everyday

via: Live Science

An article at Live Science talks about a rare species of fish, known as the desert pupfish that has been found in some man-made ponds far removed from any known natural habitat for the fish. The ponds are filled with water from nearby rivers which begs the question, “is this endangered species thriving in these rivers?”.

As promised, here are some pictures of my recent camping trip with my girlfriend to Hurkey Creek Park.

For some geo-tagged, spatially referenced photos, click here: Google Map.

I went on a little hike up a trail in Hurkey Park today. The weather was beautiful, the water was cool and I can’t imagine a better way to spend a few hours. I took my dogs, who thoroughly enjoyed the hike as well. I was rather surprised to find a number of California Tree Frogs (Pseudacris cadaverina) there.

NOTE: clicking on the image will take you to Flickr where I have more pictures from the hike.

Well, I survived the trip to Joshua Tree National Park! I have posted some pictures in my gallery [here]. I had a really great time, I even managed to climb a 5.5 face! I was very impressed with myself.

Last week I found a Rosy Boa in my front yard. Well, actually my sister found it, but I caught it. After keeping it for a few days, feeding it a mouse and having it escape once I finally got around to releasing it back in the hills above Nuevo, CA (approximately here Google Map).

These snakes are extremely docile, if you happen across one in your travels, please do not harm it. If you are calm and careful you can easily pick up a wild Rosy Boa with almost no fear of being bitten. If one does happen to strike you don’t worry, they are not venomous.

When I was younger I kept a couple of Rosy Boas as pets, well snakes aren’t really pets, but I did keep them captive. While these snakes are the ideal snake for being kept in captivity, it probably is detrimental to the wild population. Especially if you are keeping a female as you will be removing a viable breeding snake from a specific population. While I am not aware of any specific problems in regards to the Rosy Boas population as a whole, I would assume that the encroachment of human development on it’s natural habitat is having a negative impact. So I urge you to tread lightly!

More pictures are available in the gallery

This past weekend, we went camping at Hurkey Creek Park which is a Riverside County Park located within the San Bernardino National Forest.

The weather was pleasant, although it was a tad warm during the day, mostly due to the fact that we probably had the least shade of any campsite in the entire park! While we didn’t do any real hiking, we did go for a short walk up the trail that parallels the creek. After about a half hour of walking, we turned towards the creek for some much needed toe dipping. We spent the better part of 2 hours just lounging by the creek on a rock that was perfectly suited for such activities. While we were relaxing I spotted a number of California Tree Frogs! As many of you may know, I am a highly experienced frog hunter, so this was exciting for me. Unfortunately, Ace (my sister’s yellow Labrador Retriever) is now also an expert frog hunter. Fortunately he only got one of the frogs which is far less damage to the population than a friend of mine and I did on many of our hunting expeditions, of course those expeditions had scientific value so all was not lost.

I will post some pictures as well as a map using Google Earth [see previous post].

via: National Geographic

A picture of what may turn out to be the first new mammal discovered in Borneo in over a century was captured by a nightime camera trap set by WWF researchers. Click [here] for the whole story.

Today I was part of an underground adventure race! It was a grueling 17 mile hike and bike around Lake Perris (and in it at times). The following link is from the Gmaps Pedometer: [Link to race route]The race started in the early morning and mass confusion instantly set in as a result of a thick layer of fog that made it all but impossible to read the provided topographic map. A majority of the teams headed due North which, it turns out, was incorrect. My team was traveling West on a nice trail, but after some distance we decided that we must have made a wrong turn (herd mentality) and backtracked to the North fork of the trail. After hiking North for a bit, we turned West in hopes of finding the road that our first checkpoint of 25 was supposed to be adjacent to. Once we finally located the first checkpoint it was smooth sailing through the next 17 or so checkpoints, until the final checkpoint of the hiking segment. This final checkpoint was nearly impossible to find in the fog since there was no defined trail, just a clue to look for a “GIGANTIC” boulder. Well, since the fog prevented us from seeing more than 100′ ahead of us it took a long time to find this checkpoint. Once that was over with, we headed down the hill to the parking lot and hopped on our mountain bikes for the second leg of the race. Nothing really exciting happened until we reached the top of a long grade and got to aim straight downhill following a nice single track (a narrow trail that winds down the hill allowing for some very high speeds, sharp turns and the occasional jump). Shortly after this we passed a set of checkpoints that would have been under water a few months ago, but the lake has been drained down almost 40 feet due to concerns over the dam’s ability to withstand a high seismic load. The final checkpoint of the entire race was a short climb up the side of “Big Rock” and a fun rappel down the face. Thanks to my recent trip to Joshua Tree National Park I was able to do this without too much fear!

Unfortunately we did not finish the race, which would have required a 5 mile ride across Lake Perris’ dam. One of my teammates had developed some pain in his knee and I was cramping up. In my defense, I haven’t ridden a mountain bike in over 6 months and this was extremely strenuous. Had we completed the race I believe we would have been in 3rd place out of about 7 teams. There were other teams that finished before us, but they had failed to find all of the checkpoints in the fog, so their times would not have counted.

I will be off to Joshua Tree National Park tomorrow with Jeff & Penni. They will, of course, be climbing the wonderful rocks that are in the park. I am simply looking forward to another visit to one of the most interesting places I have ever been. Hopefully I will get some good pictures to share.

Just a quick post before going to the gym. I went to Silver Lake this weekend to attend a wedding and it was absolutely beautiful. I will post some pictures of the area when I get a chance.