It's Alive, but it looks like Moab Brown Chalk!

[catbirdseat]

Crazy Mark and I were hiking the trail back from Amazonia Wall at Exit 38. We were almost back to the Mt. Washington parking lot having just turned off the road. I saw an unusual color on the ground. It was a purplish brown.

 

I thought, "what's this? It looks like someone spilled chalk on the ground". It looked like colored chalk. Mark said, "it looks just like Moab Brown Chalk, touch it!"

 

So I touched it with my finger and it didn't feel at all like chalk. It felt kind of rubbery and the depression that my finger made quickly filled itself in.

 

Mark stuck his finger in and scooped up some of the substance and it appeared to be almost microscopic insects. The size was right at the limit of what the naked eye could see- less than a millimeter.

 

There must have been untold millions of these creatures all together in a patch about 10 cm square and perhaps a centimeter deep. Has anyone seen or heard of such a swarming behavior of spider mite like creatures?

 

Here is a rather poor picture that I was able to capture using my cell phone.

 

[max]

I've seen this stuff in the Chuckanuts pooled up on the surface of runoff water. It's usually been during or immediately after a heavy rain.

 

Initially, I thought it was some kind of mold/fungus substance.

 

Hiking with sciencey freind of mine, she told me she'd used her plant monocular to look at it and had decided it a mass of spiders. We postualted that they were recently hatched from a egg sack/ deposit that got flushed off of/out of the forest floor.

 

Crazy stuff, huh?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Crazy Mark and I were hiking the trail back from Amazonia Wall at Exit 38. We were almost back to the Mt. Washington parking lot having just turned off the road. I saw an unusual color on the ground. It was a purplish brown.

 

I thought, "what's this? It looks like someone spilled chalk on the ground". It looked like colored chalk. Mark said, "it looks just like Moab Brown Chalk, touch it!"

 

So I touched it with my finger and it didn't feel at all like chalk. It felt kind of rubbery and the depression that my finger made quickly filled itself in.

 

Mark stuck his finger in and scooped up some of the substance and it appeared to be almost microscopic insects. The size was right at the limit of what the naked eye could see- less than a millimeter.

 

There must have been untold millions of these creatures all together in a patch about 10 cm square and perhaps a centimeter deep. Has anyone seen or heard of such a swarming behavior of spider mite like creatures?

 

Here is a rather poor picture that I was able to capture using my cell phone.

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=46644[/img]

 

You should have tasted it too.

[kevino]

Slime mold.

[catbirdseat]

We thought of that. Slime molds are shiny and they don't move as fast.

[G-spotter]

The Blob.

 

Or some escaped nanotech.

 

Either way, if you touched it, you are probably infected.

 

There is no cure.

 

Please report to your nearest Neighbourhood Euthanasia Centre at once.

[bcollins]

Definately Moab chalk. Lately the weather's been hotter/drier in the Deception Crags area than the Utah desert, so the mudclimbers have been heading north. Scoop some of that up into your chalkbag and get crimpin.

[111]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090615/sc_livescience/microbewakesupafter120000years