Hikshari' to the Old Growth with an electric magnifier

Headwaters Forest Reserve

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I decided it was time for a pilgrimage to the spot of old growth coastal redwood trees they'll let the public visit regularly, at least if they're on foot and without a dog after the bridge at mile 3. They do give the bikes parking just before the curve down to that bridge, so one can bike most the way. I wouldn't, but one could. I hoped the South Side Trail would be open. The BLM website suggests it could be in May if the water is low enough. The docent led hikes on the Salmon Creek side of the Reserve (plus an extra birding walk by Ken Burton to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Reserve) have started. (I should finally do one of those, but I would have to rely on a fellow hiker and likely stranger get from the meet point to the trailhead.)

Paved big trail at the start of the Elk River Trail.

The South Side Trail was still marked as closed as I passed. I wanted to take it on the way back, so I held out hope it would be open later. Some day has to be the one where they put up the seasonal bridges and take down the closed sign.

There's been some thinning of the young trees near the start, leaving the cut trunks to return to the ground. It's a little hidden by the blooming thimbleberry.

The thimbleberry is ready for its close up.

Meanwhile, I admired the way the light comes through the mostly leafed out bigleaf maples and their thick mossy/liverwort/lichen growth.

It's very hard to capture that light through the bigleaf maple.

Maybe through some low leaves?

I was surprised to find the brochure box for the Redwood Edventure Quest has been removed. While the program is on hiatus and getting "reevaluated", the box was attracting trash, this is true. Meanwhile the actual quest sits expanded as part of the Junior Ranger booklet for the area. Nothing else marked this little graveled trail with its two spurs to look at the river as official, but it is.

Little trail with river views.

The trail is a nice little diversion from the wide paved path and wraps around the foundations of the old caretakers' home. I had a PDF of the Junior Ranger activity book and meant to follow along, so took my big 50 steps along the trail to find the wood rat nest.

Loads of wood in the Hikshari', more recently named Elk River, to give the salmon a home.

The river certainly looks low enough to me. It seems to gain the designation "river" only for being the biggest thing to empty into Humboldt Bay. This is only the south fork. It'll be more impressive after the north fork joins, just downstream of the parking lot.

Coastal monkeyflower below where the wood rat nest is expected.

The wood rat seems to have moved off and the nest mostly fallen apart. I wondered if that might be too ephemeral thing to have as a stop. I wandered on, stopping at the house, then maybe found the new nest, or at least the next one, of the wood rat near the end of the trail.

Hikshari' once more with that light filtering through the maple.

The foundation of the caretakers' home.

I got as far as the third stop before getting distracted with the light through the maples again. Look, we have magical, fairyland maples.

Somewhere up in maple-world. Much of the thickness of the branches is really fluff from other growth.

Alder and redwoods on either side of the river.

Another maple covered in life spreading over the river.

After a mile, the paved trail turns to gravel.

The water finds some layered rocks a short way down.

The boiler from a steam donkey still sits rusting just off trail.

And then it's time to cross the river and ditch the dogs and bikes and start to climb! It only takes three miles to get to a real climb. Someone has vandalized the no bikes sign again.

Across the river to where they're a little more serious about being an ecological reserve.

Trail is even narrower and less hardened against weather, but there are still steps.

It's a jungle down there. Wild ginger pushes up past a fern and fetid adderstongue beside the trail.

And then disaster struck! Or rather, had struck. Still in the second growth forest, one of the larger trees had come down through one of the small bridges near the top and obscured a length of trail after it. Knowing where it goes didn't help me see it. With great care (and "at my own risk") I followed the track others had made. I'm not keen on that track, if follows an old shortcut that shouldn't be there.

Really, there is a small bridge under there. Trail goes off to the left just behind the trunk, covered in broken branches.

A bit of redwood sorrel makes a sea of red and green.

A bit like what that bridge above should look like.

There was no further difficulty along the trail, although it does look a little less used past the downed tree.

