Be Prepared: Big Alderbed Vly

I probably learned a lot of useful things as a boy scout in the 1960s but most of it blended in with all the other things being learned in those happy years. But the boy scouts get full credit for one bit of cultural wisdom, the boy scout motto: Be Prepared. This odd thought slipped into my active brain while I was hiking on Sunday (5/16/2016). I had pulled out my phone to see how far it was to the car on the GPS. But the phone battery was low and it had disabled the location feature to save itself. My location was no longer being recorded. And I knew there was no point in pulling the separate GPS unit out of my pack; those batteries had quit an hour before. I was carrying spare batteries but I hadn't bothered to put the new ones in.

I was plodding along, pretty much soaked thru, with the wind gusting hard enough to bend the trees and the air temperature hovering around 34 degrees. Along with the fresh batteries I had dry clothes in my pack. I just didn't want to stop to put them on. The heavy spring snow that had been falling higher up was now a steady rain and I figured that my best option was to just keep walking.

The storm at full force over Big Alderbed Vly. The video below is shot from this same spot and provides a sense of the wind that you just can't get from the still picture.

"Be Prepared" had come to mind because I had just taken a mis-step while crossing a brook; the slip left me standing in water over the tops of my boots. But even that had limited practical effect; my hiking boots had been feeling soggy for a while. Several hours of bushwhacking through wet vegetation along with rain and snow will do that.

What I did notice was that I was getting a little stumbley and not paying attention to my surroundings in the way that I normally do. I'm usually pretty careful about my footing, so slipping on a rock that was obviously slippery was an warning sign. The warning being that my body was starting to reserve warm blood for use by core organs which, under these circumstances, do not include the brain. Sort of like the phone shutting down the GPS to save a little bit of juice for one last phone call. That's when it occurred to me that I had stopped doing the things I normally do to give myself an extra margin of safety; like changing the batteries in my GPS and putting on dry clothes to stay warm. I was getting sloppy. Which is why hypothermia is so insidious. The first effect is to muddle ones thinking. But it was less than two miles back to the car and in an hour I was there. Driving home with the heater blasting I wondered if I'll see it coming the next time.

Big Alderbed Vly

My visit to Big Alderbed Vly had not gone as planned. My intent was to visit the old growth spruce stands reported to exist around Blind Mans Vly. The catch is that to get to Blind Mans Vly you have to cross East Canada Creek. Heavy rain had fallen on Friday, two days before. But water levels this spring are running below normal so I though it should be possible cross the creek. That turned out to be a bit optimistic. I looked at a couple of rock hopping options but both required making a jump from one slippery rock to another slippery rock. My old bones and (at that point) still functioning self-preservation circuits argued against that. Wading seemed possible and I put on sandals I had carried for that purpose. Unfortunately the rocks in East Canada Creek are thickly coated with algae (not sure what that's all about) and extremely slippery. As the water rose above my knees I decided that the big spruce would have to wait for another visit and turned back.

The dam on Big Alderbed Vly. The dam is broken in the center but it still constricts the flow of water and raises the water level in the pond. At times wind driven waves were pushing water over the dam remnants for much of its' length. 

Plan B was to bushwhack along the south shore of Big Alderbed Vly; a one and half mile long swampy pond noted for an abundance of waterfowl. And the weather soon confirmed my choice. As I changed back into my boots the spitting snow turned to heavy wet flakes and the storm that had been threatening came in full force with strong gusty winds.

From the place where the trail crosses the creek it took only a few minutes to bushwhack to the site of the former dam on Big Alderbed Vly. At one time a rock crib dam had turned the vly into a pond. The dam was broken out long ago but it still constricts the flow of water and raises the level of the Vly. Standing there I realized that the wind --blowing straight down the narrow valley occupied by the Vly-- was pushing water up against and over the remnants of the dam. This was adding significantly to the flow in East Canada Creek. A flow that was going to be much lower after the storm passed.

Snow falling over Big Alderbed Vly. Big Alderbed Mountain in the background.

The snow did make for interesting pictures and old growth trees are seen all along the trail to the vly. In particular, there are notable ancient Yellow Birch trees as large as any I've seen. In places where spruce are mixed in there are some good sized specimens with diameters greater than 12 inches. But the really big ones I had hoped to find are on the north side of East Canada Creek. Those will have to wait for another day.

Ancient Yellow Birch. One of several very large and very old Yellow Birch seen along the trial to Big Alderbed Vly. Trees like this pre-date settlement of the region and indicate that the area was logged selectively, if at all.