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North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve 4/7
North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve 4/8
After Kite Hill, the next relatively calm sunny day was Wednesday, 5 days later just after a light storm might freshen conditions. I had been monitoring conditions for a couple weeks on the global satellite copernicus.us browser and others had opened a calphoto dot com thread for the North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve, (NTMER). Oddly, on the satellite, only goldfields on the South Mesa area appeared stronger than average indicating it had been under a locally larger storm cloud sometime during spring. After the commute at 10:15am Tuesday April 7, 2025, I began driving the 200 miles to Oroville, arriving efficiently in 3.5 hours about 1:45pm PDT. Although it was supposed to be cloudy and showery up that far north, by time I reached that region, storms had mostly moved east into the Sierra Nevada leaving mostly cloudy dry skies. I first stopped at the CHP office and received a 7-day camping permit for the Oroville Wildlife Area that is a few miles west of the city. Then visited the regional Walmart stocking up with perishable foods and drink.
Since I still had 5 hours of useful daylight, decided to take a looping road trip north on SR70 to Cherokee Road then south into Oroville. Was surprised with nice roadside flowers for a mile north of the SR149 junction though beyond that, roadside flowers were modest until reaching the NTMER near full parking area. Seeing vast yellow expanses, it appeared my timing was good. I continued south to the small unimproved but shady Schrimer Springs pullout where I decided I had plenty of time to explore the recently built modest trail up into the rarely visited South Mesa area. Note that should not be confused with South Table Mountain that is an adjacent fully isolated basalt plateau closer to Oroville. Despite a breeze, I also grabbed all my usual camera gear that turned out to be the right call. This new trail is only on this new revised and excellent Chico Hiking Association 2025 map.
North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve map
And note the Department of Fish and Wildlife website only includes a regional map. The website should be visited as visitors must possess a Lands Pass obtained beforehand, or DF&W Fishing license or Hunting License.
DF&W North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve
I had sketched out nearly the same potential route years before in this reserve I've now visited a few times in the past. I welcomed the new trail as the steep wooded brushy slope has considerable areas of poison oak. Well the 160 foot vertical climb was trivial with 6 short switchbacks at top. Hiking anywhere in the reserve is somewhat awkward due to the irregularly shaped loose basalt cobbles. Up on the plateau were numbers of scattered grazing cattle that kept a close eye on this human. I hiked a clockwise loop along the plateau cliff edges and quickly became confident working this remote zone would be productive. As the satellite showed, there were plenty of goldfields plus areas of other usual blooming species.
The plateau is easily the most impressive spring wildflower area in Northern California. And it had obviously just rained maybe 2/10 of an inch providing a lusher look I had hoped for. Within the vast 450 mile long Central Valley of California, due to north-northeast storm directions moving through the San Francisco Bay region Coastal Range gap, it is also the foothill region with heaviest average precipitation about 33 inches annually.
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At 5pm in diffuse cloud light, I found a good 30mm lens subject per image above along the small upper Coon Hollow ephemeral stream in its somewhat breeze sheltering shallow ravine. There were interesting clumps of very saturated green moss. Flowers included seep monkeyflower, mimulus guttatus, birds-eye gilia, gilia tricolor, dwarf stonecrop, parvisedum pumilum, sky lupine, lupinus nanus, California goldfields, lasthenia californica, white-tipped clover, trifolium variegatum, and blue dicks, dipterostemon capitatus. These creek bed cobbles show why walking is awkward in the reserve. On any of these images, select the enlarged vertical slice view links to see how sharp these images actually are.
Returning to my vehicle, I drove through the town then out to the wildlife refuge where I first explored some gravel roads on the south side of the Feather River where there were very few wildflowers other than dense numbers of blooming pink filaree, a most common alien weed due to cattle grazing. After 6pm drove to the designated camp area where a few vehicles of fisherman were still parked nearby that later left during dusk as its boat ramp is a popular entry point. That is near the Thermolito Afterbay outlet that pours into the large river. Camp spots are on cement foundations with an adjacent nicely clean rest room. My night alone, was nicely quiet and peaceful.
