Overcast with temperatures in the 40s. Light to moderate winds.
I have been working on my Sitka Trails website again. I have many tracks of walks around the trails, and am considering how much effort to put into getting nice tracks.
The display I will be using will show an altitude graph, so that’s one thing I’m hoping to have look reasonably smooth and be accurate. The GPS does record an elevation based on the GPS satellites, but it can have a tendency to jump around a bit. There are probably ways to smooth that out to get a better visualization that fairly represents the elevation changes on trails, but I haven’t explored those yet.
I have tried pulling in data from digital elevation models (DEM). That will probably work fine for some trails, but for others not so much. I think the problem is poor resolution of the models across the steep terrain we have here coupled with imprecision of the GPS track means a small error on the coordinates can mean a big jump in elevation retrieved from the DEM. I was seeing this along the shore side of Mosquito Cove loop, where I know the elevation is no more than 15-20 feet, but the track was showing over 100 feet on sharp peaks.
My phone has a pressure sensor, and I have an altimeter app that uses the pressure sensor to measure altitude. I wanted to see if it would give better results than the GPS elevation and DEM attempts I’ve tried so far. So today’s outing was to Starrigavan.
As I arrived, I saw whales and sea lions not too far off the shoreline where Mosquito Cove trail goes. There have been whales in this broader triangle between Harbor Point, Starrigavan, and Olga Strait for at least two or three weeks, but I hadn’t previously noticed activity so close to shore.
I didn’t want to walk Mosquito Cove loop (I’ve heard a bunch of trees went down in the wind, and I doubt they’ve been cleared yet), so decided to do the Estuary Life Trail and the Forest and Muskeg Trail. The former has very little elevation change, and the latter a moderate grade up the hill. If it all worked as I hoped, the elevation plots should look reasonably smooth.
I wouldn’t find out until later that it didn’t work as I had hoped. The altimeter was theoretically recording an elevation every second. In practice it did that for stretches of time, but then stopped entirely for a few minutes, or stopping then apparently (if the data file is to be believed) recording observations every few milliseconds, piling up a bunch of data points across a very short period of time, stopping that, and then starting up the 1/second rate again a bit later.
Needless to say, that isn’t going to work for my purposes. I’ll experiment with this app, and maybe try a couple of others to see if I can get something to work. Maybe it was just something about the phone today, since one of the gaps also corresponded with a gap in the GPS track of several minutes. I don’t remember having had that happen before. I am not sure what was going on.
With hopes for a smooth track and elevation file, I didn’t stop to look as I normally would. I had to navigate around a tree across the Forest and Muskeg trail, but other than that tried to keep a fairly steady pace.
I was less concerned along the road and the return along the Estuary Life trail, so when I noticed a couple of White-winged Crossbills not far off the trail, I stopped to observe them.
I think due to my presence, they flew up to a branch. One of them was an adult male, the other a young bird or female. I think it may have been a young bird, as it almost seemed to be begging for food from the male. Perhaps I misinterpreted, and it was more of a courtship interaction, or something else entirely.
I didn’t see much at the Kelp Patch Pullout today.
In the channel I stopped to take pictures of Red-breasted Mergansers near the work float. One had a very narrow fish, I think one of the pipefish.
I spotted a dark alcid from the SEARHC overlook of the north end of the channel. At first I thought it was a Rhinoceros Auklet, but the looks weren’t great due to distance. Looking at barely adequate photos, I became convinced it was a Tufted Puffin. That may be what I saw yesterday at the Kelp Patch Pullout.
I was surprised by the turnout at frisbee late this afternoon. We had enough to play four on four, but unfortunately we didn’t have the lights. We were able to play for the better part of an hour before calling it quits around 5:30pm when it was getting hard to see.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
