Ripe raspberries, ripe!

Who knew there was more than one variety of wild raspberry in Siskiyou County?  I thought this identification would be a slam dunk.  Nope.  At least three different varieties listed on CalFlora, but no records exactly where we found a large patch of raspberry on a back-country road west of Callahan.  Rubus what-ever-iss was ripe and ready for picking, though!

Another Toad Lake tour

We like to revisit places we've been before, often earlier or later in the season, or--really--just another year, because every trip is unique, every winter has more or less water, every summer more and more heat.  Catch the site on a different week and there will likely be a whole new palette of bloom and leaf, a variation in the bird chorus, an unexpected bee swarm or a green rattlesnake to see.

Our 2015 visit to Toad and Porcupine lakes, at the head of the middle fork of the Sacramento River, followed a lovely wet winter and featured an explosion of riotous wildflowers.  This trip took place only two weeks later in the year--after one of the driest years on record.  There were still plenty of flowers, and my favorite were these Epilobium siskiyouense, on the ridge saddle between the two lakes, in lean, rocky soils:

On top of the world in the Salmon Mountains

Back to Carter Summit and south on the PCT again, to find the headwaters of the South Fork of the Scott River and the wet meadows that line the trail there.  The view from the top is of a long, glorious, green slide down to Scott Valley.

There were still plenty of water crossings in late June, despite a perilously dry winter.  And at every water crossing, a dense green tunnel of ferns, tiger lilies, corn lilies, cow parsnip and angelica, columbine and aconitum, nine-bark and mountain maple.  Through it all flits hundreds of butterflies of all kinds.  

In the dry sections, coyote mint and scarlet gilia:

Cliff penstemon (mountain pride) and paintbrush in their neon glory: