Hike of the Week: Ingalls Creek

I was lured to the east side of the mountains by the promise of sunshine, but it was a false promise. The sky was clear as I went into Cle Elem, but soon turned gray as I headed north over Blewit Pass. But I didn’t actually get rained on, so that was a victory. The area is interesting geologically. The North Cascades were formed by mini continents scraped off of the Pacific plate as it submerged beneath the continental crust. Most of the sea stacks out on the coast were actually formed in Hawaii and have made the slow trip north over many millions of years riding on the spreading sea floor. So if you want to go to really old Hawaii, but can’t afford the airfare, go out to Neah Bay, look at the rocks off of the coast and eat Indian fry bread with the Macaws. It’s a lot better than poi. Anyway, as the continents collide with each other magma flows up between them forming granite plugs called plutons. So Ingalls creek is formed along the fault line of one of these mini continent collisions. It is about sixteen miles long. The north side of the valley is granite and the south side is dirt and rock.

But that is all from Ingalls Lake. I started at the end of the valley walking up the relatively flat Ingalls Creek looking for wild flowers.

This is the second week I’ve gone looking for wild flowers. After last week where I came home and compared my pictures to the ones in the 150 common wild flowers of the North Cascades, I found I was on a hike filled with uncommon flowers. So this week, I took the book, but didn’t have much better luck. Makes you kind of wonder about the accuracy of eye witnesses at crime scenes. The hike started of with what looked like the common garden iris