So Many Mushrooms!
Out on the trail from the Mirror Lakes trailhead to the PCT yesterday, it was a mycologist's dream. I have never seen so many mushrooms of so many different kinds in a single location at a single time. I'm not really into mushrooms per se, but I do find their forms and colors fascinating (unless I find a patch of morels in the spring and then the chef in me is all in!).
I suppose it is no wonder that fungi are going nuts right now. After a typically rain-free summer, it turned cold at the end of September and we got a fair amount of snow in early October. This was followed in the last week by warmer than average temperatures (pushing into the mid-70s) that melted the snow and kicked off the fruiting of the mushrooms.
If I were really into mushrooms and knew what I were doing in terms of identifying edible mushrooms, I am sure I could have picked hundreds of pounds of boletes. I almost picked a cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis radicata) to bring home for dinner, but decided to leave it for the animals. Everywhere I went, I could see signs of rampant animal foraging on the fungi and on several occasions caught Douglas' Squirrels with mouths full of shrooms, undoubtedly headed off to cache them for the winter.
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| A Coral Mushroom |
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| Orange Mushrooms and Dwarf Bramble, Rubus lasiococcus |
I wanted to take advantage of the brilliant Indian summer weather yesterday, because the forecast for the remainder of this week is for rain, freezing rain, and snow. And it will certainly be snow up at the Mirror Lakes (6000 ft.) even if it is rain here in town (3800 ft.). Despite not sleeping well the night before and getting a very late start on my day, I wanted to jump on the final opportunity of the fall to get out to the Cascade Lakes. Cascade Lakes Highway closes each fall when it becomes untenable to keep it snow-free.
With the forecast of additional snow for this week, I doubt that it will remain open much longer though it may go until the end of the month, but certainly not longer. In fact, on the drive out, the 10-foot snow poles are already installed all the way out to the Mt. Bachelor ski resort. It is telling that beyond Bachelor, where the Mirror Lakes trailhead is located, that there are no snow poles. The road will not be plowed and it will be accessible only via snowmobile, said item I do not possess or have any room to store or any means to transport.
While the Green Lakes that feed into Sparks Lake get most of the love around these parts, the Mirror Lakes, a cluster of a couple dozen or more ponds and lakes just a bit further south, are much more my jam. The Green Lakes, accessible from the Green Lakes trailhead across the road from the north end of Sparks Lake, are so popular that in prime hiking season, they require a entrance permit from recreation.gov to limit damage to the trail system. So do the Mirror Lakes, but they see way less traffic than Green Lakes.
This past Saturday, because permit season expired October 15, the parking lot at the Green Lakes trail head and the nearby roadsides were jammed with scores and scores of vehicles. Can you imagine the solitude on the trail under these circumstances? Nil. By contrast, the parking lot at Mirror Lake can hold maybe ten cars and there was plenty of parking on Saturday. When I went on Monday, even though the Green Lakes parking lot had an appreciable number of vehicles, there were only two at Mirror Lakes and I encountered both parties coming back to their vehicles in the first half mile of trail, giving me the entire trail to myself. It is a win for me any time that I go out to hike and do not see another soul.
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Rare Hike in the Three Sisters Wilderness
Without an Entrance Permit |
I arrived at the trailhead about noon after having got a very late start to my day and then hemming and hawing about whether or not to go and leave Ann by herself at home. I really do feel a bit guilty about going out and seeing all this beauty without her and I miss having someone to share the experience with. Still, I understand that her daily exercise class is a priority now.
At the trailhead just feet west off the highway between Devil's Lake and Elk Lake, it was sunny and mild, around 52 degrees according to my truck, which is pretty darned accurate. As I rounded Mt. Bachelor, I could see clouds starting to mass over the Cascades to the west. These clouds would become an issue by the end of the hike, some four-and-a-half or five hours later.
The hike up to the lakes (most are mere ponds; if you didn't get the joke, look up the word "mere" in your dictionary) is easy despite the description of "moderately difficult" in some guides. Over 3.5 miles from the trailhead at 5400 feet, the trail gains a mere 600 feet with only one small hill to climb. I hiked the length of the Mirror Lakes trail, then about a mile of the PCT, and then another half a mile or so down the Red Hill trail. Combined with a lot of off-trail bushwhacking around lakes and to see various points of interest, I probably hiked 10.5 or 11 miles in total, but who is counting?
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| The Trail Skirts South and West of a Lava Field |
Beyond the lava field at about three miles from the trailhead, the Mirror Lakes Trail tees into the Pacific Crest Trail. I continued west (left, trail direction south) on the PCT to encounter Sisters Mirror Lake, the first of a great many lakes and ponds in this area. As I wandered the lakeshore to get better views of South Sister from the western lakeshore, I scared a bunch of buffleheads to the far shoreline. As you can see in the photo below, South Sister is stunning from this vantage point and the day is going gray on me. What was bright sun at the trailhead is now a wan and flat sky.
Consulting my map, I formulated a brief plan. From the large lake, I would continue south on the PCT (actually pretty much west at this point) until I reached the Red Hill Trail down which I would go to visit a bunch of other ponds in that direction. I bushwhacked around several ponds before I got to the point where the PCT turned south and the Red Hill Trail continued straight on west.
