NORTHBOUND NINE: FORESTS & FIREWEED

The forest looks on

colors, noise, creatures busy

the forest looks on

Studying trees was not our plan, yet we recognize that the forests play a key role in the tapestry of the nature we crave. Living in a subtropical climate, it is grounding to be surrounded by these quiet noble entities on the continent. We enjoyed the all variations along our path.

Most of our campgrounds were chosen in parks founded to preserve the diversity of forest ecosystems.

Elk Falls Provincial Park, Vancouver Island

We experienced several different forest climates. The Pacific Northwest is Temperate Rainforest distinguished from Temperate Forest found in the Central Rockies of the US and Canada. The Boreal Forest is the sub-arctic forest that circles the top of our globe.

Pacific Northwest: Temperate Rainforest

Rainforests are the earth’s oldest living ecosystems. The Pacific Northwest is defined by its being Temperate Rainforest. Coastal mountain ranges block the moist air coming off the Pacific, causing enormous rainfall. It lies along the northwest US, and along western Canada. Amazingly, it also extends narrowly along the Pacific border of SE Alaska. This is a fact that only slowly dawned on us; we spent a great deal of time in rainforest. Of course, this coastal habitat subdivides with latitude.

Temperate Rainforest: Seasonal

The seasonal section includes Coastal Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and most of Vancouver Island. The forests are made up of (to name a few) Redwoods, Western Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir, Bigleaf Maple, and Western Hemlock. Significant presence of heavy mosses and ground covering ferns help host the myriad life-forms of the forests.

California Redwood Zone

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, CA

Olympic Zone

Olympic National Park protects massive wet wilderness, major valleys, and great heights. Taken from Hurricane Ridge, the rainforest meets the Salish Sea below.

Olympic rainforest

Classic moss and maple

Quinault Rainforest

Tallest Sitka Spruce in the world

55’7” circumference

17.68’ diameter

191’ height

Vancouver Island, BC

Bigleaf Maple, Miracle Beach

Coastal Redwood, Miracle Beach (note Gil at base)

Nurse logs are common but this is a nurse stump!

Qualicum Beach Heritage Forest. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the town bought this old growth forest when a private estate was being dismantled. What a wise and wonderful decision.

Qualicum Heritage Redwoods

Goldstream Provincial Park is less than an hour from metro Victoria, but you’d never know it. The park hosts Maple, W. Red Cedar, Douglas Fir, W. Hemlock, W. Sword Fern, Coastal Redwood; classic Pacific Northwest.

Arbutus Trail, Goldstream

Arbutus or

Pacific Madrone

Temperate Rainforest: Perhumid

The perhumid, or wettest, coastal zone is known as Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. It includes the north end of Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii, and adjacent coastal Canada up to Alaska. It is made up of islands and a coast laced with deep inlets. In places it is so remote and dense, the Sasquatch have been able to elude humans for eons. Recommended read: In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond by John Zada

Johnstone Strait, between upper Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland.

Great Bear Rainforest (in the rain)

Knight Inlet

Hiking on the Butze Rapids Trail outside of Prince Rupert on Kaien Island. We enjoyed the great and small.

Dawn Redwood

Haida Gwaii

Western Red Cedar. Growing since post ice age, this cedar was/is favored material for dugouts and other goods.

Sitka Spruce, another major source material over millennia.

If the trees could tell stories.

Recommended read: The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant

Temperate Rainforest: Subpolar

Once over the coastal Alaskan border, it is considered sub-polar but still rainforest. Tongass National Forest begins north of Canada’s Great Bear. The 17 million acres extends 500 miles along the very narrow panhandle coast. This is the largest US National Forest. These coastal rainforests provide year-round ice-free harbors.

Hyder, AK, the southernmost edge of the Tongass Forest

Titan Trail north of Hyder, AK

Skagway, AK

Even as I write this, it is amazing that we were hiking in rainforest in Alaska and yet the review of it here is so obvious!

The Chugach National Forest (second largest) continues over another 200 miles. The narrow edge of land skirting Prince William Sound and Kenai Peninsula is also rainforest.

The verdant green forest before it backs into the alpine climate above.

Harbors large and small are kept from freezing because of the rainforest climate. The famous pipeline uses the Valdez Marine Terminal for storing and loading crude oil to be shipped out, as well as the small boat harbor we toured from. (See Ch 6).

Port of Valdez, a natural fjord in the Chugach

Seward, on Kenai Peninsula, also features an ice-free harbor for fishing and tours. Logan Point, just past Seward, is clearly dense rainforest.

Temperate Rainforest: Inland

Apparently, the only place in the world where an inland rainforest occurs is in lower BC and Idaho’s panhandle. The Pacific air manages to flow over lower mountains and snowmelt, rather than rain, provides the moisture. This wet-belt runs N-S and either side of it, the dry area is fire-prone.

