A friend and I hiked the loop as described in the field guide https://www.oregonhikers.org/field_gui ... _Loop_Hike. I hoped to see some flowers and was not disappointed.
As it’s name suggests, the somewhat rare Clackamas Iris, Iris tenuis is only found along the Clackamas & Mollala rivers. While the Old Baldy trail is well used, the other connectors for this loop are not officially maintained and could use some more love. They are older, steeper than normal trails. That said, with care and gps we could easily follow them. There was evidence of maintenance on the White Iris trail but on sections you could not see your feet because of vegetation and the animal burrows made the ground uneven.
About 1/10 mi from the Old Baldy TH there is some large recent blowdown to navigate. Not much after that other than the normal occasional log to go over or under. On the return, we skipped the early blowdown by detouring to the road back to the TH for the last 1/10. You can see the road from the trail.
Saturday and we never saw anyone else on the trails all day. However, the gunfire we heard lasted all day. I should have known better than to come here on a weekend. The shooting was loud (like fireworks), and was carrying far up the hillside but I do not think we were ever very close. Annoying at first, I think I started getting used to it. And they did seem to break for lunch.
For a mostly forested hike this turned out to be a pretty good flower day. Plus, the one viewpoint had a four volcano view.
White Iris Bissell Loop 6/19/21
- Sugar Pine
- Posts: 182
- Joined: April 28th, 2017, 12:23 pm
Re: White Iris Bissell Loop 6/19/21
Thanks for the flower report. It is a nice hike to avoid crowds.
-
- Posts: 132
- Joined: April 24th, 2019, 8:04 pm
Re: White Iris Bissell Loop 6/19/21
Beautiful flowers. Too bad about the gunshots. That sort of clashes with the zen of the floral scene.