Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: winter

  • The January Run

    It’s the week before Christmas. Fifty years ago, I was on a Ski-doo Alpine, making the January Run. It was a partial run – mostly for the purpose of rewinding the clockwork recorders that measured the height of the antifreeze solution as deeper snows compressed the snow pillows (a snow pillow is a rubber bladder, filled with antifreeze – I measured a lot of them, but rarely saw one).

    It’s a different world now – instead of pushing twin tracked snowmobiles up Grave Creek to sample Weasel Divide, then sample Stahl Peak and rewind the pillow, I can download the measurements from my armchair. Today, the only need for snow surveyors is to visit the site, and provide the measurements that allow the correlations with the (longer established) snow course. The real iron men of snow surveys were the generation before me – they did it all on skis and snowshoes.

    So, in memory of the job that once brought me envy (“You really get paid to ride snowmobiles?”) Here’s what the data recorder has to say about Stahl Peak today:

    I like the chart – and the long-term data (for the last 30 years – it really does make me feel old to see that my measurements from 50 years ago, are so far in the past that they’re not included. But even a half century ago, I had learned that climate, like weather, changes – it’s just slower to change).

    6 Hour
    SWE Change
    (inches)    		12 Hour
    SWE Change
    (inches)    		24 Hour
    SWE Change
    (inches)    		48 Hour
    SWE Change
    (inches)    		1 Week
    SWE Change
    (inches)
    0.000.000.501.202.40
     Daily Statistics
    Latest Observation is 20.90 inches which is 147 % of average
     Note: The Median/Average is based upon the 30 year period 1991 to 2020.
    The Min/Max is based upon the Period Of Record (POR).

    So, at this time, the snowpack on Stahl is about 150% o the average. If you click on the NCRS site, you’ll see where the Kootenai basin sits:

    Basin
      Site Name    		Elev
    (ft)    		Snow Water EquivalentWater Year-to-Date Precipitation
    Current
    (in)    		Median
    (in)    		Pct of
    Median    		Current
    (in)    		Median
    (in)    		Pct of
    Median
    KOOTENAI RIVER BASIN
      Banfield Mountain55806.8   6.2   110   19.5   10.3   189   
      Bear Mountain546016.8   18.8   89   47.4   31.8   149   
      Garver Creek42503.3   4.7   70   15.2   9.0(24)169   
      Grave Creek43503.0   5.2   58   28.8   14.3   201   
      Hand Creek50303.6   3.9   92   11.6   7.2   161   
      Hawkins Lake646014.3   9.8   146   25.8   15.2   170   
      Poorman Creek50508.8   11.4(22)77   46.1   25.9(22)178   
      Stahl Peak604020.9   14.2   147   27.1   18.2   149   
    Basin Index (%)104   168

    The percentages are impressive – but there is a lot of winter yet to come. I don’t have data based on the Bouyoucos blocks we once measured to show how much moisture is stored in the soil at the sites – but I’d bet the soil moisture is at 100% capacity too.

    It’s a pleasant thing that the data is so readily available anymore.

  • Thinning in Winter

    Thinning in Winter

    When I start the chainsaw, I attract deer.  The inflow starts with a doe who learned, as a fawn, that my chainsaw meant there would be winter food near the house,  She shows up, with her yearling daughter and two fawns.  She often chooses to browse the mosses and lichens on the trees, as do the rest of her family.  The newer dependents usually just browse the needles – and they seem to come to dinner in their own family groups to minimize conflict.

    The place needs thinning.  The large stumps bear witness to the first logging – done around 1910, with smaller stumps showing a second, smaller harvest a little after the second world war.  Yet another scattered group of stumps shows where a man with a horse, a saw and a broadaxe could be in the crosstie business – opportunity, if hard work.  The other stump evidence shows the Christmas tree industry . . . and I wonder if we could have yarded Christmas trees along the old road in the sixties and seventies without the deer browsing destroying them. 

    I had a visitor comment, “You’re parking it out.”  I don’t see it that way – nearly 50 years ago, a forester taught me a simple principle – each acre will produce about the same amount of wood.  Spaced properly, the wood grows into harvestable logs.  Additionally, with the open canopy, it will produce about 80% of the grass that would grow on an open meadow.  Forest management pays, but takes a long-term perspective and consistent maintenance.  Others may think I’m parking it out close to the house – I think I’m still that same conservationist . . . though I left that career path almost 40 years ago.

    And I learn – doing my thinning mostly in the winter provides food for my semi-domestic dependents.  There is something pleasant about trimming branches on one end of a log while deer browse 15 feet further up.

    Apologies to our subscribers if you were notified about this article twice. An unfortunate result of working in the wee morning hours on little caffeine. We’re still only coming out on Tuesdays.