On July 24th 2014 a stalwart crew from the Rocky Mountain Naturalists accompanied me to the Gilnockie Ecological Reserve in the southern East Kootenays.  Our weather was unusually cold following a tremendous wind storm the night before and we were faced with many challenges just driving to the reserve.  We had 4 stops on the way in to chainsaw fallen trees and also had to use a chain and lots of muscle power to pull a wildlife tree that had fallen in our path.  Sadly the old larch snag had a partially fledged Northern Flicker still alive sitting beside it's ruined home so we made a small nest and fed it some grubs and hope that mom will be able to take over.

Once we reached to reserve boundary we tromped through the rather wet but beautiful undergrowth down to the old growth larch trees for which the reserve was created.  The trees were duly observed and admired along with some lovely round leafed orchids and a great display of Pipsissewa (Prince's pine).

After a few false starts we managed to walk as close to the southern point of the reserve where we had lunch and slowly made our way back up through the middle area.  There was a large area of blowdown near the wetland area but it was sad to see so many more of the large trees have also fallen, some as recent as the night before.

Our group emerged from the reserve in one rather wet piece but very pleased with the hike.  We decided to drive home via Caven/Bloom creek to the east, which turned out to have even more blow down, so Forestry should be happy with our efforts.  It was a long day of over 200 km's traveled much of it on gravel roads, but the company was excellent and the trees were marvelous so it was an good trip all round.

I'm including some of my photos and those of other naturalists from the day's field trip.  It was a really fun day and I hope we can go again sometime soon.  Nothing can compare to seeing those giant larch in their fall colours.

Photos by Anni, Lyle and Greg