Trinity Alps & Vicinity: Including Whiskeytown, Russian Wilderness, and Castle Crags Areas. Mike White
feet. Down in the lower canyons, 100°F days are not uncommon. Day-to-night differentials can range up to as much as 45°F.
PLANTS
An amazing variety of plants grows within the Klamath Mountains. The varied geology, assisted by a relative lack of glaciation and volcanism, has produced one of the most distinct floral provinces in the world, which botanists refer to as the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. At the intersection of five major biotic regions—Coast Range, Cascade Range, Great Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, and Great Basin—the area boasts more than 130 endemic plant species and the highest concentration of different conifers in the world. The range harbors about 3,500 different plant species, including some unusual meat-eaters.
The most obvious members of the plant community are the trees. The forests in the Klamath Mountains are marvelously diverse and include some of the largest individuals of some species seen in the United States. Two unusual conifer species, weeping spruce and foxtail pine, are fairly common in the higher elevations, and rare elsewhere. Shasta red firs grow north of Redding, extending into southwestern Oregon.
The best way to categorize the forests and other flora of the Klamath Mountains is by plant communities. As in other mountain ranges, plant communities here are determined primarily by elevation. However, many other contributing factors, including soil type, rainfall, wind, and exposure, make the dividing lines rather indistinct. There is more intermixing of species between plant communities in the Klamath Mountains than in most other mountain ranges in North America. Descriptions of six very general plant communities follow.
Mixed Low-Elevation Forest This classification represents the low-elevation community up to about 3,000 feet, including isolated riparian (streamside) communities that may be found as high as 6,000 feet. The deciduous, broadleaf trees found here include alders, dogwoods, bigleaf maples, black oaks, hazelnuts, and Oregon oaks. Douglas-fir is overwhelmingly the most common conifer in this community, but lesser amounts of ponderosa pines and Jeffrey pines also appear, as well as sparse stands of Digger pines on lower, dry slopes. Evergreens other than conifers include madrones, chinquapin, tan oaks, California live oaks, and canyon oaks.
Some bushes appear as trees in the lower riparian areas, including coastal, red, and blue elderberries, along with ceanothus, dogwoods, hazelnuts, and manzanitas. Thick stands of chaparral extend over dry hillsides, with ceanothus and manzanita being the most common shrubs, and gooseberries, wild roses, and poison oak also present.
Poison oak grows in many forms, from low, spindly plants to tree-climbing vines, and is the bane of this plant community. Touching the plant produces a violent skin reaction in most humans and, when the plant is burned and the smoke inhaled, may cause serious poisoning requiring hospitalization. This noxious plant has shiny leaves in groups of three and is easy to identify and thereby avoid. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has some helpful information (available at ranger stations) that can help you learn to identify this plant.
Mixed-Conifer Forest The largest trees—sugar pines, ponderosa pines, Jeffrey pines, Douglas-firs, white firs, and incense cedars—grow in this zone between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. Vine maples and mountain ash are occasional associates to the stately conifers. Black oaks and alders are also found in the lower realms of this zone. These magnificent forests are found on most of the trails you’ll end up hiking in the Klamath Mountains.
Shrubs such as azaleas, raspberries, wood roses, and coast huckleberries carpet small openings in the forest. Pinemat manzanita and thimbleberries are common members of the understory. Large expanses of brush are uncommon at these elevations, but where they do occur, huckleberry oaks and other scrub oaks, which do not appear at lower elevations, are the principal plants.
Red-Fir Forest Red firs and their subspecies, Shasta red firs, occur almost equally in the Klamath Mountains between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. They often overlap considerably with conifers from the next lowest community, especially white firs. Slightly larger, beautiful cones distinguish Shasta red firs from the standard red firs, with longer bracts than scales, giving the cones a silver-flecked appearance.
At these elevations, western white pines begin to replace their close relatives, the sugar pines, while Jeffrey pines take over completely from their relatives, the ponderosa pines. Mountain junipers are not particularly common in the Klamath Mountains, but a few do show up here and there in this community. Pockets of mountain hemlocks and weeping spruces can be found at the upper limits of this zone on north-facing slopes and cirques. This zone is the highest with large stands of trees. Above these elevations trees grow alone or in small clusters.
Streams at these elevations may be lined with cottonwoods. Alders are reduced to the size of bushes and are usually associated with willows in wet areas. Different varieties of willows thrive at all elevations, but they are generally the size of shrubs here. Mountain ash and vine maple are also fairly common broadleaf shrubs in this region.
Some southern exposures at this level are covered with large areas of solid brush, referred to as mountain chaparral. Ceanothus, manzanita, chokecherry, serviceberry, tobacco brush, and huckleberry oak are the primary shrubs.
Subalpine Forest Foxtail pines have found a home in the Trinity Alps at elevations ranging from 6,500 to 8,000 feet, along with smaller amounts of whitebark pines and mountain mahoganies clinging to the exposed and inhospitable ridgecrests. Somewhat surprisingly, Jeffrey pines, western white pines, and an occasional incense cedar persist in this zone, but usually in startlingly modified forms—stunted and contorted, pruned by the high winds, and bent over by the weight of winter storms. The only trees seemingly able to stand erect on top of these windswept ridges are whitebark pines and foxtail pines. Foxtail pines may sometimes be mistaken for firs at first glance, but they have bundles of five needles that grow tightly spaced all the way around supple branches that resemble small, green foxtails.
Whitebark pine on Scott Crest (see Trip 28)
Mountain hemlocks grow in protected pockets on north-facing slopes, usually in protected areas away from the strongest winds. Weeping spruces scattered around the higher lakes and cirques in the wettest and coldest places also tend to avoid the winds.
Mountain chaparral extends into the lower end of this community, with flattened mats of willow and pinemat manzanita making up the only persistent brush in the upper realms of this zone.
Mountain Meadow There are meadows in the mixed low-elevation forest, but the true mountain meadows begin in the mixed-conifer community and extend into the subalpine forest. The obvious plants in mountain meadows are grasses, sedges, and wildflowers, but shrubs are also present, along with two species of trees that thrive around the edges of meadows: lodgepole pines and quaking aspens. Neither tree is particularly common in this area, but they are a pleasant surprise when encountered.
Alpine The handful of true alpine ecosystems that exist in this part of the Klamath Mountains are positioned around the highest peaks in the range, at elevations near 9,000 feet. Trees are completely absent, and only a few shrubs and heaths hug the surface of small pockets of soil between the rocks. The most abundant plants are lichens, but a remarkable array of wildflowers burst into bloom during the very short frost-free period in late summer.
Lupines
Wildflowers
More than 100 acres of wildflowers bloom in a solid mass in late July and early August on a northeast-facing slope at the head of Long Canyon in the Trinity Alps. Probably dozens of species are represented, but the most prominent are vivid red paintbrushes; blue, yellow, and purple lupines; white angelica; and creamy western pasqueflowers that turn into fuzzy white mops when they go to seed.
In a completely different location, under evenly spaced red firs on the south side of the Salmon River Divide, the waxy white blossoms of queen’s cups and twinflowers shine against the dark background of the forest