First snow on Marys Peak closes the season at the top

Snow at the summit in late October is normal here and it never lasts long. What matters is not the snow but the line it draws: above 1,150 m the growing season is over, and below it there are a few more weeks of autumn.

The season on one transect

I have walked the same eleven points on the summit ridge since 19 August, and this is the last visit of the year. The record, in order:

• 19 August to 9 September — eleven notes on the ridge and in the valley, acorns measured at 18 to 24 mm and then re-measured at 22 to 26 mm.
• 28 August — 41 green darners southbound in one hour, in a north wind, along the ridge line.
• 27 September — four varied thrushes and a 34-bird mixed flock in fog at the saddle.
• 30 October — 4 cm of snow above 1,150 m, 2°C at the summit, and the beargrass seed heads flattened.

The eleven points are flagged and I will walk them again in March. Between now and then the record is the only thing happening here.

What the snow took and what it left

Snow at this depth does not kill anything; it bends things. The hemlock leaders on the tagged trees were bent but not broken, and the beargrass seed heads were flattened, which is how the year's structure disappears. The big huckleberry lost its leaves a fortnight ago and its stems are the only colour above the snow line now.

Three varied thrushes were calling below the snow line, which is the same movement I recorded at the saddle on 27 September, now two hundred metres lower. The darners are gone: the last southbound bird I saw on this ridge was on 12 September, and there will not be another until next August.

What the transect says about the year

Two things stand out from twenty-two visits. The first is that every date in this journal arrived within a week of where it arrived in 2024 — the acorn crop, the darner flight, the first rain, the first frost, the snow. The second is that the size of everything varied far more than the timing: the acorn crop was five times heavier than last year, the cone crop eight times, and the darner flight the largest I have counted.

The timing here is stable and the abundance is not. That is the single most useful thing this transect has told me, and it took a full autumn of walking to see it.

What to check next time

• Return on 20 March to record the first leaf-out on the same eleven points, which is the other end of the record.
• Check the tagged hemlocks for breakage after the first heavy snow, which in this range comes in December.
• Count the cones on the same three trees in March; a heavy crop this year should mean a light one next year, and that prediction is worth testing.