A Report from the High Country: It’s Dry, Too

For the last three years, I’ve been collaborating with Talbott Sheep Company to study livestock guardian dog behavior in open range. They graze several bands of sheep near Stampede and Boca Reservoirs north of Truckee; they’ve been gracious enough to let me put GPS collars on their dogs and place trail cameras on their sheep range. Last Thursday, a colleague and I got a jump on placing trail cameras on the allotment - we are hoping to be able to compare wildlife (especially predator) presence before, during, and after sheep grazing. This was the first year I’ve placed cameras well in advance of the arrival of the sheep - we were in the mountains about 5 weeks earlier than the last two years. And to my eye, the high country is damn dry.

I’ve had the good fortune of spending time on both sides of the Sierra crest from Plumas County to Inyo County for most of my 54 years. As a kid, we camped every year on Sonora Pass; as an adult, work and recreation have allowed me to explore the high country both north and south of my native mountains. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the upper elevations so dry in early June, at least since I’ve been an adult.

Hydrologists and water managers are telling us that this has been one of the most unusual snow-melts in memory. With stormy weather returning late to California last fall, the first precipitation in the Sierra was snow - snow that fell onto dry soil. The late winter and early spring snow surveys suggested that we had a lower-than-average snowpack, but that the runoff would bring reservoirs back to a reasonable level of storage once the melt started. But the runoff apparently never made it into the rivers. The dry soil was a sponge - most of the meltwater soaked in rather than running off.

Thursday was my second trip into the Donner Pass country in a month. On my first trip, Rattlesnake Creek, which flows into the South Yuba River, was running like I usually see it run in late June. Thursday, the Yuba looked like a late summer river, as did the Little Truckee River north of the town of Truckee itself. Kyburz Marsh, where Talbott’s sheep will be unloaded in five weeks, looked much like it did last year - in the second week of July. As we hiked through the meadows and into the uplands, I noticed wildflowers blooming that I typically don’t see until August. Some wildflowers were not going to bloom at all - some low-growing lupine that was blooming last July was dying this year without making flowers.

But what startled me most was the condition of the little creeks draining into Kyburz Marsh from the north and east. They were completely dry - and they looked like they hadn’t run at all this spring. When we left the meadow and hiked into the timber, the ground grew dusty - and sounded crispy. I worry that the fire season may be long and dangerous even above 6000 feet.

This year, I’ve come to realize the limitations of scale and observation from afar. At a national scale, when viewed from points east, California’s dry conditions apparently seem less severe than 2014 and 2015. But remote sensing and written reports don’t tell the entire story - have they ever?! I’ve realized that one cannot fully appreciate the on-the-ground conditions without being on the ground, year after year. And as someone who has been on the ground somewhere in the Sierra Nevada for each of my 54 years, I can say it’s as dry as I can remember.