I’ve been using this site to find wildflowers that are still blooming in late summer and I couldn’t recommend it more! The High Prairie trail started in the Badger Wilderness on the southwest side of Mt. Hood at 6000’ elevation. The beginning of the hike traversed through a beautiful high prairie with seemingly endless wildflowers and led up to Lookout mountain overlooking the Columbia gorge and the southern forests of Mt. Hood. At the top, pine mat manzanita and common juniper blanketed the shale slopes of the mountain. The plant community was pretty different than my last trip to Timberline trail but there was some crossover for sure. The soils on Lookout mountain were extremely diverse. Some areas were sand, while others were rocky basalt, some iron deposits, and some thick conifer duff. It was cool to see how the soils influenced the plant communities throughout the hike. In the first picture, I finally saw Arctostaphylos patula, which I have been looking for, for years. It was also great to see how A. nevadensis grew out of the rocky slopes on top of Lookout mountain. It makes me wonder if these two species hybridize... My favorite moment of the hike was seeing these old, weathered white bark pines at the top of Lookout mountain hanging on by a thread. Living in such a harsh, cold, and windy environment, this tree has really stood the test of time and outcompeted many of the other plants up here. I ended the day driving down the other side of Mt. Hood, following the Hood river that connected to the Columbia. So cool to see how the forest transitioned from alpine, to dry conifer, to oak scrub habitat in just a few hours.

P.S if you know the Penstemon in the last picture, send me a message!

Mt. Hood, High Prairie Trail - August 2023

Siletz Bay National Wildlife Refuge - September 2023

Mt. Hood Zig Zag Canyon - August 2023