Slippery Slopes and Broadway Battles

Today started unusually late, with the teams leaving at 8:30 instead of 7:00. Team Royal Purple (Orange) headed out to meet Jordan, a local ranger. With Jordan serving as a guide, we headed out to May Valley for collection. With his guidance, we traversed the many meadows of the valley and searched the nooks and crannies of each for any hidden plants. Searching high and low, our hard work paid off as we set our trip record to date with a total of fifty-three plants, leading to a grand two day total of 100 plants in two days. (Unfortunately, Blue team simply couldn't keep up with our fast paced collection with a total of only 30.) The collection was good, but the real adventure happened when we reached a small, yet turbulent stream. As we struggled to obtain our fiftieth plant, there was an incident...

As the team rock-hopped across with gear in hand, Mari misstepped, tumbled, and slid across a very wet rock. Regaining her balance, her now-wet shoes caused a swift return to the water as she slid once more into the water. Luckily, no harm was done and Mari valiantly saved both the recorder book and camera from a watery grave, even if she couldn't say the same of herself. If nothing else, she also furnished the rest of her team with a laugh.

Finishing their collecting, the team head back to Idyllwild for a well deserved treat of chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. Contentment continued until, upon reaching the lodge, a debate broke out over musical choices. Hayden quickly took over a computer and began to play her music of choice: broadway music ala Les Miserables. The group soon began requesting other music, but Hayden continued to insist that "It will grow on you." However, the teammates could only take so many calls for "one more song" and eventually managed to draw Hayden away from the laptop long enough to change the station. They continue to guard the computer, lest she get any ideas...

Mari (Shout-out) and Hayden (now called Goliath)

From Trails to Health Clinics

Team Royal Purple (Hayden, Stacy, Christina, Mari):
We changed our name to Royal Purple (yes capitalized) to show our superiority over team blue. We got to sleep late, we had to be out the door by 8:30. We drove out to Alvin Meadows and through Halfway Springs and Chimney Flats. Because this was a vehicle assisted collection day (at least for us - the inferior team blue went on an eight mile death march with Rusty) we were able to collect a LOT of plants - seriously. We collected 38 more plants than them. We had a total of 47. They had a mere 9 plants. I mean come on - you judge who is a better team. On more urgent news- we have not found a solution for the BP oil spill. Mari's nose was worse than ever. Bursting like a rushing volcano we took her to the health clinic. We beat the average speed of an ambulance - it took us twenty-six minutes. And the flow was yet to cease. Eventually, the doctor prescribed Mari some vinegar and she has been nose-bleed free since. We then went on to fulfill our daily tradition - sno cones!!!

Plants 'R' Us

The opportunity to meet new friends, to visit a new part of the country, to see and experience things that will produce vivid memories ... to laugh, to learn ... these are all part of the SCAP experience. But this blog entry celebrates our efforts to collect and record plant species in the San Jacinto Mountains.

The Descent and an International Affair

After waking up in the morning at our lesiure and shaking the dust out of our sleeping bags, we ate breakfast and headed back out on the trail. We'd decided that team purple (previously known as orange) would head directly down the mountain to Idyllwild while team blue would head to Reed's Meadow and then head down to the town. Both teams would collect along the way. At Reed's Meadow we (team blue) made 7 collections and listened to Rusty's story about

being in the musical Cinderella. After almost 2 hours we headed to Saddle Junction from where we would pick up Devil's Slide trail down to Idyllwild. There, to our surprise, we happened upon team purple. We'd expected them to be an hour in front of us, but there they were. So we waited for them to pack up and head down the trail. They headed directly to the parking lot while we collected along the way. It was a long downhill in the hot sun, and we didn't find much to besides absurdly attired hikers. First, there was the man wearing a straw hat, dress shirt, and fancy shoes dragging his exhausted wife up the steep trail (Rusty described him as a "dandy"). Then there was the Boy Scout troop. They paraded up the trail, dressed up in their uniforms (with matching leather hats) and carried their troop flag proudly in front of them. And there were at least 20 of them. To say the least, they looked very comical. As a boy scout myself, I found it extremely amusing that they found it necessary to attire themselves in such a fashion on a backpacking trip. I also felt obligated to impart to everybody else that most troops did not in fact fit into that stereotypical image of Boy Scouts. I don't think anybody believed me. By the time we reached the parking lot we were exhausted and hungry, but still had to wait a long time before we were picked up by Julie and taken into Idyllwild for a late lunch. Then we headed back to the James Reserve, where we met a group of international scholars from the Society for Conservation GIS (they were spending the night on the reserve). After we finished all of our data and picture compilation/organization, we all got together and learned about one another. One of the scholars was from Zambia, another from Uganda, two from Brazil, one from Colombia, one from Argentina, one from Russia, one from Malaysia,and one from Venezuela. Sasha who is from Russia also was at the reserve with us, he is the program coordinator,Rob is from New York ,he was here to drive the scholars around , he is the president of SCGIS, and Charles who is a co-founder of SCGIS was also staying at the reserve with us . They were very cool people and they are so into conservation which is so awesome. They shared a lot of information of their careers, goals, and dreams . I wish they could have stayed longer because myself and the rest of the SCAP team wanted to learn more from them, they were amazing people. After we were introduced and got to really know each other we decided to watch Zombie land and then all join around a camp fire to have some ridiculous smores and listen to some camp fire music. Some of the foreigners didn't know how to make smore or even what it was but we had it covered, we weren't going to let them leave the reserve and continue with their work without knowing what a smore was. They loved them i am sure of it, they couldn't get enough of them. It was a perfect ending to an awesome day.

