Up and Down

Still seated? Still working on that glass of lemonade? Good. Because there's more. This time you have to start by looking up.

A group of plants and animals seldom seen or heard lives in the canopied universe overhead. The Really Big Trees of Mount Rainier's Grove of the Patriarchs host about 200 different kinds of plants, including mosses, liverworts, and lichens often visible only on a fallen branch. Animals that live in the lush green canopy here are just as diverse. Many birds and insects as well as mammals make their homes in the ceiling of this magnificent old-growth forest, including sharp-winged Stellar's jays, nattering Douglas’ squirrels, flying squirrels, and bats.

Look down.

Another universe lives at your feet. Millipedes, sow bugs, beetles, insect larvae and many other animals thrive in the forest duff at and beneath your shoes. Microscopic plants, worms, bacteria and fungi inhabit this redolent red soil including mycorrihizae, a partnership of fungi and roots that enable trees to better absorb water and nutrients. The fruiting bodies of these fungi, called truffles, are favored morsels for squirrels and voles.

These "up" and "down" worlds include the weathered remnants of dead standing trees or living trees with dead tops called “snags.” They are important to the heath of the forest, providing homes for cavity-dwelling birds, mammals and insects. They also store energy and nutrients for new generations. Today they mark the entrance to a new world of enchantment, Mount Rainier’s fabled Grove of the Patriarchs.

An easy 1.25 mile addendum to our Silver Falls hike, the Grove trail meanders through an incredible old-growth forest onto an island skirted by the Ohanapecosh River. The Grove is home to trees that are in Josiah’s words, “even older than Dad!” Much older. Here Douglas fir, western red cedar and hemlocks, some a thousand years old, reach heights of 200 feet or more.

Hoofing this trail along the foaming Ohanapecosh River, the boys pause to skip rocks across the Ohana’s racing waters. The “one person at a time” suspension bridge we're obliged to traverse spans a sparkling stretch of river that appears calm and placid, shimmering in the sun like cut crystal. The river seems tame compared to the roaring rapids of Silver Falls. Don’t you believe it. The jade water may appear placid, sleek enough to see bottom, but it runs swift and teeth-clatteringly cold. It is just as potentially lethal here in the “doldrums” as its more effervescent sister is in the swift running rapids downstream.

On the other side of the river, The Mountain’s magic elicits different responses from different folks. Astonishment. Wonder. Unhinged jaws. Sunburnt tonsils. Hikers to the Grove of the Patriarchs have one thing in common: reverence. You don't run on this trail. You don't cavort or gripe. In the Grove of the Patriarchs, you enter a green cathedral of Really Big Trees: massive western hemlocks, western red cedars and Douglas firs. We spot red alder, the most common deciduous tree in the park, with its light-colored, ash-gray bark and coarsely toothed leaves. Western hemlock, another conifer common to the park, swishes its drooping treetops and branch tips from finely furrowed, reddish bark. Pacific silver fir, aka: “lovely fir,” struggles to the sky, stretching to heights of 165 feet. The silver fir’s light gray bark is smooth and blistered. Like the hemlock, this conifer is very shade tolerant and thus thrives amid this fabled green understory of ancient green skyscrapers.

The guardian of all this arboreal splendor is the Ohana River, which forms a protective ring around the small island home of the Patriarchs, preserving them from fire over the centuries. The result is a mammoth monument to tenacity: dozens of trees more than 25 feet in circumference--some as much as 50 feet around--and up to 1,000 years old. In the Grove we realize again that things of great age or beauty don’t happen overnight. They take time. A thousand years ago a fire burned though the Ohanapecosh valley. The towering forest built on those ashes took centuries to become the complex, diverse forest community it is today. Look up and down again. Try not to gawk too obviously.

Six miles later and still gawking :), we wind down our combined Silver Falls/Grove of the Patriarchs hike. Strolling downhill back to the campground, we’re serenaded by what appears to be warbling brown wrens with enough range and volume to give Enrico Carusso a run for his money. The voice should belong to a 30 foot pterodactyl. Naw. This sonorous songbird is less than five inches long from stem to stern, but you’d never know it from a distance.

Near the campground, the Ohana River jitterbugs over fallen logs and rocks. Curtseying over glacier-polished boulders, the river slows occasionally to waltz through deep-water pools before it picks up steam and twists south. Wren and river compete for Park’s Most Vociferous titles. That contest could go either way.

We arrive at our campsite to find the campground vacant. The campground will gradually “fill” toward evening. Since we’re here ahead of the usual summer hordes and masses, “full” means another half dozen campers. In fact, we have the entire south end of Ohana’s A loop to ourselves by lunchtime on Tuesday. Looking up or down, we can live with that. Either way, it’s magic.

More Later!

Chris and Kristine

Story ID:	602
Written by:	Kristine L. (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Travel
Location:	WA usa
Year:	2006