Subject: [Tweeters] Mt. Rainier - Paradise hiking
Date: Jul 22 21:49:25 2011
From: Dave Hayden - dtvhm at nwrain.com


Sherry and I went up to Paradise today to hike up above Golden Gate looking for Ptarmigan. It's like looking for a live rock in a rock field. Needless to say, we struck out this time. They could be a little higher, but way too much snow. At the Paradise parking lot, the snow was still at least 15 feet high. We had GRAY JAYS and CLARK NUTCRACKERS before we started our hike. No real visable trails anywhere per say, just packed down snow where people had already been. As we got into the Golden Gate basin, the tracks had stopped and we forged our own. We heard a SOOTY GROUSE and YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER singing. Ascending up to the pass at Golden Gate we had 4 GRAY-CROWNED ROSY FINCHES in a small snow free meadow along the snow line. Once above Golden Gate, we found no tracks anywhere. We searched all the exposed areas that we could for the ptarmigan, but no luck. One thing about being so much snow is, that you can explore areas that you could not if it was snow free. We had 6 AMERICAN PIPTS working the exposed meadows. Hoary Marmots seemed to be everywhere. Marmot dens looked like snow cave entrances. A few were in some of the snow free areas higher up. A black colored Fox roamed the ridge line in the Golden Gate basin. We had another fox towards the end of the Paradise Valley Road. This one was quite bold, stopping traffic and begging for food. We stopped, rolled down the window, and it came right up to the door. This is not good, and could cause this fox to be removed. Hopefully folks will not feed it, or it will come to an unfortunate demise.

Dave Hayden
dtvhm AT nwrain.com
Centralia, WA




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