Flower show!! Featuring flowers that grow of their own accord, more stunning than the human-tended, chemical-enhanced, meretricious ones that you have to buy a ticket to see. The only admission fees for this one are moderate physical fitness and a little uphill walking.
I'd been to Cowap Peak once before, in late September, and made a note that I wanted to come back at flower time. I put out an APB to the group of usual suspects known as High & Outside, and Stephen answered. So we left Bellingham at 7:30 and arrived at the Damfino Lakes Trailhead a little before 9. Plenty of parking (mostly Subarus in the lot, of course), and Stephen even found a place that promised shade for most of the day. We were on the trail at 9:00 sharp, though nice second-growth forest.
After 20 minutes we reached the newly erected signpost directing us left to Canyon Ridge and Boundary Way, and we started up the very skanky way to motorcycle heaven (otherwise known as Canyon Ridge), ascending crumbly ground and shredded logs embossed with motorcycle tracks. We recalled that a guy on some sort of a contraption in the motorcycle family had zoomed past us on the Canyon Creek Road, and assumed he was already amongst the vrooming angels.
Before long, however, another signpost directed us to the right toward Boundary Way. Immediately the contrast of seasons struck me--we hiked beside what had been a desiccated ex-bog in early fall but was now a bog in full glory, complete with lots of white Sitka valerian and yellow daisies, plus whole wet meadows bright red with leatherleaf saxifrage. Then up a stretch of forest, containing some huge mountain hemlocks among various kinds of firs, and the one big blowdown of the trip--go around the upper end. I climbed over the lower end but didn't need to. And then to the show of shows...
After the ultimate goal--the summit of Cowap Peak, comes into view, the trail sidehills gradually up a south-facing meadow, shouting its colors at you. White bistort, valerian, and cow parsley; buttery yellow daisies, Oregon sedum and tiger lilies; purple-to-pink asters, Cascade penstemons, heather, a single monkey flower and one clump of thistles; little pale yellow partidgefoot; blue lupine; and just a few scattered reddish orange paintbrushes. The going was slow not because it was steep (it's not), but because we stopped every few feet to take pictures of the flowers. When we could take our eyes off the flowers, the snow-covered heights of Shuksan and Koma Kulshan gradually rose above the High Divide in between.
Eventually the way enters forest for a short distance, leading us to the crest where we were greeted by views of Tomyhoi and the Border Peaks to the east, peaks that don't show on USGS topo maps to the north, and a "Welcome to Canada!" alert on our phones, even though we were still a mile or so south of the border. A middle-aged couple arrived while we rested there, the only other hikers we saw all day. To the right was Boundary Way, but Cowap Peak beckoned to the left, and so we went left. The ridgeline meadows were not quite as colorful as the ones on the south slope, but there was lots of mountain ash in bloom (in Bellingham, they already have fruit), along with heather and more patridgefoot.
We walked upward, first gently, then steeply, then gently again, with the mountain views on both sides expanding as we ascended. At about 11:10 we were on top. Or as close to the top as either of us dared to go--there is a very exposed short scramble which we both looked at and both thought "nah, probably not." Soon the couple was up there with us, and they kindly took our pictures with Kulshan in the background. It was warm, not hot, a very slight breeze, a very few horseflies, no mosquitoes.
Also no place to sit and eat, so we retreated a couple of hundred meters and found some nice rock seats to lounge on (marble for Stephen, granite for me) with more views into Canada.
When we got back to the junction around 12:00, we decided to ramble a ways down Boundary Way, and found a big patch of white-flowered Rhododendron albiflorum. But then the downward grade got steeper, and we decided to return to the junction. A downward traverse of the flower show and the bog showed blossoms in somewhat different light, then the motorcycle skank and the way out, arriving back at the Subaru convention and the shady (non-Subaru) car at 1:30.
Absolutely gorgeous day.
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