he thinks it was a downy woodpecker but it didn't have any red coloring on it, so I don't know about that either. Anyways, the waterfall was indeed amazing, and on the hike back we ran into Ross and a few others that were looking at an American Dipper in the stream. I was surprised at how much this bird looked like a stone in the water and was amazed that they were even able to spot it.
The waterfall! The never ending noise a waterfall makes is mesmerizing.
At around 9:30 it was time to leave NatureBridge and go see a very low tide to the north of us at Tongue Point. There were many other people checking out the tide pools as well because this was indeed a great spot for that. The number of species we saw and were able to identify was probably upwards of 25, containing things like barnacles, star fish, anemones, sea grasses, crabs, mussels, sea urchins, and even a dead octopus! It was interesting to see where different things were located probably due to the topography of the land and how the waves crashed along the different facing slopes. Also, I don't think I've ever seen a sea urchin in a tide pool before so that was really neat. The bright colors of the sea stars and sea urchins aren't something you see everyday out in nature, so overall that was a really fun experience.
We ate lunch looking out over the tide pool, then piled into the vans once more and took off up into higher elevations of Olympic National Park. Unfortunately, we started to run out of time and gas so we didn't make it up quite high enough to be in a different vegetation zone. Another negative thing was that it was really foggy so we were robbed of some really amazing views. It was a fun car ride though, and after we got as high as we decided to go, it was just a long coast down the mountain to the gas station. Then it was onward to Seattle and the end of the field trip.
I wasn't able to go into great detail about each specie we came across in this post, but here's a list of the ones I was able to write down, excluding all the cool stuff we saw at the tide pools:
trillium
red alder
western red cedar
vanilla leaf
sword/licorice/lady ferns
dull/tall Oregon grape
vine maple
bigleaf maple
pacific yew
salal
douglas fir
grand fir
devils club
baldhip rose
fairy slipper orchid
oceanspray
pin cherry
madrone
red & evergreen huckleberry
silver fir
manzanita
millipede
orange peel fungi
stinging nettle
twin flower (linnea borealis)
monkey flower
stairstepper moss
Plus much more!
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