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At dawn Wednesday April 8, 2025, excited about the coming adventure, I reorganized gear in the Forester, then drove to NTMER. By an early 8am PDT I was up on the plateau. Given my surveillance Tuesday developing an efficient plan, I walked directly west for this first subject at 8:30am PDT. There used my Sigma 30mm F1.4 prime lens at a low tripod position to work this northward view with a near sky lupine foreground within an expanse of dwarf stonecrop, California goldfields, and purple hued white-tipped clover that delineates a seep path. In the foreground, are a few filaree and valley tassel flowers. The lupine colonize slight mounds with soil above the lava bedrock in the landscape that are also where the cattle graze on short grasses and filaree. And note, cattle don't eat lupines. And yes, that is snow on distant Sierra Nevada peaks with trees of Beatson Hollow poking up 4/10 mile away.
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I moved down into a slight ravine, changed to my Sigma 56mm F1.4 prime lens, then pointed southwest to put the distant at 27 miles Sutter Buttes in blue haze Rayleigh scattering light to just peak a bit over the mesa. The Sutter Buttes is an up to 2.2k tall remnant 1.4 million year old, eroded, dormant Pleistocene volcano rising up starkly from near sea level in middle of the Sacramento Valley. In addition to the above flowers, were butter-and-eggs aka johnny-tuck, triphysaria eriantha, and tidy tips, layia platyglossa. Notice how most of the birds-eye gilia are still closed up at this 8:40am time. Beyond the Sutter Buttes at frame right one can barely make out through the haze at 95 miles, the Coast Range. Though a similar height to the buttes in Solano County, it appears lower due to the Earth's curvature.
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It was too early with a low sun altitude to optimally work subjects in this area so next moved north to the south rim of Beatson Hollow that had many more areas of lupine with valley oak, quercus lobata, canyon live oak, quercus agrifolia, blue oak, quercus douglasii, and gray pine, pinus sabineana, filling that ravine for Campbell Creek. This 9:06am view was a 56mm lens 3 column single row focus stack stitch blend requiring 64 individual shots.
The significant rains 3 weeks before caused a delayed rise in both goldfields and filaree with the latter responsible due to red beaks for the green red mix. In fact, much of the green coloration on the south Mesa were these still stunted yet to bloom filaree. A week later, the satellite showed a noticeably unaesthetic loss of green that was mainly due to developing filaree. I do believe, there are twice as many cattle allowed to graze on the reserve as necessary to keep the alien grasses in check. Without the filaree, there would be much denser native species. In soft soil areas given heavy weights, their hooves leave deep depressions.
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I walked back south on the mesa, then at 9:53am worked this westward 30mm lens view showing the shallow broad upper Coon Hollow ravine with California goldfields, butter-and eggs, birds-eye gilia, dwarf stonecrop, tidy tips, blue dicks, sky lupine, valley tassels, castilleja attenuata, and filaree. All day, I did not see any purple owl's clover even later when I looked down into Beatson Hollow where they are often abundant. Instead, their usual mid spring, white relative, valley tassels, were rising. I've seen the same phenomenon in Antelope Valley some springs when odd winter conditions never allowed that species to germinate. In the 80 miles distant background Coast Range across the Sacramento Valley, is snowy Hull Mountain at 6.4k. The mid March storms were especially cold leaving considerable snow at lower mountain elevations so may be a key factor in why the purple owl's clover did not germinate.
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It was now 10:12am and with a higher altitude sun, off sun axis flower color saturations increased significantly that is especially evident comparing the above with my similar shot at 8:30am. That is another factor why I tend to prefer such subjects at mid to late morning, not too early. Notice the water pooling frame mid right due in part to the previous day's minor rain. I really needed my waterproof Zamberlain hiking boots walking about this day. There are a few yellow carpet, blennosperma nanum at frame lower left.
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Down in upper Coon Hollow ravine, worked this subject that views westward with the Sacramento Valley in distant blue haze. At 10:27am the gilia have opened up. Note how flowers on the less sun exposed south side of the ravine with more runoff are denser while moss areas frame right on the sunny north side are more brownish dried out.
