Lake Twentytwo hike
May. 5th, 2005 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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hattifattener and I hiked up to Lake Twentytwo, which is out on Mountain Loop twelve miles past Granite Falls. The day was cloudy, and the forecast was for likely drizzle, but it wasn't raining.
The trail soon gets into magnificent old-growth forest, huge redcedar and hemlock, vine maple leafing out underneath. I read that this spot's microclimate gets some extra rain, enough to suppress fires for a thousand years, so the Doug-firs have aged and died. The trail crosses Twentytwo Creek, and winds back and forth uphill within earshot of the creek. The sword ferns are unreeling their fiddleheads, wiry red-stemmed spiral wheels. Devil's club is pushing out tiny leaves from bristling old gray stems. ("In early spring the leaf shoots are edible" -- "One or two is sufficient to add a unique tang to common meals.")
Lots of red huckleberry, and also lots of something. It looked like red huckleberry, but its leaves were larger, overlapping, and angled differently. Maybe it was red huckleberry. It had reasonable-looking flowers.
Trees grow branches from their roots into epiphytic mosses; why not filter-feed on insects for their nitrogen?
The trail comes out into an open area of chartreuse young vine maple, salmonberry, bleedingheart, and still more devil's club. The path runs across, touches the edge of a tree zone -- immensely broad redcedars -- and back, zigzagging up the open area, into a stand of mature vine maples, most J-shaped. We are high enough for a view of the countryside, riverbends, hills with tips clipped by the layer of cloud.
Pink-tipped trillium. A white-flowered plant with variable number of petals: 11, 7... ooh, prime numbers... 9, 6... oh well, so much for the prime-number flower, beloved of the Greeks.
Back into the trees. A touch of cloud to the ground, here, but it cleared. Lichen forms zones on rocks -- they should be filmed with a time-lapse camera. Rocks with lines. Often crisscrossing lines. How does that work? Maybe it's not innate in the structure of the rock -- just got sheared this way, re-fused, and then sheared that way? Hrm.
Soon we came to the lake. The cloud layer presses a lid down to meet the hills to the right and left, and the cliff wall on the far side, so we're at the one entrance to a closed space. (Looking back from the far side.) The cliff wall is strung with thin waterfalls, falling onto patches of snow, whose rushing noise is always a background sound. On the boardwalk to the left children are yelling. Sound carries well.
We ate lunch, sitting on dry lengths of squared timber sitting in the mud. Cheese sealed in plastic along with a banana tastes like a banana. Pricks of rain in the lake, off and on.
We looked to see if there was a way to go around the lake without trampling off-trail, and found an orange-flagged something that looked questionable but turned out to be a reasonable trail, or proto-trail; they were obviously still constructing it. It went muddily through trees, and out into rocky terrain. The lake offered a tempting rock, so we went out onto it. Ripples on the water crawled so slowly towards me that time felt slow.hattifattener saw some litter and we started a trash collection.
We met a baaby backhoe on the trail.hattifattener petted its arm-elbow.
The trail was now in the rockfield below the cliffs. They had been blasting to form a the trail of fragments. We climbed a boulder or two, and went in one. The cloud layer cleared a bit higher, so we could see rocky knobs to the southeast.
The south end of the lake had a flat margin that looked like it would be a wetland in higher water. Curious ‘rivers’ of rocks and pebbles, raised from the surrounding ground. Water must have formed them somehow. Grasses (or rushes, or whatever the hell indistinguishable grassy thing) all washed flat lakewards. The trail-makers had built a very solid boardwalk over parts of it -- top boards two or three inches thick, and sides sawed angled to go around corners. They also left their tools and materials lying around, or possibly left them cached neatly but the winter got to them. The trail led back across rocks (tools here too), through firs, and just sort of stopped at the creek. We stepped across on rocks. The cloud had lifted a bit more, so at the far end the wall was visible as twice the height we could see of it before.
We headed down. The open area of loose talus was work for the feet and knees going down. A split redcedar, still leafing from the two ends. We crossed the creek in a bit of sunset light here and there. When we got down, I was more tired than I'd figured on being. We spent almost seven hours up there, what with going around the lake and fun with boulders.
Some plants I didn't know at the time, but I think I do now:
palmate coltsfoot?
running clubmoss?
Some plants I didn't know at the time, and don't know now:
The would-be prime-number flower.
Liliacious-looking thing up by the lake. It grown up more.
I see this not-really-parsley-like thing all the time and wish I knew what it was.
Lovely small strand-petaled flower (crummy picture). Growing in just one patch that I noticed.
