Hike Up Starrigavan Ridge

On Tuesday Paul asked if I wanted to go hiking on Wednesday and I said yes, so I met at his place the next day and we went down and caught the bus out to the ferry terminal. From there we walked down Nelson logging road to the trail head. We walked up the trail to where the first part of the Starrigavan landslide washout. We then need to get off the trail a little bit because the washout destroyed the trail. We had to walk across rocks and logs in some places and jump across other parts of the creek to get to a large part of the landslide washout. We hung out in there for a bit looking at and taking pictures of things that were growing on the gravel bars. After we had spent about 15-30 minutes there I continued up the washout until we got to where we could get back on the trail. We walked up the trail a ways until we got to a trail that split of from the one we were on and went to Eagle Dip Lake. We walked down the other trail stopping once and a while to take photos of different Fungi. We eventually made it to the lake about noon and had lunch there while we looked around.

Once we were done eating we headed back the direction we had come but we did not go back down the trail. We continued past and went up a way Paul had not gone before. It was not all that bad, we found a fairly well used trail and followed it up to tree line. On our way up we stopped and took photos of some fungi then continued on. We eventually got to a little meadow just below tree line. I had a lot of ferns in it. There were also a lot of sparrows in it, all of the ones that I saw were either Lincoln’s, Fox or Golden-crowned. We took photos of the meadow then continued up into it to see what was there. One of the thinks we were looking for while we were up there was a Moonwort. While we were there in the meadow I saw a plant I did not recognize and I pointed it out to Paul. We thought it was a Moonwort. It turned out it was a Leathery Grapefern but if was find I had never seen one of them before either.

We walked a bit further then we got to tree line. As we got to tree line Paul said there were two deer up on the hillside. It took me a few moments but I did eventually see one as it ran away. We walked up into the alpine more and looked around there a bit before heading up to the ridge. While we were there we saw several Parsley-ferns and other things. We then went up to the ridge and stated walking up the ridge. From the ridge I could see into Katlian bay and valley and I could see a water fall in Katlian valley. We walked up the ridge towards the summit on our way up there looking for a Moonwort that had been seen in the area. We got to the summit with out seeing it. After we got to the summit we started heading down the other side then decided to go to the lake that was below it so we walked down a fairly steep section to the lake. On our way to the lake we came across a patch of Mountain blueberries so we stopped and picked until we had our empty water bottles full of berries then we headed down to the lake. We spent a few minutes at the lake then started down towards the “main” trail that most people use to get to the lakes. We got to the trail and started down it. After we had been going down it for a while we started jogging down it. I took us about half hour 45 minutes to get back to the road. We had planned to catch the bus back to town but we just missed it so Paul made a phone call and a friend came out and got us and took us back to town.

I really enjoyed doing that hike and would be happy to do it again.