Near 11:30 today, I parked at the Big Tree Ridge Trailhead and noted 5 cars, two of which left as I parked (see below, Tahoe arrived after I had begun hiking). Weather was cloudy, misty, and the foliage and ground were damp. The facility is clean, the signage is excellent, and the trail is in good condition with occasional very recent improvements in the bed and drainage off the trail. Just before the Big Tree Ridge Trail reaches its upper junction, there was a considerable improvement and the formation of a new trail around the root-wad of a winter up-rooted large Douglas-fir tree that took the old trail bed with it.
I made a series of figure eights as I wandered from the trailhead to the top and back -- I really enjoy the extraordinary vigor of the understory plants with Pacific waterleaf being the shortest, then Siberian miner's lettuce, leaves of colt's foot (vying with devil's club and bigleaf maple for having the largest leaf), and bleeding heart, then fragrant fringecup and piggy-back plant, then bracken, lady, and sword ferns, then stinging nettles (some reaching 6 feet), red currant, and salmonberry, then devil's club, and finally elderberry, hazelnut, vine maple -- so thick, lush, and green. There many other plants!
The streams are drying up. The dog with me was able to find both running water and deep enough pools to drink from at three different points stretched and nicely spaced along our 7.82 mile hike. We did something we should not have as we walked the connector trail between the Harvey Manning Park at Talus and the Big Tree trail on our descent (involved some ascent). There is a lot of work to do on this trail before it will be open. For me, what was truly discouraging were the number of very old and large Douglas-fir, western hemlock, and especially large western red cedar that were blown down in early December. If we examine our suburban and urban parks, they are really postage stamps on the original envelope of forests, meadows, and grasslands that made up the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. Loss of these time and size monarchs from an already diminished pool is discouraging.
There is an interesting experiment occurring in the first part of the Big Tree Ridge Trail. The first couple of hundred feet of vertical were previously spent in a relatively young and very dense second growth stand of red alder, bitter cherry, black cottonwood and bigleaf maple (originated mostly from stump sprouts). Previous attempts (as well as natural occurrences) to increase the coverage by evergreen species (e.g., western redcedar) mostly failed as inadequate light and heavy herbivory killed them. This winter the stand was thinned by at least 50% removal. There is an amazing amount of down, but well-organized wood and woody debris. I am interested to see how this treatment plays out (it would have been an excellent silvicultural exercise for UW students in SEFS, but they were not contacted).
The well organized wood from the silvicultural treatment and even the spot-wise and scattered, but much more impressive, the downed wood, branches, and needles from the wind-storm form an interesting threat. These disturbances have potentially provided considerable fuel for a fire. As the summer progresses and these and other fuels dry, a fire would start easily and with strong winds move rapidly. I have not seen much discussion of this potential for the wind-stormed damaged forests of the Puget Sound Area.
For a plant nerd, this hike rivals subalpine and alpine and eastside hikes. However, context makes the others win almost every time.
Ps: A Tahoe with California plates had two of its right side windows broken completely. No other cars had damage in the trailhead lot.
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