That's not devil's club. What is it?
hattifattener and I hiked up to Lake Twentytwo, which is out on Mountain Loop twelve miles past Granite Falls. The day was cloudy, and the forecast was for likely drizzle, but it wasn't raining.The trail soon gets into magnificent old-growth forest, huge redcedar and hemlock, vine maple leafing out underneath. I read that this spot's microclimate gets some extra rain, enough to suppress fires for a thousand years, so the Doug-firs have aged and died. The trail crosses Twentytwo Creek, and winds back and forth uphill within earshot of the creek. The sword ferns are unreeling their fiddleheads, wiry red-stemmed spiral wheels. Devil's club is pushing out tiny leaves from bristling old gray stems. ("In early spring the leaf shoots are edible" -- "One or two is sufficient to add a unique tang to common meals.")
Lots of red huckleberry, and also lots of something. It looked like red huckleberry, but its leaves were larger, overlapping, and angled differently. Maybe it was red huckleberry. It had reasonable-looking flowers.
Trees grow branches from their roots into epiphytic mosses; why not filter-feed on insects for their nitrogen?
The trail comes out into an open area of chartreuse young vine maple, salmonberry, bleedingheart, and still more devil's club. The path runs across, touches the edge of a tree zone -- immensely broad redcedars -- and back, zigzagging up the open area, into a stand of mature vine maples, most J-shaped. We are high enough for a view of the countryside, riverbends, hills with tips clipped by the layer of cloud.
Pink-tipped trillium. A white-flowered plant with variable number of petals: 11, 7... ooh, prime numbers... 9, 6... oh well, so much for the prime-number flower, beloved of the Greeks.
Back into the trees. A touch of cloud to the ground, here, but it cleared. Lichen forms zones on rocks -- they should be filmed with a time-lapse camera. Rocks with lines. Often crisscrossing lines. How does that work? Maybe it's not innate in the structure of the rock -- just got sheared this way, re-fused, and then sheared that way? Hrm.
Soon we came to the lake. The cloud layer presses a lid down to meet the hills to the right and left, and the cliff wall on the far side, so we're at the one entrance to a closed space. (Looking back from the far side.) The cliff wall is strung with thin waterfalls, falling onto patches of snow, whose rushing noise is always a background sound. On the boardwalk to the left children are yelling. Sound carries well.
We ate lunch, sitting on dry lengths of squared timber sitting in the mud. Cheese sealed in plastic along with a banana tastes like a banana. Pricks of rain in the lake, off and on.
We looked to see if there was a way to go around the lake without trampling off-trail, and found an orange-flagged something that looked questionable but turned out to be a reasonable trail, or proto-trail; they were obviously still constructing it. It went muddily through trees, and out into rocky terrain. The lake offered a tempting rock, so we went out onto it. Ripples on the water crawled so slowly towards me that time felt slow.
hattifattener saw some litter and we started a trash collection.We met a baaby backhoe on the trail.
hattifattener petted its arm-elbow.The trail was now in the rockfield below the cliffs. They had been blasting to form a the trail of fragments. We climbed a boulder or two, and went in one. The cloud layer cleared a bit higher, so we could see rocky knobs to the southeast.
The south end of the lake had a flat margin that looked like it would be a wetland in higher water. Curious ‘rivers’ of rocks and pebbles, raised from the surrounding ground. Water must have formed them somehow. Grasses (or rushes, or whatever the hell indistinguishable grassy thing) all washed flat lakewards. The trail-makers had built a very solid boardwalk over parts of it -- top boards two or three inches thick, and sides sawed angled to go around corners. They also left their tools and materials lying around, or possibly left them cached neatly but the winter got to them. The trail led back across rocks (tools here too), through firs, and just sort of stopped at the creek. We stepped across on rocks. The cloud had lifted a bit more, so at the far end the wall was visible as twice the height we could see of it before.
We headed down. The open area of loose talus was work for the feet and knees going down. A split redcedar, still leafing from the two ends. We crossed the creek in a bit of sunset light here and there. When we got down, I was more tired than I'd figured on being. We spent almost seven hours up there, what with going around the lake and fun with boulders.
Some plants I didn't know at the time, but I think I do now:
palmate coltsfoot?
running clubmoss?
Some plants I didn't know at the time, and don't know now:
The would-be prime-number flower.
Liliacious-looking thing up by the lake. It grown up more.
I see this not-really-parsley-like thing all the time and wish I knew what it was.
Lovely small strand-petaled flower (crummy picture). Growing in just one patch that I noticed.
That's not devil's club. What is it?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-06 04:12 pm (UTC)Parsley thing looks really familiar to me. Think I might have one growing in my garden. Will look up and get back to you.
=)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-06 07:59 pm (UTC)Smilacina leaves match. I guess I've never seen a young shoot of one -- sure, they might start out all vertical like that.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-06 08:28 pm (UTC)