Silver King Creek 2010

I'm back from Silver King Creek, and I'm exhausted.  I have so many photos and stuff to write that I should probably break it up into at least 2 posts.  Here's a start. 


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Above is a map of the pack station where we met up on Monday morning to drop off gear up for the packers to pack onto the mules.  I have a secret crush on the guy who runs the pack station, Joe.  I could totally see living there in the high country above Coleville and riding horses all over the Carson Iceberg wilderness.  Plus, he is totally interested in the restoration of the Paiute cutthroat trout (despite potential reduction in his business because of fishing regulations), as well as mushrooms.  Ethan said that asking me about mushrooms is practically a marriage proposal.  So true.

But that's neither here nor there.

The crew consisted of me and 7 guys, mostly over 40. Some USFWS guys from Reno, some CDFG guys from the Sacramento area, a guy from Utah who works for Utah Division of Wildlife who was just there to see the Paiute cutthroat trout and help out, and a guy from the USFS in Reno. Most of these guys have been involved with the project for many years, so they had the logistics for the trip on lockdown. I made it clear that even with only one woman on the trip, the X's still outnumber the Y's.  Har, genetics joke.

We left our crap with the mules and 4 of us set off for Corral Valley Creek.

This was our camping destination, Connell's Cow Camp:


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Damn you can almost see the cabin on Google maps.  Crazy.

Highlights of the walk in include some wildlife, some mushrooms, taking dead batteries for the electrofishers and waiting for the pack train to bring fresh ones, the oldest juniper in California, and some spectacular views of Corral Valley Creek and the northern high sierra. 

View of Corral Valley Creek, a tributary to Silver King Creek. Silver King Creek is a tributary to the East Fork Carson River.

 View of the pack train coming to rescue us

Above are some pictures from the hike in.  A nice giant sawtooth mushroom, the oldest juniper in California, Panther amanita (I think), a nice cluster of pine drops, delicate stream orchid, and a view of the peaks west of Silver King Creek.

Top is red columbine, and bottom is marsh mallow (Sidalcea spp.). The Sidalcea was EVERYWHERE.  Fields of it in the meadows - super pretty.

We got back early enough so that the people who were on the clock (not me) could clean out the rat infested cabin. I wandered around looking for boletes (I remembered them from '08), set up my tent, and looked for fire wood. I scored some boletes from right behind the cabin and we cooked them up with Bill's tri tips for dinner.  Check out how delicious this looks!

Nice little caveman dinner

Day 2 was a long day, because we were sampling Upper Silver King Creek, but it was nice because it was right in front of the cabin.  The conductivity of the water was low, so the electrofishers had to get closer to the fish to shock them so we could collect data and fin clips.  Here are some photos of Upper SKC:

Lots of sierra tree frog metamorphs in the valley.

Dinner was fajitas - pretty damn tasty. I went to bed early, after drinking beer, wine, and some of Bill's $60 Irish whisky.  Pretty standard for me.

Day 3 was 4 mile canyon creek, which was a delightful bushwack through an aspen forest (have you ever done this? It's not ideal).  I saw some species of mushrooms I hadn't seen before, an aspen bolete and scaly pholiota amongst the aspen:

Unfortunately in my excitement over photographing the mushrooms, I set down the bucket I was carrying.  Oops.  So I had to traverse the heinous aspen forest in my waders (!) until I relocated it.  Not cool at all - waders do NOT breathe.  At least I recovered it... after much shouting and cursing and expressions of "this sucks".  Here are some photos of fish workup on 4 mile canyon creek:

Photos of the Paiute cutthroat really don't do them justice.  It's always disappointing to see photos when you've had them in hand. Also a cool photo of a tree eating a "closed for fishing" sign.

Fly Valley Creek was up next, and on the way we found an arborglyph by the original rancher, Joe Juanseras, from 1916. He was the one who transferred the Paiutes upstream of Llewellyn falls, which is a fish barrier.  This saved the fish from extinction by hybridization because the downstream portion was later stocked with pretty much every form of rainbow and cutthroat trout you can imagine.  Here's a pic of the arborglyph:

I didn't take that many photos, but there were tons of monkshood, larkspur, lilies, and other wildflowers.  Here's a pic of ranger's buttons and a bee:

Ok I can't really think of anything else for now...I'll spare everyone a billion more mushroom and flower photos.  I know they suck, but like I've said before, I'm not even pretending to be a good photographer.  I could probably do a good job of pretending to be a decent botanist though...