Addicted to Pajarito Mountain

Another day, another explore...such a hard life!  I got a late start - 11:40 am from the parking lot.  There was a mix of dark clouds, white clouds and blue sky.  Someone in the parking lot told me I was going to get wet.  It did rain but not very hard and there was no lightning and then it stopped.  I started up the Zero Road East from the Lodge and took a right at the side road near Boomer. 

I went up the side road to where it intersected the Zero Road East higher up and then walked that for a short distance to another side road, turning right and then followed that to an intersection where yesterday I turned right but today I went left instead.

Truthfully, I don't know how much of this road system I'm learning because I wander here and there, back and forth.  If I keep at it, I should eventually gain some familiarity.

I saw two deer bucks that bounded off diagonally down a ski slope when they heard me.  I've seen a number of bucks on Pajarito, including a human one who didn't see me and was almost ready to unzip his fly until I made noises to warn him off!!

I was enchanted by a tall thistle with fading yellow flowers, laden with orange and black fritillary butterflies.  There was even a bumblebee on it.

I saw two felsenmeers, one near Aspen Lift that I walked across - they actually lop off the young trees and use it as a ski run.  Wouldn't the warning signs about obstacles, natural and man-made, be more truthful if they told skiers that huge rocks lay under the snow?

This reminds me that I saw the other day a tree with a plaque on it saying the tree belongs to Joel Prichard, who died in December 2000, and it thanks all who tried to save him.  Sad.

I got up to Bruce's Blvd. West and saw all the connections it makes to the back of the mountain.  The snow-making puddle is as ugly as ever and still unfilled.

I started to follow the Logging Road down the west side of the mountain but since the weather was still holding, I got waylaid by yet another side road that eventually went back to the Logging Road.

I got back to the car at 2:23 pm. and did a little over 4 miles.  The sky was dark and cloudy and occasional thunder-rumbles could be heard - the second shift was coming!  Back home, though, it never rained.

Pajarito is a very rocky mountain.  That can be seen on all the road surfaces and the felsenmeers.  Really, rather than being like an isolated, towering peak, it's more like a long, east-west ridge with a couple of over 10,000' bumps on it. 

I'm beginning to recognize which ski lift is which - Lone Spruce and Mother are both blue and two seaters.  Aspen is black and a 4 seater. I need to check out Townsight but haven't made it over there lately.

Death Camas Revisited

It turns out that wild onion also has long, flat, narrow basal leaves that are similar to the death camas.  The wild onion's flower stem is round and stiff just like those of the death camas and not hollow like a green onion.  This helps me understand how someone could confuse the two if they pick the plant in the early spring before the flowers appear.

On Pajarito Mountain today, I picked the basal leaves and flower stem of a death camas and sniffed but could detect no onion odor. I "washed" my fingers off on wet vegetation of golden banner since I didn't know which part of the death camas is poisonous. 

Now I read in Wikipedia that all parts of the plant are poisonous.