TWILIGHT PADDLE: WIDGEON ESTUARY

Widgeon Estuary is a wonderful springtime jaunt either as a daytrip or overnight. The paddling is easy. You can do the trip via kayak or canoe and can stay for the night or do it as a day trip. I'll be planning to camp near the base of the trail to the falls and will likely go for three days.

There is nothing better than to cruise flat water with rippling reflections of big snowy mountains cascading off your bow.

The estuary of Widgeon Creek at the south end of Pitt Lake at Grant Narrows is the perfect place to enjoy this sensation.

If you like quiet peaceful waterways teaming with bird life this is the place to go for the whole estuary is a protected bird sanctuary. After making the 300m crossing of Grant Narrows, expect to see tons of waterfowl and other species from herons to harlequins that make this area their habitat. You might even see a fleeting glimpse of muskrat or beaver if you are lucky.

If Widgeon Creek is high in the spring or early summer you can paddle quite a distance up under lazy overhanging branches draped in moss and lichen. Huge lush ferns and skunk cabbage line the shoreline in the marshy areas and neat little gravel bars are gathered in the bends of the creek. When you are there you will be amazed that you can be so close to the city yet so far away.

A campsite is located near the west end of the estuary if you want to stay longer. This is probably best to do in the shoulder season when it isn't so busy. If the water is high more secluded sites are located up the river.

PTEROSAURS: CATCHING PREY ON THE WING

Pterosaurs, the mighty winged-lizards, soared ancient skies expertly hunting for prey. Because they evolved from reptiles prior to modern birds, it was once believed that pterosaurs were primitive, passive fliers. They were seen as gliders, rather than skillfull hunters. Being the earliest vertebrates to have evolved powered flight, we now recognize that they were powerful fliers, chasing and catching their prey on the wing. One clue to this revelation is a small bone at the front of the wing bone which curves back towards the shoulder, roughly like an elongated thumb on a spread hand.

Modern birds have a small but vital feather, the aula, in this position. It shifts, acting like the leading edge on some airplane wings, redirecting the airflow over the wing, and allowing major changes in speed and angle in the air for comparatively little effort. It seems clear the pterosaurs’ extended thumb would have held a flap of membrane in a similar position at the front of the wing, and for a similar purpose. Their skulls hold the other clue; they have much larger brain cases in relation to their size than their earth-bound contemporaries. Co-ordination of flight requires tremendous brainpower, and co-ordination of active flight, with the constant shift in the shape and location of massive wings, even more so. Nature is extremely parsimonious, not frittering away investment in any organ where it is not needed.

Given the engineering challenges and the energy costs of getting each additional gram of weight off the ground, pterosaurs would never have developed such large and heavy “on board computers” unless they clearly paid their own way in faster, more nimble flight that would have allowed their owners to catch more prey and outmaneuver competing aerial hunters and scavengers.

PADDLING PARADISE

Like most mountainous areas, Bowron makes its own weather system and it appears you get everything in a 24-hour period. In fact, whatever weather you are enjoying seems to change 40 minutes later; good for rain, bad for sun. Wisps of cloud that seemed light and airy only hours early have become dark. Careful to hug the shore, we are ready for a quick escape from lightening as thundershowers break.

PUPPY LOVE: KANE AND MEADOW

WOOLY MAMMOTH

Creating long extinct life through harvested genetic remains is closer than you think. After successful experiments at the Institute for Reproductive Studies in Scottsdale, Arizona, with frozen mice sperm, scientists are now experimenting with sperm from mammoths preserved in Siberian ice.

We may one day have wooly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), extinct since the Pleistocene, roaming around zoos and colder climes. At least it looks that way. Because of their massive size and icy cold environment, many mammoths have been preserved as frozen carcasses instead of being turned to stone, thus they are prime candidates for genetic reproduction. We really can bring them back. When originally touted in the news as a possibility, most audiences took the science to be too farfetched.

Researchers harvesting DNA and deciphering their genome feel they are on the edge of doing just that. Science as we know it is sliding down the double helix to science fiction. DNA, long bits of genetic code that form the roadmap of how we are built, is relatively easy to harvest and remarkably hardy.

