From Greengate to the Overlook: Bobcat, Bears, Porcupine and Clementines

It was a clear and cool day this past Monday.   Not too warm.  Not too cold: just right for hiking in a foot of snow.  Our goal for this beautiful day was to reach the "Overlook," a spot between Kulish Ledges and October Snow, on the southwest slope of Osgood Hill. Always in search of alternate routes to our favorite places, we parked at Gwenyth Tolman's house and skirted the slope below Kulish Ledges and above Spoonwood Pond, to approach the Overlook from below.

Early on in our trek, we came upon tracks of another human on snowshoes, with a dog apparently dragging a stick.  We also crossed numerous deer trails, but hoped, as always to find something a little more interesting than deer.   For a while, we followed a stream to see if we might come upon mink tracks, since these water-loving muskelids tend to stick close to brooks and small streams to find crayfish and other small water-dwelling prey.   No such luck today, however.   We steered east away from the stream toward our intended destination.

Following the contour of the slope, we crossed tracks of fox, snowshoe hare and grouse.  And deer, more deer.  Often, because the tracks were old, it was hard to tell what animal had passed this way, but we could be certain that it wasn't a deer if the tracks went under obstacles that a deer couldn't possibly fit.  It is never enough to look at just a small sample of tracks to identify the animal.  One needs to follow, to observe the patterns and where the animal went, before coming to conclusions about what it was.   Of course, sometimes the signs are unmistakable -scat, hair, or scent posts which indicate one species over another.
Usually, though, one has to follow the trail a bit before these unmistakable signs appear.

Finally, after a long slog up a very steep slope, where we pulled ourselves up by saplings and on hands and knees, we came to a point which we believed was just below the overlook.  But we had to be sure, so Al took a piece of a clementine peel and attached it to a small branch which he thought we would be able to see from the overlook, if our guess was right.

Scrambling up directly under the overlook was out of the question--just way too steep, at least for me, so I took a path to the left, following the track of a porcupine at times, then bobcat, then grouse, until I worked my way up and above the overlook.  Al took a slightly steeper track and checked out a spot where he believed that the bobcat had sat under an overhanging boulder.  Eventually, we both reached the overlook which affords a spectacular view of Spoonwood, White Swamp, Holt Hill, Nubanusit, and Crotched Mountain, and, if we looked really carefully, a little clementine peel on a small branch in the valley below.  I actually needed my binoculars to see it, but it was there!

So we had reached the overlook from below.  Now what?  Well, if you were at the top of a steep slope, and the snow was soft and giving, what would you do?  Well, okay, maybe you wouldn't do what we did, which was to find a route to slide down the hill on our rear-ends.  I will admit that it was a little tricky and I didn't always follow Al's route, because he had stripped off all the soft snow and left me with a pretty slick slide, but it was fun and exhilarating and no one broke anything and it was a lot easier than going up. We took the time on the way down to peer into caves in the boulder field and note the porcupine and bobcat tracks, and the amazing way these animals maneuver these slopes with apparent ease, and observe the stripped bark of saplings, work of the intrepid porcupines.

Following the contour of the slope, we found ourselves in an area above Spoonwood Pond, where we had been before--last summer when we were trying to follow the stream to White Swamp, the wrong stream, as it didn't lead to White Swamp.  At the stream, we found more grouse tracks, and moose tracks.  We moved through an area of the forest, where there were beech trees, and where there are beeches, we always look for bear sign.  We weren't disappointed: bear nests, bear claw marks, some older, some new.  Our route seemed to take us through an area full of bear nests. I felt afterwards that we were following the bear's trail, from one beech tree to another, until we actually lost count of the number of bear nests that we found. The bear nests are branches twisted over one another, brown beech leaves still hanging off the branches.  The bears grab the branches to get at the beech nuts.  I can imagine them sitting up at the top of the trees, gorging  themselves in preparation for the long winter months.

The long winter months: our favorite time of year for following the tracks of so many forest creatures.  We finished our hike where we had started, and noted fresh human and dog tracks.  Gwenyth and Bronwen were taking a walk, with faithful Bronte, their chocolate lab.   We stopped on the way out to thank them for letting us park in their driveway.   Our exploration had been challenging, exhilarating, and rewarding.  What more could we want?

Hot Cocoa, of course, and more clementines, please.    

Well clawed bear beech, with an old "bear nest"

The Overlook with White Swamp in foreground and parts of Nubanusit further out.  

Al ponders the route down.  Somewhere over his shoulder is that little piece of clementine peel.

We slid down the slope on the left side of this photo. 

Al thought this boulder looked like an owl, but I thought it looked like a  moose  head in profile.  Al added the  snowballs for eyes.

Bear Nests from this past fall.  

The roots of this yellow birch were totally bare from the top of the  boulder to the ground, a distance of about  6 feet, but the tree looked pretty healthy.