Life on the Outer Coast

Sunday

Another sunny day, got up around 6am, guess the blackout curtains aren't quite heavy enough.

There was a family outing to Gavan ridge on Sunday. It seemed like record time (1hour, 27 minutes), but a little less extreme than the hike up Verstovia during spring break. Ian was cruising along looking the trail over in preparation for the alpine race, but Jeff stayed behind me so I didn't get left in the dust. I handed my altimeter to Ian so that he would stop at 500 and then every 250ft gain in elevation so that I could pay a bit more attention to how the elevation changed and slow him down. He was somewhat irritated by this ploy, but it worked.

We went up to the ridge fairly directly, stopping at the preset elevations and at the view platform, and definitely after a few flights of stairs. I had forgotten how much fun those stairs are. I think that my class will like the trail up Verstovia slightly more than they would this one. We encountered snow at about 2,040ft (uncorrected elevation) where the ridge trail starts toward Harbor Mtn. There were Coptis asplenifolia and Vaccinium ovalifolium in bloom on the ridge.
As no one seemed interested in slipping around in the snow, we went back down. Too bad it was so early, it would have been nice to sit for awhile and eat lunch, but then it was only 10:30.

On the way back down, I wanted to try to keep track of elevations where the canopy species shifted from Tsuga mertensiana to a mixture of T. mertensiana and Picea sitchensis then to Chamaecyparis and T. heterophylla. Now I notice that I didn’t take adequate notes, but I was finally paying enough attention (nothing like relearning) to see that in the subalpine forest there is a range where the canopy has a good mix of T. mertensiana and P.sitchensis. There was a mix on the ridge which increased in P. sitchensis until around 1900ft. By 1810ft there were all four species in the canopy and understory. I’ll have to do better on Verstovia this Thursday.

The other two plants I was attempting to keep track of were Veratrum viride and Valeriana sitchensis. They were present along the trail from 1220ft to the ridge in suitably wet habitat. There was also an Arnica that was too young for me to worry about, although I would like to work on identifying the species when the plants are very young. All have to wander back up there in a couple of weeks to see how things are progressing. The Viola glabella was in full bloom from 720 through 1480ft, it was finishing down in the lower elevations. Not quite in bloom but present were Parnassia fimbriata and Listera caurina.

I would like to better document the elevational distribution of plants in this area, so I’ll try to get in the habit of carrying the altimeter around with me.

I picked up a Eriophorum angustifolium from the muskegs on the way back to the car. It seems that the subtending bract and the number of spikes are good characters to identify this species. There is a lot of it blooming along the Cross Trail and along lower Gavan. I was a little dismayed to discover last evening that according to the FNA there are potentially 8 species to keep straight. Not sure why that seems so daunting, there are a lot more Carex and that doesn’t seem to bother me. Also in bloom was the Nephrophyllidium crista-galli and the Ledum groenlandicum. The Kalmia seems like it is already finishing its bloom period. There is so much to look at, there just isn’t enough time to adequately appreciate all of it in a life time of summers.

I also looked more closely at the Cornus along the path through the scrubby portion of the forest and in the muskeg. All that I looked at in the open forest were C. unalaschensis and at the end of the muskeg I found a C. suecica. The petal color is a very clear character, I’ll have to work on the leaf arrangement characteristics next.