I played hooky from work one day in July 2003 and climbed up South Ingals peak. It has been one of my favorite areas in the Central Cascades … up the North Fork of the Teanaway River. That is Mt Rainier in the distance. I really liked the silver wood snag. This spot hasn’t seen any forest fires (yet), but the access road was the east perimeter of a large fire this summer. Below are some anemones growing in the rocks near where I took the upper photo.
The mountain across the valley (which is the Duckabush) is Mt Steel. The small stream runs down into LaCrosse Basin … this is all in Olympic National Park. It’s a very remote area … 20 miles or so away from any trailhead … which helps cut down on the number of boots smashing the flowers down. We were very careful to step on rocky areas as we made our way across the meadow.
Menzies Larkspur is a fairly common alpine wildflower in the Olympics. This one lives up on the shoulder of Green Mountain.
This Columbine is along the Dosewallips trail in the Olympic National Forest. You can see another patch just a little bit up the trail. (easier to see that one if you click on this image to increase the size)
Nothing says “Spring is Here” to me like seeing the trillium come up. These were growing along the Larry Scott Trail here in Port Townsend. (These are wild ones.) … and the dictionary says the plural is “Trilliums”. Which just sounds odd to me, but not as odd as Trillii.
