April 25, 2012
Today was park
cleanup day, and a bunch of park employees met at 8am and dispersed
across the park to spend about 6 hours cleaning. I went with the
paleo group, and we covered Conata Road, Conata picnic area, and the
loop road from Conata to the Pinnacles entrance. If you know the
park you know that this is a very large area. There were six of us
and two trucks, and we walked the sides of the road in pairs. The
trucks were shuttled so that you'd walk a ways, reach a truck, drive
it past the other pairs, park, then keep cleaning until you met up
with the next truck that was driven ahead. Worked great. Probably
walked a good four miles or more, cleaning. The most interesting
part was at the end, by the Pinnacles entrance. Yesterday there was
a prescribed burn up there, from sage creek road to the pinnacles
entrance. Ryan had helped with that, so we got the stories last
night. Was interesting to see the freshly charred prairie and walk
along the soot. We found a bunch of old fencing pieces, metal
stakes, and thick wires in the burned area, and worked to clean those
up. In the process we discovered a few rattle snakes. Two were
dead, charred in the burn. Photos below. One had bit itself, the
other looked to be trying to find something to bite. With our group
was the head of resources management, and he told us there's a
rattlesnake den nearby, which the paleos found. There was at least
one still alive in there, we could hear him rattling. After the
cleanup, everyone met in the visitor's center for a nacho snack. I
then headed to my apartment to finish putting labels on all the kids'
paintings, and brought those over to the VC. Then spent a couple
hours painting, had dinner, and noticed a spectacular sunset. Ran
out to take photos and found Ed along the way, who hiked with me. On
the way back to the quad, I went to take a step and shrieked. I
almost stepped on a rattle snake while wearing sandals. He was
pretty small, and not rattling, but looked very angry. Ed said he's
a juvenile, which are the most dangerous since they don't rattle, and
they don't control their venom: they'll pump everything they have
into you. Older adults learn to control it since they need to
conserve it to use on their prey. After that a bunch of us headed to
the Wagon Wheel to play cards. Wednesday night is the night that park employees meet up.
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| By the Pinnacles entrance sign, burn in the background. |
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Charred rattler, head at the top where it is twisted around,
having bitten itself. |
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| Another charred rattler. |
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| Sunset on Angel Butte, behind the quad. |
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| Sunset behind the quad. |
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The juvenile rattler I nearly stepped on. Ed says that when
they stick out their tongue and hold it there, like this guy
is doing, it means they're really angry. Super! |
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| The quad. |
Photos to come, still working o going through them all.