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Red Hill Trail Narrows
Through Pink Mountain Heather, Phyllodoce empetriformis |
Once I got onto the Red Hill Trail, I noticed that I was in a location where few people travel. The Mirror Lakes Trail is broad and wide as are all the popular Three Sisters Wilderness trails near the roads where they are easily accessible. The PCT, by contrast, had very open margins with a fairly deep single rut trail, 18 inches wide and five or six inches below grade. Both these trails had plenty of footprints, horse shoe impressions and droppings, and bicycle tread marks. Despite the ban on bicycles both in wilderness areas and on the PCT, there are a few Bend-area knuckleheads who give the rest of the trail riders a bad name.
Stepping off the PCT and onto the Red Hill Trail, I noticed zero footprints since the last rain and what horseshoe impressions I could find were very old, possibly from the spring. Tellingly, the trail narrowed in spots to five or six inches wide, wading through patches of Pink Mountain Heather and Grouse Whortleberries (Vaccinium scoparium). At this less peopled point in the wilderness, I heard several California Quail calling from a meadow just off to my left and I went to investigate, in hopes to photograph them. Although I could see them walking along the ground and fluttering into the trees, they were not cooperative in showing themselves for an unobstructed photo.
Continuing on up the trail, quite faint in rocky areas, I started to see flashes of gold and scarlet blueberry leaves off in the woods. To my mind, blueberries are some of the prettiest plants for fall colors and I truly miss fall drives by the blueberry fields around McMinnville over in the Willamette Valley where we used to live.
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Our Local Wetland Blueberry Showing Brilliant Fall Color
Bog Bilberry, Vaccinium uliginosum |
As I neared a series of ponds on either side of the scant trail, I took big detours around them and through the woods to see what I could see. I was so struck by the mirror-like ponds edged with bilberries glowing scarlet and gold, contrasting against the gray rocks and the deep green conifers, that I took dozens and dozens of photos. Even if the sun were not shining and the day were gray, the colors still popped beautifully, a great payoff on a great hike.
Some four-and-a-half miles, nominally a 90-minute walk, from my truck at the trailhead, I noticed a couple of things. First, the afternoon was wearing on and second, the weather was setting in. Even in my relatively secluded location, I could feel the temperature had dropped by a good ten degrees and that the wind was getting up. The low gray skies were a harbinger of the snow to come in the morning. Although I felt a few raindrops, I wasn't super concerned about it really raining just yet, but I knew it was time to get moving with more haste back in the direction of civilization, so I set back out to connect with the PCT and then the Mirror Lakes Trail back to the truck.
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| Broken Top from the PCT |
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| Female Buffleheads on a Lake |
I walked fairly slowly back past all the lakes still taking them in. But arriving at Sisters Mirror Lake, the largest of the lakes and the most open, the wind was really getting up and the threat of rain was real. And as any hiker can understand, it was getting to that point in the late afternoon where your natural impulse is to find a sheltered location to spend the night before it becomes dark. That drove me to pick up the pace as I hit the Mirror Lakes Trail and jam the 3 or so miles in about 45 minutes.
On my walk up to the lakes, I had seen any number of Douglas' Squirrels foraging mushrooms and I heard many more alarm as I walked past, though I couldn't see them hidden in the trees. On the return trip, many of the same squirrels kindly let the entire world know that I was passing, not a good thing when you are moving quietly in hopes of seeing wildlife. At one point though, I heard a very different call to my right, a call very distinct from the tiny squirrels.
And then suddenly to my right, I saw a group of five or six gray, white, and black jay-sized birds fly across the trail in front of me. As they passed over, I immediately thought Clark's Nutcracker, but the calls and the flight path were all wrong for those common residents in these parts. One landed just to my left and I saw distinctly that it was what I call a Grey Jay, which has since been renamed to Canada Jay, the national bird of Canada. These may be the first Canada Jays I have ever seen, though I have vague recollections of sitting on a picnic table in Rocky Mountain National Park and having one approach me looking for a handout. That was 40 years ago and I just don't remember it clearly.
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| Highlight of the Walk for Me: Canada Jay |
I stopped my ultra-quick walk back to the truck only long enough to snap one frame of the Jays and then I was off back down the hill. As I entered the final half a mile or so of trail, I started noticing old blazes hewn into trees of a certain age along the trail. Many of the blazes are grown over and resemble nothing so much as scabs in the bark. Others are more distinct and I got the impression that they are a short blaze over a long blaze, all cut with an axe. I became certain of the blazes when I saw the one in the photo below on a dead tree that had lost all the bark that now obscures many of the old blazes.
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| Old Blazes, Short over Long |
Quickly I arrived at my truck about an hour before sunset and was facing the prospect of hitting rush hour traffic, especially the jam-up at the Reed Market-Bond roundabout. Fortunately, the line was fewer than ten vehicles when I arrived at the roundabout.
I'm really sorry that Ann didn't get to share this hike with me, but I am also quite happy that I ventured out on the last day before the snows. Hikes into the Three Sisters Wilderness are wonderful at any time of year, but what's better than having alpine lakes whose edges are festooned with brilliant scarlet and gold blueberry leaves all to yourself? And no mosquitos! And bushwhacking with little fear of ticks? Late fall is a spectacular time to visit the Cascade lakes out beyond Mt. Bachelor.