Recreation Day

Despite the fact we wanted to sleep in REALLY late on our only day off, we rose early (sort of) to attend the Lemon Lilly festival's pancake breakfast sponsored by the Rotary Club of Idyllwild. We all lined up for two pancakes, eggs, sausages, and fresh orange juice. Once we found out there were seconds, Colyer immediately stood up and charged towards the kitchen, getting himself seconds AND thirds. He restrained himself from fourths because he was the only one still chomping.

When everyone (except Colyer) was full, we headed to the laundromat. Some of us were unsure about laundry- we've been spoiled at home and have never done laundry before. We worried our reds would ruin our white shirts or that our clothes would shrink. We used this time to call home and catch up with life back at home. When the clothes were ready and dried, we were relieved to know that our clothes had survived the rough cycles of the machines. Of course, this tedious task wore us out and forced us to return to the Candy Cupboard- we needed snow cones.




Replenished, we paced the streets of Idyllwild, doing some touristy shopping. When Rusty and Julie came to pick us up, the girls had lots of new jewelry, and the boys were complaining about the five hours of shopping we had just done. Worn out and hungry, we went home to Julie's pasta with some delicious vegetable sauce. With our stomachs full, we started the most epic and fun game of Ultimate Frisbee ever. It was a close call, but Colyer, Jesse, Stacy, Sarah, Christina, pulled out a 15-13 win. A rematch is soon to come. Before we prepared for bed, we watched Three, a movie that was supposed to be scary- but turned out to have bad acting that was hilarious.

A Starry Night On the Mountain Part 1

We began our routine with "get up by 6 and out by 7." Our destination was near the top Mount San Jacinto and Mount Taquitz where there was a ranger camp ground that was invisible to hikers and was privy only to our group. We started our journey at the bottom of the tram, which is the largest cable tram in the world and can hold up to eighty people. As we all entered the compact vehicle that we thought was way to small to hold the massive amount of people that were flowing into its doors. The floor under our feet began to rotate at about a 1/2 mph pace. When the tram reached its max height we had traveled about 8,000 ft so we only had to hike up another 2,000 ft which might sound pretty bad, but with our calves of steel that was no major problem. As a whole group we hiked up until we reached a certain point in our journey where we had to split up. The Royal Purple team went the easy way and the Midnight Blue team (the best team)had to walk extra miles in order to get some hardcore plant specimens. The Royal Purple team reached the camp about an hour after the Midnight Blue team because the Midnight Blue team had to stop for plants that the other team skipped. At around 7 pm both teams had gathered at the camp. That is when the fun began. As we sat and devoured our food that seemed to be stockpiled for the apocalypse as we thought about how to amuse ourselves. We decided to play pine cone baseball and we used a pine cone for the baseball, hence the name, and an ax handle that was lying on the ground. We were surprised to see that we had an A-rod hitter on the team, Tex-Mex. Once the opposite team submitted to defeat from the power of the Midnight Blue team we all decided to play a game of ninja. As we all karate chopped the dusty air through the night we decided to wear the sacred Madeline hat. We hurriedly placed the hat on our heads one by one taking silly pictures with hat, which was almost blasphemy. At around 9pm we layed on our sleeping bags and stared at the starry night. We saw satellites, constellations, and we told each other some silly stories. We all fell asleep happy and laughing because of Goliath's hamster death story.

Ode to Lemon Lilies

One of the most beautiful and beloved plants on the 'hill', which is what the locals call the San Jacinto Mountains, is Lilium parryi, the lemon lily. It turns out that the first Lemon Lily Festival, scheduled during the first weekend of our fieldtrip, overlapped our two-day overnight work at the high elevations of the mountains. So, our contribution to these festivities was to locate and georeference six separate populations of lemon lilies that we encountered on Caramba Trail, Willow Creek, Tahquitz and Skunk Cabbage Meadows, and on our descent along Devil's Slide. We will provide these data to our colleagues at the U.S. Forest Service.