Hurricane Ridge and Crescent Lake

Thursday, July 23, my wife and I left home about 4:30 am to catch the 7:15 ferry from Keystone on Whidbey Island to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.  The ferry ride is about 30 minutes and after a rather rough crossing we were in Port Townsend by 8:00 am and on the Hurricane Ridge Road in Olympic National Park, our destination, by 9:00 am.

Thereafter our travels slowed dramatically.  The fifteen mile trip up Hurricane Ridge took us 4 hours with numerous stops for pictures and one brief hike.  Most of the stops were for flower pictures, however, since the weather was cloudy early in the day though it cleared as the day progressed.

Sedum lanceolatum (taken by my wife)

Digitalis purpurea

We were on our usual lookout for native orchids and saw five of them on our way up the ridge, Piperia unalascensis, the Alaskan Piperia, Platanthera stricta, the Slender Bog Orchis, and two varieties of Platanthera dilatata, var. leuchostachys and var. dilata, the White Bog Orchis or Bog Candle, among them.  The Piperia was nearly finished blooming and I did not bother with pictures.

Platanthera dilatata var. dilatata

Very interesting were the areas where we found Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys growing side by side with the natural hybrid of that plant and Platanthera stricta.  This hybrid is named Platanthera x estesii and has the flower shape of dilatata and the green color, though paler, of stricta..

The Parents: Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys and Platanthera stricta

The Hybrid: Platanthera x estesii

The hybrid is often found alone with neither of the parents nearby. We were a bit confused, however, since our sources listed this as a hybrid of stricta and dilatata var. albiflora which we did not see anywhere along the road that day in or out of bloom, while it was flowering with and alongside var. leucostachys.

Some of the other floral highlights of our trip up the ridge were the Elephant's Head Lousewort, Pedicularis groenlandica (named for it's obvious resemblance to the head of that animal and blooming in very wet areas), the Nodding Onion, Allium cernuum, growing in very dry areas,and the Avalanche Lily, Erythronium montanum, one of our favorite wildflowers.

Pedicularis groenlandica

Allium cernuum

Erythronium montanum

Other flowers were the Olympic Delphinium, Delphinium glareosum, a pink form of the Common Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, the Cascades Penstemon, Penstemon serrulatus, and the Cascades Wallflower, Erysimum arenicola.

Delphinium glareosum

Achillea millefolium

Erysimum arenicola

Penstemon serrulatus

Often the flowers were growing together like a lovely garden and almost always with the Indian Paintbrush which were everywhere.  I have trouble identifying them,however, and do not know if they were all the same species or if we saw different species

My wife took pictures of this spider and I managed to get a pictures of two butterflies one which was identified by our friend, Marti as the Clodius Parnassian, after its picture was posted and the other which I've tentatively identified (with Marti's help) as the Silvery Blue.  I must get some kind of reference for butterflies in our area, since there are very few of them that I know or recognize.

Parnassius clodius

Glaucopsyche lygdamus (?)

We saw also the Common Butterwort, Pinguicula vulgaris, growing in abundance along the stream at the Klahane Ridge trailhead where we did our only hiking.  Several of the Platantheras were growing there as well, along with the Seep-spring Monkeyflower.

Pinguicula vulgaris

At the visitor's center and parking lot we refilled our water bottles, took a few pictures of a friendly deer and proceeded on down the road that continues west for a short distance.  We were looking at the end of the road for a dwarf form of Piperia unalascensis (forma olympica) that grows only in that location.

We had come looking for this plant a year ago, but had missed it in bloom.  Now we found it and spent some time taking pictures and talking to a member of the Washington Native Plant Society who had also found it (unexpectedly for him) on the ridge.

We also found on the ridge a dwarf form of the Columbia Lily (Small-flowered Tiger Lily, Lilium columbianum), that was only six inches tall - the plant grows to six feet at lower elevations.  These only ever had one flower.  We also found numerous plants of the Olympic Onion, Allium crenulatum.

Having seen what we wanted there, we went back to parking lot at the visitor's center and took the gravel road that drops off the end of the parking lot and runs southeast for about eight miles, the road to Obstruction Point.  This road is not visible from the parking lot and few visitors seem to know about it.

At the four mile point, often referred to as the Waterhole, we found a road grader blocking our way.  Talking to the driver we discovered that he had just finished opening the road the rest of the way.  He offered to move the grader, but warned us that there was a lot of snow further up and that the road was very wet from snow in places.

