Saturday, May 27, 2023
Although we had originally planned to spend Memorial Day Weekend camping in eastern Oregon, we ended up staying in a hotel in Ashland instead. Our first hike of the weekend was Grizzly Peak.
We got an early start to avoid the crowds. There were two cars when we got to the trailhead at 7:35. This is BLM land and the trailhead signage was pretty great compared to what we’re used to in national forests. There was even a sign in Spanish!
Although it’s a tad early here for most of the wildflowers, we did see thousands of trillium:
There were other early wildflowers as well including woodland violet:
And calypso orchid:
Crews had come through the week before and performed trail maintenance, thankfully:
We passed a hellebore meadow with a view:
As we reached the “back end” of the loop we started getting more views:
Mt. Ashland:
The snow had only recently melted up here and there were a few patches of mud, but nothing terrible:
Delphinium:
Lomatium:
Dwarf Hesperochiron:
After sitting and taking a break and enjoying the view we continued on the loop. This photo shows the stark difference between the area burned in a 2002 wildfire and the intact forest:
Hiking through the forest as we finish up the loop:
Little mountain anemone:
Clouds had been building all afternoon but we didn’t get rained on during the hike. That evening in Ashland, though, we had quite a thunderstorm pass through:
Gaia stats: 5.5 miles, 815 feet elevation gain
