Posts Tagged ‘Reynolds Ridge’
A Fine Day at Fuller Lake
We came across this amazing display of scarlet paintbrush (Castilleja miniata) along the road and stopped for a while to watch the hummingbirds fighting over it.
We had to stop at our favorite butterfly-watching site along Road 3810 where the dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium) attracts numerous butterflies and other insects with its candy-like fragrance. Nectaring here a fritillary and an Edith’s copper.
On August 1, John Koenig and I headed back to the Calapooyas to visit Fuller Lake, just east of Reynolds Ridge. John had never been there before. It was my third trip, but it had been six years since my previous visit, and somehow I’d neglected to post a report on this blog of either of the earlier visits. There’s a short but somewhat rough road down to the trailhead, but surprisingly the trail was in great shape. It’s an old road that leads to the lake, less than a mile away. Sadly, the shelter that was still there on my last visit was nothing but a pile of boards. There was also evidence of an old dock along the lake that was in similar disarray.
The lake itself was as pretty as I remember it. A large talus slope bounds the south end of the lake. We headed down the west side toward the talus. Most of the flowers were finished blooming, but we did come across one exceptional stand of leopard lilies (Lilium pardalinum) in their full glory. It was clear there had been a lovely show of camas (Camassia sp.) a month or so earlier. We even found a couple of stray flowers left. We imagined it must look a lot like nearby Bradley Lake, but although it was already August, this was my earliest trip, so I’ve never seen its spring bloom. Read the rest of this entry »
Gorgeous Day at Grassy Ranch
From the summit above Grassy Ranch, there’s a grand view. Looking southeast, we could see still snowy Mt. Thielsen and Mt. Bailey.Nancy and I saw the burned area in the middle ground when we drove up Medicine Creek Road a couple of weeks earlier. Spreading dogbane was abundant and attracting lots of pollinators.
On Saturday, July 15, John Koenig and I spent a long, wonderful day up in the Calapooya Mountains. After the butterfly survey a few days before (see Second Year of Sierra Nevada Blue Surveys), I couldn’t wait to get back up there. We decided we were going to try to drive up Coal Creek Road 2133 without making very many stops—after all, we just drove by there a few days before. Our destination was Grassy Ranch and Reynolds Ridge, over on the south-facing slope of the Calapooyas. It was a long drive coming from Lane County to the north, and we wanted to have as much time as possible over on that side since we seldom get there. But alas, there were so many beautiful things to see, we just had to make one quick stop, then another, and another, and ….. We didn’t even cross over to the south side of the ridge until after noon. The first stop was for a beautiful sweep of Cardwell’s penstemon (Penstemon cardwellii). Then we had to get out at our favorite area where there is a long, wet roadside ditch filled with wildflowers. Here we discovered a single blooming plant of Sitka mistmaiden (Romanzoffia sitchensis), a species I’d never seen in the area. We surmised it must have come from a seed swept down the creek from a population hidden far up the steep, rocky slope. There were also lots of my favorite clover, King’s clover (Trifolium productum var. kingii or T. kingii, the name seems to go back and forth).
Cardwell’s penstemon seems to prefer gravel roadsides to more natural habitats.
A Day Full of Surprises
Looking across the steep north side of Pyramid Rock, you can see Bohemia Mountain and Fairview Peak in the distance.
The proofs for the Flora of Oregon arrived from the printer last week, so I had to take some time off of botanizing to help read through the manuscript one more time and then make a bunch of changes. I had hoped to join some researchers who were visiting the sites in the Calapooyas where there were disjunct populations of Columbia lewisia (Lewisia columbiana), normally found much farther north. Since I didn’t finish making corrections to the Flora until it was too late for their hikes, I decided to go back up to one of the sites, Pyramid Rock, where I had seen it in all its delicate beauty last year (see Peak Bloom at Pyramid Rock). On my past trips, I had made it an overnight trip coming up from Steamboat because of the 25 miles of gravel required to get there from the north. But I didn’t have time to camp out, so I decided to just tough it out in one day. Unfortunately, all my usual hiking buddies were already occupied, so on on Friday, June 12, I headed up Coal Creek Road 2133 by myself. Read the rest of this entry »