Maple trees, Terrace, BC

Douglas Fir, Cultus Lake BC

Wells Gray Provincial Park

Hemlock and Cedar, these trees age into old growth (+200 years), while other trees arrive and disappear over time.

With any rainforest comes lots of water. There are over 40 named waterfalls along the Wells Gray corridor. (I might add, this is where we hiked with face netting over our hats for the bugs. Rather than looking ridiculous to other hikers, most came up and asked where they could buy them!)

Helmcken Falls, the most famous

Second Canyon

Moul Falls Trail, an obviously rich ecosystem from the tallest trees to the forest floor.

Dogwood

Bailey's Chute

Hiding in the handrail

Temperate Forest

The Continental Divide is the boundary between BC and Alberta. This range stops the Pacific effect, leaving the inland rainforest behind.

Crossing over to Jasper, AB

This scrubby understory is so different from rainforest; no ferns, no maples, no moss. This is moose country. We did this hike in 2022.

Maligne Lake, AB

Unfortunately, we did not get to return because Maligne road was taken out during an uncharacteristic late heavy snow in June 2023. We saw hundreds of bent and broken trees throughout the area from the very wet snow.

The pine beetle that decimated lodgepole-pine forests in the US Rockies, has made its way north and continues its damage. Most Jasper campgrounds had to clear-cut the dead trees. We stayed at Wabasso in 2022 and 2023 partly because the grounds still had some trees.

Dead lodgepole pine at Wabasso Campground, Jasper

Update: In July 2024, one year after we were last there, the entire National Park and the town of Jasper were evacuated for the worst fire in 100 years.

Logging

How logging companies view old growth forests. These trucks were headed north at various points on the Cassiar Hwy, possibly for Prince Rupert to be exported.

Recommended read: Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, Canadian scientist. This is a study of the benefits of diversity within the forest.

Boreal Forest

Once we were even further North, we crossed into boreal forest rather than temperate forest. Boreal refers to the Greek god of the North Wind. Boreal Forests are also called the Taiga, a Russian word. Since the Boreal is frozen 6-8 months of the year, it is sometimes referred to as the snow forest.

The Boreal is the world's largest biome (a specific climate that spans continents and is made up of many ecosystems.)

White Poplar, Yukon

I find it hard to tell Poplar from large Aspen, most of the time; both tall white barked trees with small, loose, trembling leaves. They are in fact, closely related.

Quaking Aspen, Yukon

Aspen forest, Matanuska, AK

The forest floor, Matanuska

Crowberry

Lingonberry

Blueberry

Black Spruce – strange tall, narrow trees all over Alaska

Mixed Boreal, Portage, AK

Paper Birch (layers of bark missing), Lake Lucille, AK

Paper Birch, Fairbanks, AK

White Spruce and Fir, Fairbanks, AK

Lawyer’s Wig fungi (drip black as they age) Yukon

White Spruce, Yukon

The very strange Black Spruce, Yukon

If it is not obvious already, forest life is very dependent on fungi. What makes the forest an ecosystem are the myriad interdependent lifeforms, both visible and invisible to the human eye.

There are many amazing video clips on the connectivity between underground fungi and trees. Check out the Wood Wide Web.

Recommended Netflix movie: Fantastic Fungi

***

FIREWEED

Purple petals fall

spiral seeds fly, laughing

over red tundra

The lovely fireweed. This is the poster-child.

Our road trip afforded us countless hours of roadside wildflowers. In fact, we kept an especially keen eye looking for the wildlife that eats them non-stop. Not just deer and elk, but bears love eating flowers!

A nice mix of yellows, whites, orange and purples; maybe even some fireweed.

Fireweed's wispy nature belies their true strength. They are the first plant to follow a fire as their roots are quite deep allowing them to survive. By immediately coming up, they mitigate the erosion that too often is a consequence of fire.

Not just fire, they were the first to sprout up in London after the blitz. Brits call the plant Bombweed!

Arctic Fireweed near Salmon Glacier (a very short variety that tolerates extreme cold).

I admit getting fixated with this iconic little plant. I am not alone. One of the longhouses in the village at 'Ksan is named for it while all the others are named for their animal crests. (See Ch10). The indigenous population used/use it for medicine, both internally and externally.

Fireweed House, 'Ksan Village

Reaching the end of the blooming cycle, a few petals remain at the top with the spikey seed pods lining up below.

My Enigma

A few years ago, I had seen a photograph of the Alaskan tundra covered entirely in dark red; the piece was called Fireweed. It stuck with me. Nothing I was seeing however, was anywhere near red tones. Probably misremembering, I kept searching them out.

At last, in Denali I had the answer to the riddle of the red tundra. After the flowers open, then drop, from the bottom up, the seed pods get ready to burst. The green leaves at the base of the plant turn a deep, almost burgundy, red. When the flower stem falls away, the remaining red leaves cover the ground.

These show every stage: a few each of the blossoms, the pods, the seeds unfurling, and the autumn red leaves (lower left).