Volunteers were diligently combing the mountain for wildlife this weekend, documenting a number of species. The trackers that were out explored two new areas for this season, on the South side of Mt. Hood.

​Saturday’s tracking team went out in on-and-off snowy weather, and as they began their snowshoeing, saw lots of squirrel and snowshoe hare tracks right away. When they headed off the trail, though, they quickly found a trail much larger than that. The snowed-in tracks made it hard to distinguish the details, but they suspected a coyote, a fox, or a bobcat, and started following the trail.

Many of our volunteers were happy to get up to Mt. Hood this past weekend, and saw a great range of tracks and sign. For this Winter Weekly, we’ll focus in on the tracking team that combed the area around the Frog Lake Sno-Park, and the creatures large and small that they found signs of.
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The area around Frog Lake is at about 4,000 ft. elevation, and lies between the White River and Salmon River drainages, directly south of Mt. Hood’s peak. The thick hemlock and fir forest makes a great home for wildlife. 

Thanks to all the volunteers who celebrated the start of 2017 by keeping track of wildlife on Mt. Hood! For our wild friends in the forest, January 1 is just another day, but another big shift has happened -- we’re on the summer side of the winter solstice, and the days are getting longer.

Back at the Cascadia Wild office, we’ve caught up on processing all our camera photos, and we had a number of interesting visitors to our Sandy Flats sites.