Life on the Outer Coast

August 25 & 26th Gavan-Harbor

Despite the less than promising forecast for Saturday, the clouds were well above the tops of the peaks when I woke up, so I talked Jeanne into a hike from the Harbor Mtn parking lot to the Gavan Hill shelter. The weather went from cloudy to sunny, so we spent most of the day on the trail picking berries and collecting seeds. I’m ever more convinced that the way to improve the weather is to carry full raingear and wear long pants.

Blooming: Aconitum delphinifolium, Saussurea americana, Senecio triangularis, Gentiana platypetala, Erigeron peregrinus, Saxifraga ferruginaea, Sanguisorba canadensis, S. menziesii, Elliotia pyrolaeflora, Heuchera glabra, Arnica lanceolata prima and Luetkea pectinata. Only saw one S. menziesii, all of the Sanguisorba I saw in the meadows was S. canadensis. I did get suckered by one Erigeron...it just looked different, but as usual it was E. pergrinus.

Collected seed from Hiericium triste, Aquilegia formosa, Veratrum viride, Lupinus nootkatensis, Geranium erianthum, Anemone narcissifolia, Valeriana sitchensis, Senecio triangularis, and Aconitum. Cleaning the seed was less of a chore than I thought it would be. Not sure about the ripeness of the Veratrum or the Aquilegia, but decided to take the chance in case I don’t make it up there again this summer.

Found another pile of ptarmigan feathers along the trail, but no live ones. Heard another red-tail while picking berries. A red squirrel was clambering around on the boulders, don't know if I've seen them in the open alpine before.

The truly and hopelessly beautiful Gentiana platypetala were open by afternoon. I hadn’t noticed or had forgotten that the inside of the corolla was white below the unfused portion. The other feature I belatedly noticed about the flowers is that tips of the petals were a rather exaggerated onion dome shape.

The Arnica on the list was from the view pull out just before the last push to the top. A. lanceolata subspecies prima is the updated name for A. amplexifolia. The key characteristics are yellow anthers, more than 4 pairs of sessile entire leaves, tawny pappus and basal leaves present at flowering.

Found two Sorbus sitchensis on the Harbor Mtn side of the meadows. They were both about 3ft tall at most, but both had diagnostic red hairs on the winter buds. The trees ordered for the park definitely aren’t what I had ordered, at best they are S. scopulina, but that is probably optimistic. I found one more S. sitchensis along the road on the way down on Sunday.
Collected some berries from Marge and Tedin’s tree today in hopes of growing a few for the park. Hopefully Sorbus is self fertile.

We ate a multitude of salmonberries on Saturday and picked a bag of blueberries (V. ovalifolium) before heading down to find some meatier food. The blueberry crop was abundant on the early blueberry, but I didn't notice any on the V. caespitosum.

On Sunday, I woke up to another sunny day, so I returned to Blueberry heaven with Molly and Cheryl. We had a beautiful day up there. Unfortunately, we had to be down the mountain by 3pm, it was very difficult to pull myself away. I collected 16 cups of blueberries by quitting time on Sunday. They ended up in the freezer until I can make jam on some rainy day.