A long overdue and much needed visit to Mclane Creek Natural Area, and the Mclane/Beatty Creek confluence this afternoon. There wasn't much moving at the beaver pond - if you are familiar with Kitty's landscape paintings you'll recognize the big snag right away. It was fairly quiet along the boardwalks covering sensitive areas (below) as well.
The fall colors this year seem particularly strong to me, given the terrible heat and limited amounts of rain we had in early to mid summer. I'm thrilled with it all, and feel tremendously lucky to be living in such a wonderful area.
The confluence lies on dry ground just outside the extreme southwest boundary of the nature trail itself. A short walk through the woods puts you at the base of a very large, multi-trunk, western red cedar - the confluence lies directly below the group.
In the photo above, Beatty Creek comes in from the lower left and merges (about dead center of the shot) with Mclane, which flows left-to-right through the top half of the photo. There is not much in the way of running water in Mclane Creek right now, and only soggy gravel and soggier leaves in Beatty.
Salmon won't begin plowing upstream until the rain gives both creeks a good first flush. The coho will be first, probably sometime in the first or second week of November. In all likelihood the chum won't be able to venture into Beatty Creek's main channel until sometime just before Thanksgiving, when there will be (hopefully) an inch or two of water passing over the log jam currently blocking most of the channel. Chum can't go airborne like coho, so rapids without side channels create total blockades. Last year's strongest flows though the natural notch shown below were deep enough to allow large numbers of the great beasts to fight their way into the deeper water on the other side. (The viewpoint shown here is roughly 180 from the one above, and looks straight upstream from the confluence itself)
Several solid and potentially productive pulses of Pacific moisture are headed this way in the next few days, and we've had a fair amount of rain already this month. I'm hopeful it will be a good year for the runs in both creeks - a couple years ago Beatty was bone dry until mid-December, well after the chum run had come and gone. Not a single fish made it into the creek in time to spawn.
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PS - HOW LUCKY AM I?
A hard left turn at the base of this towering mass of second-growth, big-leaf maple takes you back to the pond at the heart of the reserve; but a hard-right puts you on the trail back to my house, about a half-mile away as the crow flies. I am truly blessed, thanks to the foresight and ongoing efforts of a large number of people who, for many years have put their give-a-damn where their mouths are. Thank you, one and all.