NPSO 2019 Annual Meeting

July 12-14     Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains

Field Trips

Saturday July 13, 2019    8:30 - 4:00                    Field Trip # 15

Difficulty:     Moderate  (2.4 miles) - 1 mile to the large lake, the last part off trail.

Elevation:     The Bigelow Lakes Trailhead starts at approximately 5600'. The Bigelow Lakes Basin is located at 5900', for a total elevation gain of 300'.

Group Size Limit:     15

Trip Description:     Botanize the Bigelow Lakes Botanical Area in the expanded Oregon Caves National Monument to view rare and endemic plants as well as spectacular flower displays of more common wildflowers of the Siskiyou Mountains.

Bigelow Lakes are surrounded by lovely wet meadows in a dramatic glacially-carved granitic cirque jammed with exciting graminoids, plus some other show-off flowers like Veratrum californicum and Helenium bigelovii. If you like sedges and grasses and want to learn more about them, this is the outing for you. Bring your copy of the Field Guide to the Sedges of the Pacific Northwest and we'll do our best to do some field keying among sedges with distinctive characters visible without a microscope, for example Carex amplifolia, C. aquatilis, C. exsiccata, C. kelloggii, C. luzulina, C. jonesii, and C. athrostachya. We hope to test-drive the new Field Guide to Grasses of Oregon and Washington, so bring that too, and we'll have a treasure hunt to see who can find Pleuropogon refractus or Hierochloe occidentalis, two of the most beautiful grasses in the world.

We'll allow some time for you to marvel at three species of Potentilla growing together and one of the westernmost populations of aspen, as well as other rare or endemic plants including Gentiana plurisetosa, Iliamna latibracteata, Quercus sadleriana, and Quercus garryana var. breweri. Other nifty plants include Botrichium multifidum, Castilleja arachnoidea, Kelloggia galioides and Isoetes occidentalis.

In Spirit of the Siskiyous: the Journals of a Mountain Naturalist, Mary Paetzel wrote, "Bigelow Lakes settle deep in the Siskiyous above Oregon Caves National Monument. At an elevation of 5,900 feet, they are considered 'high country' in this area (and remind me of the 'high country' of Southwest Colorado, my childhood home)."

Appropriate Footwear:     Sturdy, water-resistant footwear is advised since we will be walking in some wet locations to key plants.

Special Considerations:     Bring lunch, water, sun protection, maybe something waterproof to sit on if the ground is wet where we key plants. Bring trekking poles if you use them.

Plant Lists:     The first plant list below covers Bigelow Lakes, and the second covers Oregon Caves National Monument.

Meeting Place and Time:     Trip # 15 leaves at 8:30am from Pacifica.

Driving Directions:     From Pacifica drive south on Water Gap Road toward Williams. At Williams Highway stay to the right and merge onto Williams Highway. At Cedar Flat Road stay to the right and merge onto Cedar Flat Road. Turn left on Cave Camp Road. After 6.7 miles the pavement ends. Bear right at the fork after .8 miles. After another 2.9 miles, turn left at the intersection onto USFS Road 079. Continue on this road for 4.0 miles. Turn left onto Road 070 and proceed .9 miles. Here the road ends and a small parking area exists. Walk .5 miles along the decommissioned roadbed (passing a large blowout) until you see an old trail sign on the left for the Bigelow Lakes/Mount Elijah Trail.

Driving miles from Pacifica to trailhead:     33 miles one way from Pacifica. The drive time is approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, mainly on Forest Service roads.

Leaders:       Dr. Linda Vorobik & Dr. Cindy Roché

Dr. Linda Vorobik holds a PhD from the University of Oregon, Eugene. She is affiliated with the herbaria at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Washington, Seattle, as well as the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Linda's work is published in scientific books and journals. A master botanical illustrator, she shares her skills teaching classes in Oregon, California, and elsewhere. Her home is on Lopez Island in Washington state.

Dr. Cindy Roché lived and botanized in the Rogue Valley and adjacent mountain ranges from 1998 to 2016. During that time she illustrated grasses for two volumes of the Flora of North America, and taught workshops at the Siskiyou Field Institute. For the past 17 years she has been working with the Carex Working Group on a Field Guide to Grasses of Oregon and Washington, recently published by OSU Press. After moving to Bend, she added sedges to her repertoire by assisting Barbara Wilson in teaching sedge workshops.

Botanizing Bigelow Lakes

Field trip co-leader, Linda Vorobik, botanizing at Bigelow Lakes.

Bigelow Lakes Basin in the Oregon Caves National Monument.

California globe mallow (Iliamna latibracteata)

Indian paintbrush and Bigelow's sneezeweed in the Bigelow Lakes Basin.