Hurricane Ridge Wildflowers

Looking South

I recently did a day drive up to Hurricane Ridge In Olympic National Park. The road runs up into the alpine area, which makes it nice if you are carrying a bunch of camera equipment. The top photo is looking south into the center of the park and the Elwha River valley. The end of June is a good time for wild flowers, since most of the snow has left. I was able to find a trail where I was by myself and not packed in with all the other folks (they were mostly hiking trails near the main parking lot or Hurricane Hill).

The second image is Olympic Onion, which is described as being rare. I’ve seen it a few times and it smells strongly of onion. Since I’ve never seen it in huge masses, I’ve never harvested any for enhancing the flavor of my backpacking food. (although it sure would help)

Third image is larkspur … which competes with lupine in the blue/purple assemblage.

Olympic Onion
Larkspur

Autumn Trails

Autumn Trails 1

I know … it’s the wrong time of year for autumn shots. Oh well. I was going through some older shots and saw these two trails. They were both in Montana, near Whitefish. It was middle of September, but you can see a slight dusting of snow just left of center, along the ridge line. We got into snow before we got to the top … and we were cold and tired. Fortunately, we found a ski area at the top and rode the chair lift down to where our car was parked.

Autumn Trails 2

Wildflowers

Elephant’s Head

These were taken on a hike in the Olympic National Forest … and not recently. This is the high country near Lake Lucerne in the Upper Duckabush and along the O’Neil Pass Trail. This area is usually covered in snow until mid-July or so. I would really like to get back to this location, but it’s at least a long 2 day backpack … which means the pack starts weighing enough that I have second thoughts.

Partridge Foot

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