We went on anyway and were thankful we did.  We saw Avalanche and Glacier Lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) by the millions (and I am not exaggerating), along with many other early-blooming wildflowers, before we came to the end of the road which found not only very muddy in places, but also very rough.

Two flower that especially caught our attention were the Dwarf Lupine (Lupinus lepidus var. lobbii) and Alpine Phacelia (Phacelia sericea var. sericea).  These were growing in alpine flower garden that included more flowers than we had time or energy to look up.

The sign at the end of the road really caught our attention.  My wife wondered if anyone had been on the receiving end of the threat expressed!  Certainly wouldn't be very pleasant.  So, lest we be caught, we hurried back and then made our way down the Hurricane Ridge road.

In Port Angeles we went west and traveled another ways to Crescent Lake and to East Beach where we hoped to find two other orchids.  One of the two we had seen the year before though it was almost finished blooming and the other we had found completely finished.

Piperia elegans

The star of the day was Epipactis gigantea, the Stream Orchid or Chatterbox, which we found growing in one large clump right beside the lake, so close, in fact, that it was difficult to get pictures without getting wet feet.

It was also very windy and we discovered why this orchid is known as the Chatterbox.  It has a movable lip, not unlike a little mouth, that in the wind made photography even more difficult.  The plants at this location were about a foot tall and the flowers about an inch and a half across.

Behind a rock we found about six plants of Piperia elegans, the Elegant Piperia.  After photographing it and a beautiful shrub with white, rose-like flowers, we returned to the car for the drive to the ferry and then home, arriving home about 11:00 pm.

Backpacking in the Canadian Rockies (5)

Day Five - July 9, 2010

We were up very early, around 4:00 am, on this fifth and last day of our hike.  Packed up our camp, had a quick breakfast of granola and blueberries, and were on the trail with our packs before 5:30.  No one else was stirring in camp and the trail was deserted.

In all it took us about six and a half hours to hike out, including several fairly long stops for pictures, for refilling waterbottles, and for rest.  This was about half the time we had taken to hike in.  The sky was nearly cloudless again and it was hot, so the early start was a good idea.

Our last views of Berg Lake and of Mount Robson in the morning light were beautiful and it was nice to see the same scenery we had seen hiking in at a later time of the day and in a different light.  My wife took more pictures than I did, however.

We saw two new orchids on the way out.  The Alaskan Piperia, Piperia unalascensis, we had probably missed on the way in.  We found it along the trail just below the Emperor Falls detour.

The other orchid, Platanthera orbiculata, the Pad-leaved Orchis, we had seen on the way in, but none of the plants we saw were in bloom.  Now we found just one plant in full bloom in the woods near Kinney Lake and took our time getting pictures, since this was one we had not seen before.

The plant is very elegant with two large, shiny, round leaves at the base of plant and a fifteen inch flower spike with large, very intricate green and white flowers.  If not the showiest of native orchids, it most certainly is the showiest of the Platantheras.

The last four kilometers of the trail, from Kinney Lake to the trailhead were very busy with dayhikers and bikers, since it was a beautiful Friday and now near noon.  We must have seemed very much in a hurry to them and we hoped that no one could smell us as we went by - five days without a shower leaves a definite odor.

The Robson River, after a week of hot, sunny weather, was a raging torrent, and the woods through which we hiked appeared to be very dry, but we did not linger often even for photos on our way out.  The energizer bunny seemed to have more energy than I did, but even she took only a few pictures on this last leg of our hike.

Arriving at the car we divested ourselves of our packs for the last time and headed for Edmonton.  First, however, we had to get some civilized food and drink, and so we stopped at a Tim Horton's in Hinton, the first town outside the parks and later at a Chinese Restaurant for our evening meal, and so ended our excursion.

Beautiful mountain scenery, and abundance of flowers, time to be together and to relax, what more could one ask?  Will we do it again?  With family in Edmonton it is a real possibility, and the result is certainly worth the effort, but there are other trails and other things to see, and we are not as young as we once were. 

Stats:
- total distance hiked: 50 miles, 80 kilometers.
- daily average miles hiked: 10 miles, 16 kilometers.
- elevation gain (and loss): 6500 feet, 1980 meters.
- beginning elevation: 2800 feet, 853 meters.
- Berg Lake elevation: 5400 feet, 1646 meters.
- Snowbird Pass elevation: 7920 feet, 2414 meters.
- Mumm Basin elevation: 6800 feet, 2073 meters.
- number of orchid species seen: 15 + two additional varieties