Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘BVD trail’

A variable checkerspot straddling the individual small flowers of spreading dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium) to sip the sweet nectar. Milkweed species were recently moved into the dogbane family, Apocynaceae. They both share the trait of milky sap in their stems and are both beloved by butterflies as well as other insects.

For the second day of our camping trip, Nancy and I went up to Twin Lakes and what I call the BVD Meadow, both accessed from the same parking spot at the end of Twin Lakes Road 4770. I’d never seen (or felt) the road in such poor condition with many miles of washboard and areas starting to wash out a bit. My van survived without flatting another tire, but on returning to the campground, I discovered I’d lost a hubcap. The flowers were good, though farther along than I expected at the meadow, and we went for a nice swim at Twin Lakes, but both places were buggier than I ever remember. So far, it has been a particularly bad year for mosquitoes in the Western Cascades. Read the rest of this entry »

On the second day (June 3) of my brief overnight trip to the North Umpqua area, I headed up to the Twin Lakes trailhead, but my destination for this trip was the former BVD trail, accessed from the same area. While I did spend a couple of hours over at Twin Lakes at the end of the day, I was really more interested in looking at rock plants, especially after my fabulous trip to Pyramid Rock the day before (see Peak Bloom at Pyramid Rock). I was not disappointed. There were a great many beautiful plants in bloom. And because I had been camping just a few miles from the bottom of the road, I was already out walking at 8:30am and had lots more time than usual to poke around. My goal was to explore beyond the main meadow I’d been to several times before. Looking at the Google Earth image, it is clear that there are a lot of openings, both large and small, along this steep, south-facing slope.

Perhaps the most outstanding display of the day was from the numerous silver lupines (Lupinus albifrons), which were all over the meadow and rocky areas. I do love purple!

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The Western Cascades is one of the best tree-growing places in the world, and we have some beautiful old growth forest still remaining in spite of the extensive logging. But the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, so, naturally, I’m always looking for non-forested spots—meadows, outcrops, wetlands, and so on. While I use Google Earth to look for naturally open areas now, in the “old days”, I used to look for white spots on the USGS map. Sometimes I got lucky. On a trip to Twin Lakes in August of 2004, I got really lucky when I discovered the old BVD trail.

The large open meadow along the BVD trail has a great view to the east of Mt. Thielsen and Mt. Bailey.

The Twin Lakes trail is one of the most beautiful in the North Umpqua district. There are two beautiful lakes, huge old-growth trees in the forest, and both wet and dry meadows. The second time I went to Twin Lakes, I ended up camping by the trailhead. I woke up really early and decided to see what a nearby large white area on the map represented. Instead of heading west from the parking lot onto the Twin Lakes trail, I headed east. There is a very short stretch of road that ends at a man-made pool of water, presumably there for fire fighting. A sign read “BVD Trail No. 1511, caution this trail is not maintained and may be difficult to follow.” They were right about the faint trail being hard to follow, but by going straight along the ridge for less than a third of a mile, I did end up quite quickly and easily in a huge south-facing sloping meadow with wonderful rock outcrops down slope. As it was late August, everything was dried up, but I could see the remnants of balsamroot, buckwheats, and other great plants. The following year, I went back to see it in bloom and was thrilled to find lots of wonderful flowers, some of which were quite uncommon. Read the rest of this entry »