Some of the largest redwood sorrel, both flowers and leaves, I've encountered were guarding the split to the loop at the end.

I decided on a clockwise turn around the loop at the end of the trail this time.

Out to wander among the fire and otherwise scarred old trees in the section of old growth.

Of course, my pictures of the old growth are likely to look quite a bit like all the other times I've been up to it. I haven't named the trees, but the biggest ones near the trail are certainly occupying distinct memory buckets.

I decided I would look at the very small among the very large. To that end, I brought along what I shall call an electric magnifier. It's billed as a "4K 3840x2160p WiFi Digital Microscope Camera with Adjustable Metal Stand" in an Amazon listing by a seller who calls the magnification selection the focus. I paid particular attention to the stand, which has z adjustment (the real focus adjuster), but I don't really want to carry that with me. It also has a bit of plastic protection around the lower lens. The length of the protector is correct to focus near the lower end and again near the upper end of the magnification this thing is capable of.

The good: It has adjustable lighting to illuminate the sample. The wireless connection doesn't seem to lag much. It's easy to start and stop, although there are ways it could be easier. The bad: The sensor is a ludicrous aspect ratio, almost twice as wide as high. I'm suspicious about the pixel number of that sensor, plus "on some Android systems" it is knocked down to 1920x1080. That includes my LG handheld. I have an old Motorola handheld that it works to full resolution on, but it wasn't charged as I headed out. Also good: The stand is pretty solid. It slants slightly differently if approaching a spot from above or below, but it really adjusts vertically and the same area stays in frame as it goes. Also bad: The recommended software (WiFi Check) saves particularly lossy JPG images, so the file in memory never looks as good as the picture on the screen. It's a little better with an older one (DM WiFi, which actually had been doing full advertised resolution but must have "updated") which saves as lossless PNG. There are settings for image size, but not for image type or quality for saving.

But what to look at? I searched for the spore sacks of ferns at first, and got a few of them. I looked at a few details of redwood sorrel leaves. Then I moved on to the lichen growing on the burned wood surface of one of those known big trees next to the trail.

There's actually at least two lichens here, but the toy soldiers, the one with bright red fruits, got the attention.

Close ups from a couple electric magnifier images of the red fruits.

The leafy bits of the lichen.

A coral lichen among some feather moss.

Closer on those lichen fingers.

Closer on that moss.

Soon enough, my loop was coming to an end. It is only half a mile.

Nearing the last of the old growth, or the first if one goes the other direction.

So downhill I went.

Back among stumps.

Sometimes it's still a pretty airy forest with a mix of tree sizes.

And sometimes it's a dense collection of narrow spindles, even looking from the same spot down a different slope aspect.

I wasn't yet done with the electric magnifier. I had a look at some mushrooms on a stick that must have rolled between when they started and now, and the thing actually impressed me finally.

Turkey-tails that changed their "up" at some point.

Trying to get a good image of the pores, I found the little black spots on the right hand one to be something alive and squirming!

Grubs at higher magnification marching across the frame.

Little dots of orange fungus! Another obvious magnification subject!

Along the interface between two dots.

As a scientific instrument, this electric magnifier leaves a bit to be desired. It makes no effort to record, or even know, where the magnification is set so there's no way to have scale without sticking a ruler in the picture. However, it's priced as a toy and it could certainly be some good fun. Unfortunately, I'd had enough fun and needed to pay a little attention to the time and getting back instead.

Okay, I may have had a look at some fetid adderstongue seeds, but the result wasn't so interesting.

I wouldn't mind having a really close look at the piggyback plant.

I didn't find out what might be crawling in these brittlestems.

The South Side Trail hadn't opened during the day, so I had to return entirely on the pavement as expected.

Is that the wood rat's nest now? An abnormally thick collection of debris among the low branches of a tree in a stump.

*photo album*




©2024 Valerie Norton
Written 25 May 2024