"Wanderer overlooking a sea of fog," upper Mamquam River Valley, British Columbia. Photograph courtesy Mick Range. Roughly eighteen miles east of Squamish, just west of the Mamquam/Pitt divide. Mr. Range and I drove up from Vancouver through the steadily growing gloom with the hopeful and somewhat naive plan of climbing Pinecone Peak, just east of here. Rain began to fall about the same time we parked beside a totally overgrown spur road. I could actually hear the drops sizzling in the dust as I wiggled into my boots and gaiters and psyched myself up to get wet. Piles of fresh bear and cougar scat everywhere. Ten minutes up in the bush, rain still falling, we determined we were on the wrong road. Down to the car, fifteen minutes' drive, back up another, even more completely overgrown road. Twenty minutes later, pushing through an alder sea, we heard a deep glottal rumble that we took at first for thunder. But thunder comes from the sky, and this growl was coming from the bushes. . . .

They call them "apex predators" for a reason, and the ursus-to-English translation was unmistakable: "Get the fuck out of my yard!" We hoofed it back down the road, and the growler saw no reason to pursue us, or to even put in an appearance. But that sound, deep and Dolby-bass grumbly, will stay with me for a while.

Up the logging road again, wiggling my two-wheel drive Taurus back and forth over a series of water bars. Then up a side road, rain coming down harder now, into a clearcut. We headed up to the top of the cut, then bushwhacked straight down to the car. The most prolific cut I have ever hiked through, bursting with flowering plants and mushrooms. Mick's photographs (above) look like they were taken with a polarizing filter; the plants' green is unearthly, unnaturally bright. But these are the colors we actually saw. A weird conjunction of deep black duff; productive rainfall; the peculiar microclimate of the upper valley's south-facing slope.
- posted by cjb @ 9:02 AM