My Everyday Photos

The girls and I hiked to Black Lake on Friday. This hike is more about the trail than the destination. It follows Lake Creek which is really roaring with white water now. I was pleased that the girls stayed away from the rushing stream. The area burned about ten or fifteen years ago and is a recovering forest with standing silver snags, numerous species of shrubs and wildflowers and in some places there are thick stands of small pine trees and aspens. Every year lots of those silver snags fall, often across the trail, and it hasn’t been logged out yet. According to the information at the trailhead, there are 48 downed trees along the route. This certainly slows a person down. Most I could get across; some I had to go under and in at least one case I had to go around a big log.

Another feature is a series of beaver ponds near the lake. These efficient engineers have dammed up a tributary creek and created some really good habitat but also have flooded the trail in places. It proved to be a bit of a challenge for me to get across a series of downed logs over the pond to return to the trail.

The flowers and bird song slowed me down too. I was able to identify four different warblers by their songs alone. I stopped many times when the trail was away from the stream, so I could listen to the birds and photograph the flowers. Needless to say, I did not make good time on this hike but like I said, it’s more about the trail than the destination.

Luna looks happy to be in the wilderness

First log across the trail

Later she would go under logs like this

Paintbrush

Paintbrush

Two kinds of lupine

Serviceberry

Paintbrush

Cute tiny flower

maple

Lewisia tweedii

Tweedy’s Lewisia

Mountain ash flower with pollinator.

Mountain ash flower with pollinator

Mountain ash flower with two pollinators

Wild clematis

Wild clematis

Oh gosh, I’ve forgotten this one

Elderberry

Beautiful little flower on a thorny shrub

Douglas sunflowers

penstemon

penstemon

ferns unfurling

columbine

fungi

A log that was cut out of the trail last year

Talus slopes like this had pikas in them

Aspens growing out of the galus

Big boulder in the trail

Avalanche debris strewn across the trail

Hmmmm

Lake Creek

Beaver pond

Beaver pond

Black Lake

Cooling off

And here’s the list of birds I heard and saw:

Ruffed Grouse

Mourning Dove

Calliope Hummingbird

Hairy Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker

Olive-sided Flycatcher

Hammond’s Flycatcher

Dusky Flycatcher

Warbling Vireo

Common Raven

Black-capped Chickadee

Pacific Wren

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

American Robin

Nashville Warbler

MacGillivray’s Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Chipping Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Song Sparrow

Spotted Towhee

Black-headed Grosbeak

Red-winged Blackbird

Pine Siskin