Even with the abuse of time, small amounts can be extracted and with that the genetic wizards are able to put the puzzle pieces back together. Frozen sperm is used in fertility clinics around the globe, the difference here is that the entire mammal is frozen before harvesting the sperm. Once harvested, the frozen sperm from long extinct male mammoths is injected into eggs from females of closely related species. While positive results have been made and papers published (see the National Academy of Sciences) a baby mammoth has yet to be conceived.

A return debut? Yes, it seems it is true. Geneticists have mastered the craft, mapping out the genetic code on species ranging from mice to men. So, start planning their "Welcome back" parties. Wooly's time has arrived!

Baleen

BOWEN ISLAND

CASTLE PEAK HELICOPTER FOSSIL FIELD TRIP

FOSSIL PLANT BOUNTY

EVENING LIGHT: LUND HARBOUR

IMPOSING WHITE PEAKS: THE CARIBOO GROUP

We soak up the breathtaking views after a long morning's paddle. The east and south sides of our route are bound by the imposing white peaks of the Cariboo Mountains, the northern boundary of the Interior wet belt, rising up across the Rocky Mountain Trench, and the Isaac Formation, the oldest of seven formations that make up the Cariboo Group. Some 270 million plus years ago, had one wanted to buy waterfront property in what is now British Columbia, you’d be looking somewhere between Prince George and the Alberta border. The rest of the province had yet to arrive but would be made up of over twenty major terranes from around the Pacific. The rock that would eventually become the Cariboo Mountains and form the lakes and valleys of Bowron was far out in the Pacific Ocean, down near the equator.

With tectonic shifting, these rocks drifted north-eastward, riding their continental plate, until they collided with and joined the Cordillera in what is now British Columbia. Continued pressure and volcanic activity helped create the tremendous slopes of the Cariboo Range we see today with repeated bouts of glaciation during the Pleistocene carving their final shape. Warm and dry with bellies filled full of soup and crisps, we head back out to explore more of nature's bounty.

ANKYLOSAUR TRACKWAY

PARADE OF LOST SOULS: HALLOWEEN 2010

DEEP ABYSS: NAUTILUS

HUMAN REMAINS FOUND IN TRANSILVANIA

I travelled to Transylvania last year and spent some time in the newly minted anthro-capilal of Romania. I was lucky enough to brush shoulders and prep tools with paleoanthropologists working on a new find that changes what we know about early human activity in Eastern Europe.

If Van Helsing were poking around Transylvania these days, chances are he'd be more likely to be looking for the decaying remains of 35,000 year old humans than blood drinking vampires. Romania's dark history extends back way past the days of Vlad. Seems vampires and ghouls aside, something darker and much more interesting lurks.

The remains of a man, woman and teenage boy, the first Romanian family if you will, tell the most complete picture of what our ancestors were like some 35,000 years ago.

International scientists have been carrying out further analysis to get a clearer picture on the find, said anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, of Washington University in St. Louis.

But it's already clear that, "this is the most complete collection of modern humans in Europe older than 28,000 years," he told The Associated Press. "We are very excited about it," And they have reason to be. The find is changing perceptions about modern humans.

Romanian recreational cavers unearthed the remains of three facial bones last year, and gave them to Romanian scientists. Romanian scientists asked Trinkaus to analyze the fossils, and he traveled to the Romanian city of Cluj this week with Portuguese scientist Joao Zilhao , a fossil specialist.

Included in the find was a jawbone belonging to a male around 35-years in age. It was found alongside a partial skull and teeth from another male, likely his son or perhaps another relative, around 15-years old. The bone fragments were near a temporal bone to a woman of unspecified age.

"This was 25,000 years before agriculture. Certainly they were hunters," said Trinkaus . He said the bones were discovered in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains . Trinkaus said the humans would have had religious beliefs, used stone tools, and a well-defined social system and lived in a period in during which early modern humans overlapped with late surviving Neanderthals in Europe.

The humans survived because the area was ecologically variable being close the Banat plain and close to the mountains. A team of international scientists from the United States , Norway , Portugal and Britain will return to the cave to continue their field work next year.

Look out Van Helsing, there are new kids in town.

