Kaleberg Archive for Keyword: triliums

06/11/09 - Pacific Dogwood and Tiarella Pacific dogwood and tiarella are blooming along the lower parts of the Lake Angeles Trail. Only a few triliums are left, but a new season has started.

Keywords: lake angeles, triliums, flowers

05/28/09 - The Trail To Lake Angeles The trail to Lake Angeles is open and nearly snow free save for a few patches right near the lake. There is still ice on the lake, but it is melting rapidly, and the view up there is spectacular. The frogs were out and chirping loudly. Click here to hear them. We've never made it up to the lake this early before. Who knew what we were missing?	There is still a fair bit of snow on the mountains.
The ice is melting rapidly.	There are buds on the trees, but the scene is still wintry.
Melting snow at the campground	Another view of the mountains
A panorama of the lake
The trail is in great shape up to the lake and lined with trees like the aisle of a cathedral.	The creek is rising as the snow melts.
We love the mosses.	Our obligatory trilium photo, while the triliums hold out

Keywords: lake angeles, triliums, winter, spring

05/08/09 - Lake Angeles Trail Update We were at the Lake Angeles Trail again, trying to get built up for the climbing season. There are definite signs of spring. The snow is gone, and the triliums are coming out for what promises to be a good season.

Keywords: lake angeles, spring, triliums

05/02/09 - The Lake Angeles Trail: Gateway to the High Country

The Lake Angeles Trail starts near the entry station on Hurricane Ridge Road and runs from about 1900 feet up to Lake Angeles which is about 4200 feet above sea level. It starts at a modest elevation, but it runs up into the lower reaches of the high country. Its low starting elevation means that it thaws out well before the high country trails do, so it is a good trail for getting back into shape.

We drove five miles up Hurricane Ridge Road and checked out the trailhead. There was no snow. The last official report was from early April, and the park people reported plenty of snow, and mountain lion tracks in the snow up around the bridge. We saw neither snow nor mountain lion tracks which was just as well. We did see triliums, but that is another story.

The trail to the high country

Someone decorated the little bridge near the start of the trail

The obligatory trilium photo

Keywords: high country, lake angeles, trails, triliums

04/30/09 - Elwha Update

Spring is coming to the Elwha Trail which starts at Whiskey Bend. There are more people, more triliums and even some other flowers around. The male grouse are lekking, setting up bachelor pads to attract les femmes. Their deep, booming cry, almost a glottal stop, apparently does something for the ladies. There must be a good number of grouse about judging from the sound of things.

An obligatory trilium shot

Looking downstream

A local orchid

Keywords: elwha, flowers, spring, triliums

04/19/09 - Flowers Along The Spruce Railroad Trail

We are finally having a few real spring days, and that means that April showers are at long last yielding April flowers. Of particular note, the triliums are coming out along the Spruce Railroad Trail. These three petaled flowers are a bit hard to spot, at least at first. Our experience is that we don't see any triliums until we are a mile or two down the trail, but then, once we see our first blossom, we start seeing lots of others. On the final leg of our hike it seems like every other plant is a trilium, and we can't help but wonder how we missed a veritable carpet of these lovely flowers.

There are also a lot of other flowers blooming, including some of the succulents growing out of the rocks in the sunnier parts of the trail. If you crouch down and look carefully you can see lots of little flowers in the sunny patches. We aren't sure of what all these flowers are, but the ones here were growing out of gravel, which is probably why they are blooming so early, where "so early" is strictly comparative.

Keywords: flowers, spring, spruce railroad, triliums

04/16/09 - The Triliums Are Back

We saw our first triliums of the season along the Elwha Trail. As usual, we spotted one because we had stopped to photograph something else, and once we had spotted one trilium, we began to look for others. Triliums like water, and we had spotted the first one in one of the little canyons with a briskly running stream. We were walking back, sure that there were no more triliums to b seen. After all, we had come this way and seen none. Needless to say, no sooner than we had expressed this, we spotted a trilium, and then another, and then another.

Triliums are like that.

The first trilium we spotted

Another trilium

And another

This may look like rock, but it is an old tree stump, overgrown with moss. Parts of this trail look like something hobbits would live in.

Another evocative trail

Keywords: elwha, triliums, spring

04/25/08 - Triliums

Each time we have visited the Spruce Railroad Trail at Lake Crescent we have kept our eyes open for signs of spring. Spring has been late in coming. The skunk cabbage didn't even appear until April, but then we saw the first Indian paintbrush and the first few salamanders. This time the triliums were out. There aren't many leaves on the alders, but we are finally seeing some signs of spring.

