| Porcupine
Mountains, MI |
Lee
E. Frelich |
| May
10, 2006 08:34 PDT |
Bob:
I pasted in below some trees we measured from an e-mail Paul
sent me:
Between Konteka and Toledo Creeks:
White Cedar, 7.8' girth, 79' tall
White Cedar, 10.0' girth, 86' tall
Black Ash with bear scars, 11.3' girth, 75' tall
On upper Little Carp River Trail beneath Summit Peak:
Recently dead White Pine, 13.0' girth, 116' tall
Nearby Hemlock, 12.5' girth, 95' tall
Near Lily Pond Cabin:
White Pine, 14.3' girth, 95' tall, topped with new leader
White Pine, 10.9' girth, 119' tall
The 86 foot tall white cedar and 11.3 foot girth black ash are
notable
finds. Hopefully the 14.3' girth white pine at Lily Pond will
eventually
reach a height of 120-130. It lost part of its crown in a storm
a few
years ago, but has a vigorously growing new top.
There are some potential 13 or 14 x 120 -140 foot trees in the
park that
can be seen from overlooks and we spent a lot of time trying to
figure out
how to get to some of these trees, so much that there was not
any time left
to actually go there. The Porkies are not one of your little
remnants in
MA--it can be a 10 mile hike to a tree, and there are lots of
obstacles to
travel like swamps, lakes, and bluffs. Paul is going to try to
find some of
these trees on aerial photos and plan a route to get to them.
Lee
|
| RE:
Back to Lee |
Lee
E. Frelich |
| May
10, 2006 11:25 PDT |
Bob:
It is tough to hike across the Porkies--the swamps are the worst
part. You
can never hike a straight line through them and they take a lot
of time for
hiking a short distance. Due to metal deposits in the ground,
the compass
was unreliable--we were going west at one point when we thought
we were
going north. To top all this off, the UTM grids on the topo maps
were
apparently off by several hundred yards, so that even with
Paul's fancy new
GPS, we could never tell where we were, and would miss critical
junctions
that we had to be at to avoid topographic obstacles further into
the hike.
I am not sure that we will ever arrive on the ground at some of
the large
emergent white pines we saw from various overlooks, but it's
worth a few
more tries.
BTW, there is 50,000 acres of unlogged white pine dating from
the 1600s and
1700s in the BWCAW, and a similar acreage on adjacent Quetico
Provincial
Park, but those locations are even harder to get to than the
interior of
the Porkies. Based on latitude of 48-49 degrees, I would not
expect
heights greater than 110-115 feet, but girths will still reach
14 feet cbh
on some trees.
Lee
|
| Wild
spring weather |
Lee
E. Frelich |
| May
11, 2006 09:43 PDT |
Bob:
Good thing Paul and I decided to go to the Porkies last Friday
rather than
this Friday.
Heavy snow is falling in western Upper Michigan and
north-central Wisconsin
today and tonight, with up to 8 inches expected. Towns along
Lake Superior
are under a coastal flood watch, as northerly winds up to 55 mph
over the
next 12 hours are predicted to cause an average wave height of
18 feet.
The millions of Spring beauty (Claytonia caroliniana) that Paul
photographed last Sunday, as well as Yellow trout lilies, in
maple forests
at high elevations in the Porkies will be crushed by the snow,
although I
am sure plants that bloom that early are adapted to these types
of weather
setbacks. They will probably spring back up when the snow melts
and finish
their seed production. I am puzzled as to why the species of
Spring beauty
that grows in Upper Michigan ever got the name 'caroliniana' to
begin with,
since it won't even grow in southern WI, which is too warm for
it.
May is a funny month in Upper Michigan--you never know whether
it will be
winter or summer on any given day.
Lee |
|