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A few minutes later at 10:24am during some nice calm, worked this small stream pool reflection of seep monkeyflower. I was tempted to return a week later after this trip, but knew despite still many flowers, I would see significantly less green as optimal aesthetic periods in our landscapes are often just a brief few days.
Notice how much more saturated blue the reflecting small stream pool is versus the sky. That should always be the result in image post processing due to light and water physics even when using a neutral density filter to darken skies.
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Over the next couple mid day hours with a higher sun altitude, these areas would be a bit too brightly harsh so I would instead return later in the afternoon. I walked a mile northeast for a look from the ravine rim into familiar Beatson Hollow areas that confirmed purple owl's clover and poppies were scarce. Then walked east along the rim where under shady oaks, ate lunch, and rested. Near 1pm right at mid day, light for the above sun off axis 30mm subject north-northwest with lupine was reasonable as green subjects tend to render better mid day. Note a few fryinpan poppies, eschscholzia lobbii, in the foreground. In the distance beside the valley oak, are blue oaks with a canyon live oak frame right. Anyone climbing up from Beatson Hollow has to be careful as those shady areas have considerable poison oak.
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A few minutes later, another similar sun off axis 30mm subject above but south-southeast.
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At 1:34pm another nearby 30mm subject a bit higher showing an abrupt change of yellow goldfields versus blue lupines. What is difficult to visually perceive in the 2-dimensional image is there is actually a slight terrain drop between those two colors.
This was a two column horizontal stitch blend. My tripod, Nodal Ninja MK3 II multi column row head detent functions only supports vertical camera orientations. But sometimes I will camera orient horizontally for narrower, more panoramic frames like this that just requires a bit more careful work between shots using the camera EVF one-third grid line display to register overlap points between frame sets. I generally, always have my display mode with one-third grid lines.
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There was a bench just above the last subject with an excellent mix of species. I waited about a half hour for the harsh mid day sun to lower. Working the above an hour later would have been better but I was a bit impatient and being somewhat backlit, it did make the green areas glow more. I believe the small white flowers are variable linanthus, leptosiphon parviflorus. Am uncertain about the species ID of the larger yellow sunflowers next to those birdseye gilia frame right but may be alien weed lesser hawksbit.
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Above is nearby similar subject a bit more down in the ravine. Note the reddish purple areas on some sky lupine petals. Those petals indicate to bees, already pollinated flowers.
At page top what I think vied for the strongest image this day shot north with my 30mm lens at an optimal 2:39pm. The foreground has many small variable linanthus. The abrupt reddish brown to green moss level drop put the flowers above into a denser combined edgewise orientation. That also allows putting sky lupine up against contrasting goldfield backgrounds while blue dicks frame left contrasts against the forest green. The mid distant woodland and distant pine forest with nice clouds adds much.
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I worked my last subject in this area at 2:45pm with my 30mm of an interesting patch of lupines within green mostly filaree surrounded by dense yellow goldfields. Well all fine except for that flat dried cow pie frame lower mid right. It was time for me to ramble back to upper Coon Hollow where I was intent of shooting a section of dwarf stonecrop atop moss.
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I had decided not to spend a second night and day in the area as I'd already worked the better South Mesa areas while concluding areas north of Beatson Hollow were sub-par this year. By 3:25pm had reached that area and after some considerable moving about figured out the above exact frame. With the sun above right providing nice shading to the basalt cobbles, worked this 3 column stitch blend requiring 57 shots with my 56mm lens also possibly the strongest image of the day. The mossy stonecrop really glowed. I backed off just enough distance to add some of the lush green close-up foreground plants while still having enough height for a bit of sky. The dense band of goldfields adds a nice punch. Considerable water was seeping down through the impervious cobbles providing a wildflower waterfall effect.
By 3:55pm I was back at my car with just enough daylight hours left to fully drive home before darkness set in. With post processing concluded, I am quite satisfied with results of this trip as most of the subjects are rather different than those I worked previous years.
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