FUNGUS: DEWDROPS GATHER

CASTLE PEAK

MIDNIGHT SWIM

KANE EXPLORING HARRISON FOSSIL SITE

EOCENE PLANT SITE #2

CHUCKANUT DRIVE: EOCENE TROPICAL PARADISE

The siltstones, sandstones, mudstones and conglomerates of the Chuckanut Formation were laid down about 40-54 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, a time of luxuriant plant growth in the subtropical flood plain that covered much of the Pacific Northwest.

PUFFER FISK

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MOONLIT NIGHT: DINOSAUR TRACKWAYS

In the summer of 2005, I joined Jen Becker, and fellow delegates from the British Columbia Paleontological Symposium for an impromptu late night tour of Wolverine River, one of many prolific research sites of Lisa Buckley, a magnificent vertebrate paleontologist working in the Tumbler Ridge area of British Columbia.

There are two types of footprints at the Wolverine River Tracksite - theropods (at least four different sizes) and ankylosaurs. The prints featured in this photo were laid down by ankylosaurs. Many of the prints are so shallow that they can only be recognised by the skin impressions pressed into the tracks.

At Wolverine, we filled in the dinosaur trackways with water and then lit them by lamplight to mysterious effect.

No visit to BC's Peace Region is complete without a trip to the Tumbler Ridge Museum and Dinosaur Lake Campground.

In 2000, two young boys, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm, were tubing down the rapids of Flatbed Creek just below Tumbler Ridge. As they walked up the shoreline excitement began to build as they quickly recognized a series of regular depressions as dinosaur footprints. Their discovery spurred an infusion of tourism and research in the area.

The Hudson's Hope Museum, also in the Peace Region, has an extensive collection of terrestrial and marine fossils from the area. They feature ichthysaurs, a marine reptile and hadrosaur tracks.

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park, near Smithers, is open to visitors interested in photographing significant marine fossils. If you do not have a chance to get out to the site, you can also view the collections at the Bulkley Valley Museum in Smithers.

RUCKUS ON THE ROCKS: ARGENTINA

MORNING CALM

FOSSILS OF OREGON: FARALLON PLATE

Had you been swimming with the marine fossils that were laid down in the Eocene Epoch in Oregon, some 55 to 38 million years ago, you'd be treading water right up to where the Cascade Mountains are today.

The Farallon Plate took a turn north some 57 million years ago, sweeping much of western coastal Oregon along with it. The Cascades were beginning to uplift and were fast becoming the breakwater for a retreating Pacific Ocean.

By the middle Oligocene, the Cascadia Subduction Zone was in full force with growing pressure erupting volcanoes along the Western Cascades, a pattern that was to continue well into the Miocene. The soft ocean sediments of Oregon contain beautifully preserved gastropods, bivalves and cephalopods.

BEACH FEAST: WEE SNICK SNACK

DISCOVERY: LICHEN ON SLATE

ENGLISH BAY

FOSSILIZED DINOSAUR EGGS

 

CELEBRATION OF LIGHT

CELEBRATION OF LIGHT

LACOSTE

DOGWOOD BOUNTY

The Bowron Lake Circuit is home to a variety of plant life. Large sections of the forest floor are carpeted in the green and white of dogwood, a prolific ground cover we are lucky enough to see in full bloom. Moss, mushrooms and small wild flowers grown on every available surface.

BLUE LAKE RHINO: PRESERVED IN IGNEOUS PILLOW LAVA

The Miocene pillow basalts from the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area of central Washington hold an unlikely fossil mold of a small rhinoceros, preserved by sheer chance as it's bloated carcass sunk to the bottom of a shallow pool or lake just prior to a volcanic explosion.

We've known about this gem for a long while now. The fossil was discovered by hikers back in 1935 and later cast by University of California paleontologists in 1948. These were the Dirty Thirties and those living in Washington state were experiencing the Great Depression along with the rest of the country and the world. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States, navigating the States away from laissez-faire economics. Charmingly, Roosevelt would have his good name honored by this same park in April of 1946, a few years before researchers at Berkeley would rekindle interest in the site.

Both hiking and fossil collecting were a fine answer to these hard economic times and came with all the delights of discovery with no cost for the natural entertainment. And so it was that two fossil enthusiast couples were out looking for petrified wood just south of Dry Falls on Blue Lake in Washington state. While searching the pillow basalt, the Frieles and Peabodys came across a large hole high up in a cave that had the distinctive shape of an upside down rhino. 

