Doug's Mountain Journal
A Chronicle of Natural History on San Bruno Mountain
Doug Allshouse has been writing his seasonal Mountain Journal for many years. It appears in the quarterly newsletters of the Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS). We are very pleased to share his reflections on the natural history of the Mountain. Together with David Nelson, he is writing San Bruno Mountain: A Guide to the Flora and Fauna. The book will be published by Heyday Books in 2022.
This has been a most unusual sunny and mild July so far. . . . The one truth I have learned in the 42 years of living high up on the Guadalupe Hills is that the nicer it is in July or August the nastier it will be in September. You will have to wait until the autumn edition to see if my hunch comes true.
That was the last paragraph of my summer journal and the verdict is??? True!! July really was an anomaly, very warm and sunny for the first 19 days. I can only remember three July Fourth’s in 42 years that were sunny and clear, and what a fireworks show we got from the Excelsior and Outer Mission backyards! I suspected it since shelter-in-place seemed to rev up the fireworks activity in May and June. I guess the relief checks that were sent out were spent filling trunks with illegal fireworks. Much frustration and cabin fever was sent skyward with flashes and booms expressing some mild relief.
August didn’t disappoint with 24 days of precipitation, 22 from fog and 2 from a couple of waning tropical storms that brushed the Bay Area. The most important one was August 16th with a lightning show reminiscent of a storm that passed through about 35 years ago. There was lightning in every imaginable form and the dark skies and lightning continued into Monday the 17th. Little did we know that the event would haunt us for close to six weeks with 11,000 lightning strikes across California starting many wildfires, and a few statewide would merge into complexes that eventually burned real estate about the size of Connecticut.
September was especially out of character with 13 days of foggy precipitation. Then on September 9th I awoke to copper-colored skies mixed in with fog, and as the day approached 11 AM the skies actually darkened and the street lights were still lit. I had to drive to Sunnyvale and as I drove further south on 101 the skies lightened to a vibrant apricot, with brooding, dark rusty skies in my rearview mirror. It was, by far, the most macabre day of my life, but in reality it was dwarfed compared to what many people were experiencing up north and around the Diablo Range and the Santa Cruz Mountains. The fires are subsiding (for now) and October has been warm to mild with eight foggy days so far. This September and October had the most days of fog in the seven years I’ve been keeping records.
Autumn journals are a bit more difficult to write because the season is generally quiet and laid back. The hot windy days and excessive smoke have forced the closing of the park for weeks on end. The perennial plants are hunkered down until the seasonal rains awaken them, but it’s an exciting time for birding with fall migrants flowing through and the arrival of our winter birds. My backyard hill is buzzing with White- and Golden-crowned Sparrows, the song of Fox Sparrows will give way to a raspy bark, and who can forget the pairs of Great-horned Owls hooting love songs in the early morning hours?
The only excitement was the discovery of human bones on September 25th in a meadow adjacent to the February 28th fire north of the Youth Camp. The County cleared a couple of acres either as a fire precaution or just to open up space. The burn area is undergoing some restoration by first crushing the gorse remains with bulldozers. The clearing of an adjacent meadow obviously stirred up some bones that someone saw and the Sheriff’s Department came in and did a sweep. I was in my garage when I heard a helicopter over my house and opened the garage door to see what was happening. It was a news helicopter and a couple of stations carried footage of the search. The only comment was that the bones had been there for quite some time.
San Francisco campion (Silene verecunda subsp. verecunda)
It’s time to turn our attention to something a bit more uplifting. A San Mateo County Measure A grant funded a rare plant survey by Creekside Science (Dr. Stu Weiss et al) to find and map our Rare, Threatened, and Endangered plants in 2015. A few plants were not found despite rigorous searches; however, the survey did not actually last a full year. San Francisco campion (Silene verecunda subsp. verecunda) was one of those plants. On Sunday, April 10, 2016, a dear friend, Mark Sustarich, found a few plants near the summit parking lot. This spot had been shown to him years before by David Schooley. Mark called me on Monday and I met him at the summit and we located a few more. On the following Saturday Mark, David Nelson and I scoured the rocky outcrops and found several dozen more plants. In late 2016 I discovered a trail just below the summit and the southernmost communication tower that had some promising rocky outcrops. We visited them the following year and found more plants. We ascended the steep ridge above the outcrops and found even more at the top of the ridge.
Another Silene photo, which shows the long pedicels.
Since our initial discovery in 2016 we have volunteered our time to do five Silene surveys with reports to the County Parks Natural Resources Manager. We are working on a project to seed and plant a few areas with more Silene.
On October 13, I received an email from David Nelson with a photo from Toni Corelli, a noted San Mateo County botanist, of a population of Silene verecunda on a rock wall north of the lower Devil’s Slide Park parking lot. Until now the only known populations were in the Presidio dunes, Mt. Davidson, San Bruno Mountain and Swanton. The Devil’s Slide population seems to emulate the San Bruno Mountain population as far as its choice of habitat: a steep rocky wall preferably on the lee side from the wind. We are looking forward to submitting a Site Activity Review to the County next year so we can photograph the population. Until the tunnels were built, vehicles used to zip right by those plants on their way to Montara, and I can’t imagine anyone crazy enough to attempt to access that road cut to study those plants. The Slide was a white-knuckle journey on a twisting roller coaster two-lane piece of undulating hell. Now it’s a serene road-trail where you can hear the sea birds and see amazing plant life up close and actually enjoy the views and the surroundings.
As we continue to adjust to life with Covid, just getting out in nature seems to soothe our anxieties. It’s amazing how many people have discovered the Mountain. The Crocker Avenue gate has never been more popular. Pre-Covid there would be an average of 5-15 cars parked outside. Now on particularly sunny and warm days it averages 25-40 cars, sometimes more. I’m sure that most visitors walk the Saddle, but the really good stuff is on the main ridge across the Parkway. It’s asleep right now, but in a couple of months Nature’s alarm clock will awaken our winter and spring beauties. Just you wait and see!
See you on the Mountain…
Doug