Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Mount Pilchuck Trail

Friday, February 28, 2014

Mount Pilchuck Trail

Mount Rainier from the Mount Pilchuck Trail August 2012

Mount Baker from the Mount Pilchuck Trail August 2012

Mount Pilchuck August 2012

Phyllodoce empetriformis (Pink Mountain-Heather) Mount Pilchuck Trail August 2012

Mount Pilchuck Fire Lookout August 2012

Click here for more photos of the Mount Pilchuck Trail.

The Mount Pilchuck Trail offers interesting terrain & sweeping vistas. There are great slabs of granite resting on the slopes of the mountain like so many toppled dominoes. The flora is not particularly exciting. I found this trail to be fairly difficult: steep, crowded with hikers & strewn with sharp rocks. There was snow on parts of the trail in August. I slipped & fell on my back. However, there were people of every age & description on the trail. I was utterly amazed to see one man hiking barefoot. At the very top of the mountain, you must climb over large boulders (& around the people climbing down) to get to the old fire lookout. You can see forever from up there. I'm not sorry I did this hike. But I don't ever want to do it again. The trail starts at 3,100 feet in elevation & climbs to the summit at 5,324 feet (1,623 meters). It is 5.4 miles round trip. The road to the trail head can be found off the Mountain Loop Highway in Snohomish County, Washington.

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About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.