This fossil is interesting in all sorts of ways. First, we so rarely see fossils in igneous rocks. As you might suspect, both magma and lava are very hot. Magma, or molten rock, glows a bright red/orange as it simmers at a toasty 700 °C to 1300 °C (or 1300 °F to 2400 °F) in hot chambers beneath the Earth's surface. As the magma pushes up to the surface becoming lava, it cools to a nice deep black. In the case of our rhino friend, this is how this unlikely fellow became a fossil. Instead of vaporizing his remains, the lava cooled relatively quickly preserving his outline as a trace fossil and remarkably, a few of his teeth, jaw and bones. The lava was eventually buried then waters from the Spokane Floods eroded enough of the overburden to reveal the remains once more.

Diceratherium (Marsh, 1875) is known from over a hundred paleontological occurences from eighty-seven collections. While there are likely many more, we've found fossil remains of Diceratherium, an extinct genus of rhinoceros, in the Miocene of Canada in Saskatchewan, China, France, Portugal, Switzerland, and multiple sites in the United States. He's also been found in the Oligocene of Canada in Saskatchewan, and twenty-five localities in the US, specifically in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming.

We know a bit about him. He roamed a much warmer, wetter Washington state some 15 million years ago. By then, the Cascades had arrived and we'd yet to see the volcanic eruptions that would entomb whole forests up near Vantage in the Takama Canyon of Washington state. He had two horns on his nose and was a distant relative of our modern rhinoceros. He was also a chunky fellow, weighing in at about one tonne (or 2,200 lbs). You can visit the site, but it is one of the most difficult to reach and comes with significant risk. Head to the north end of Blue Lake in Washington. Take a boat and search for openings in the cliff face. You'll know you're in the right place if you see a white "R" a couple hundred feed up inside the cliff. Inside the cave, look for a cache left by those who've explored here before you. Once you find the cache, look straight up. That hole above you is the outline of the rhino.

If you don't relish the thought of basalt caving, you can visit a cast of the rhino at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington. They have a great museum and are pretty sporting as they've built the cast hardy enough to let folk climb inside. The Burke Museum is having a bit of a facelift at the moment and is closed while they move their collections to the New Burke, a 113,000 sq.ft. building opening in the Fall of 2019.

EARTH: THE BLUE PLANET: BACTERIA

Exquisitely beautiful, yet small, silent and deadly, bacteria were some of the first true life forms. Our Earth formed 4,500 million years ago but bacteria didn't arise until 1,000 million years ago, well after the Big Bang.

Since that time, a great variety of life has evolved. Most of the plant and animal life that has arisen has subsequently gone extinct and our only ties to them are through the fossil record.

TYAUGHTON AMMONITES

PADDLING BEFORE THE FRONT

As a weather system approaches, the wind picks up, with the strongest force just ahead of the front. The wind brings waves, making our paddling unstable.

Like most mountainous areas, Bowron makes its own weather system and it appears you get everything in a 24-hour period. In fact, whatever weather you are enjoying seems to change 40 minutes later; good for rain, bad for sun. Wisps of cloud that seemed light and airy only hours early have become dark. Careful to hug the shore, we are ready for a quick escape from lightening as thundershowers break.

For this small band of kayakers, the weather forecast is helpful, but it just one portion of the equation. Local weather, and more importantly, wind, comes from a mixture of factors.

Local knowledge of the topography, the relative temperature of land and lake we paddle help predict how windy and soggy our afternoon will be.

Today, the cooler air is flowing off the water up the forested slopes, heating and rising as it does so, creating a 5-15 knot intermittent force that turns ripples into small white caps.

A few strong gusts of wind drive us off the lake, breaking for lunch to wait out the worst of it, and knowing that the winds that started mid-morning will subside by late afternoon and rise again after sunset. We snack on warm soup and flatbread, watching as our once crystal clear oasis turns to froth. Warm, dry and now with full bellies, we get back on the water. We’re eager to push through to our next destination knowing that by nightfall the katabatic winds will arrive, as warmer air from the hillsides flows down and out over the chilly lake.

Paddling in unison, we enjoy the crisp air, confident that well before then we’ll be snugged in our tents sipping hot cocoa.

PERFECT SUNSET