Keywords: lake crescent, salamander, spring, spruce railroad, triliums

08/10/07 - The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center: A True Northwestern Rain Forest Gallery

The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center is an unusual art gallery. Most of the exhibits are shown in a natural Northwestern temperate rain forest. If you are tired of finding mushrooms, mountain beaver, triliums and salamanders on your rain forest walks, come here and enjoy the sense of light and play in this unusual outdoor museum.

Welcome to the labyrinth

Keywords: art, port angeles, triliums, salamander

05/11/07 - Great Year For Triliums at Lake Crescent

Last year there seemed to be an awful lot of triliums along the Lake Angeles trail. This year, there seem to be an awful lot of triliums along the Spruce Railroad trail at Lake Crescent. Keep your eyes open. A lot of them are along the slow ascent at the eastern end of the trail, and it is easy to miss them with all the ferns and shrubs. Also, keep your eyes open for salamanders. They are out there, especially on wetter days.

Keywords: flowers, spruce railroad, triliums, lake angeles, lake crescent, salamander

04/02/07 - Elwha Trail Report

Whiskey Bend Road is usually open all year round, but it has been closed for a while due to fallen trees and nasty ruts. It isn't much of a road by some standards, but it has a good solid one and a half lanes, and the dirt is pretty firmly packed and the drainage is good. In fact, it is so good that there are lots of neat waterfalls that flow down to and under the road. Just a few days ago, we noticed that the Park Service had taken Whiskey Bend off the list of roads that have been closed, and today we rode out in our trusty Honda and had a spectacular hike along the Elwha Trail.

The road itself, as we noted, is in good shape, and so is the trail. There were a number of recently sawn logs by the side of the trail, including one monster on the climb up after Humes Ranch. We only made it to the first crossing, about an hour or so hike from the parking lot. The little stream in the canyon was running full, despite two large trees which had collapsed across its path into the canyon. Our special surprise was the first trilium of the season, blooming early in the shelter of the canyon.

The first trilium of spring

Just pretty

On our way back to the car, there was a blue grouse sitting in the middle of the trail. We had been hearing the deep booming of the male birds lekking, that is, staking out good sites for their bachelor pads. We sometimes see blue grouse on Hurricane Hill, but rarely on a wooded trail like this one, but today was different. The grouse were definitely about and not one bit shy.We even saw another blue grouse crossing the Whiskey Bend Road on the drive down.

Keywords: elwha, flowers, triliums, birds, hurricane hill, spring

05/19/06 - An Awful Lot of Triliums

There seem to be an AWFUL lot of triliums on the Lake Angeles Trail this year. We've always seen triliums on our way up towards the lake, but this year they are all over the place, sometimes in clusters of six or eight, and each time we climb, there seem to be more of them.

Being Kalebergs, we have several theories about this. The most obvious explanation is that there was an AWFUL lot of deadfall over the winter. There were serious windstorms and the trail seems to be much more open. The various streams, usually only heard, are now often visible, and a lot of the trees seem to be horizontal rather than vertical. This means that there is more sunlight, and while triliums are not sun lovers, the additional sun might encourage them.

Our other explanation is that there was more snow cover this winter, and that means that there is more water in the soil. For the first time in several years we seem to have a proper snowpack in the high country, and while this trail has never been particularly dry, it is possibly moister this year.

No, we have still not made it up to the lake, but we have enjoyed the lower portions of the trail and all those triliums.

Keywords: flowers, lake angeles, high country, triliums, winter

04/28/06 - Lake Angeles Trail Report

The triliums are out. The one right near the Lake Angeles trailhead is in bloom.
We haven't made it up to the lake, but we spoke to a couple, more intrepid than we are, who had. The report: the snow starts about a quarter mile from the lake proper, so bring boots or be prepared to get wet feet. The snow was fairly deep, 12-18", depending on where you stepped, but the lake was partly thawed and they reported much melting going on. In fact, they could hear the snow and ice melting in chunks off the "walls" that surround the lake. It sounds worth it, but as we said, they were much "more intrepid than we are".

Keywords: flowers, lake angeles, triliums

05/07/05 - Triliums

The picture to the left is from our files.

Keywords: triliums, flowers, lake angeles, spruce railroad