Badlands Residency Day 35

April 25, 2012

Today was park cleanup day, and a bunch of park employees met at 8am and dispersed across the park to spend about 6 hours cleaning. I went with the paleo group, and we covered Conata Road, Conata picnic area, and the loop road from Conata to the Pinnacles entrance. If you know the park you know that this is a very large area. There were six of us and two trucks, and we walked the sides of the road in pairs. The trucks were shuttled so that you'd walk a ways, reach a truck, drive it past the other pairs, park, then keep cleaning until you met up with the next truck that was driven ahead. Worked great. Probably walked a good four miles or more, cleaning. The most interesting part was at the end, by the Pinnacles entrance. Yesterday there was a prescribed burn up there, from sage creek road to the pinnacles entrance. Ryan had helped with that, so we got the stories last night. Was interesting to see the freshly charred prairie and walk along the soot. We found a bunch of old fencing pieces, metal stakes, and thick wires in the burned area, and worked to clean those up. In the process we discovered a few rattle snakes. Two were dead, charred in the burn. Photos below. One had bit itself, the other looked to be trying to find something to bite. With our group was the head of resources management, and he told us there's a rattlesnake den nearby, which the paleos found. There was at least one still alive in there, we could hear him rattling. After the cleanup, everyone met in the visitor's center for a nacho snack. I then headed to my apartment to finish putting labels on all the kids' paintings, and brought those over to the VC. Then spent a couple hours painting, had dinner, and noticed a spectacular sunset. Ran out to take photos and found Ed along the way, who hiked with me. On the way back to the quad, I went to take a step and shrieked. I almost stepped on a rattle snake while wearing sandals. He was pretty small, and not rattling, but looked very angry. Ed said he's a juvenile, which are the most dangerous since they don't rattle, and they don't control their venom: they'll pump everything they have into you. Older adults learn to control it since they need to conserve it to use on their prey. After that a bunch of us headed to the Wagon Wheel to play cards.  Wednesday night is the night that park employees meet up.

By the Pinnacles entrance sign, burn in the background.

Charred rattler, head at the top where it is twisted around,
having bitten itself.

Another charred rattler.

Sunset on Angel Butte, behind the quad.

Sunset behind the quad.

The juvenile rattler I nearly stepped on.  Ed says that when
they stick out their tongue and hold it there, like this guy
is doing, it means they're really angry.  Super!

The quad.

Photos to come, still working o going through them all.