A Driving Tour of the Siskiyou Crest

    The mountain view from the Dutchman Peak fire lookout above the Applegate watershed of the Siskiyou Crest stretches three hundred and sixty degrees around the peak. Slowly a small group of ardent Applegaters encircled the lookout

 as Luke Ruediger, who had invited us on this driving tour of the Siskiyou Crest, named the peaks, pointed out the watersheds, showed the connections between them, identified which parts were protected, which forests were in the hands of commercial interests, which were public lands, and how increased protections would make a connectivity for wildlife, recreationists, and other dwellers and users of these lands. The map of the Siskiyou Crest and surrounding areas was alive before me.

   And how beautiful it was, that circle of mountains with its jumble of peaks and valleys and the knot of mountains where the Klamath Siskiyous meets the Cascade Range at Mt. Ashland. 

    Dutchman Peak was the first stop on this driving tour on back roads, country roads, mountain roads, and increasingly rough roads. As we walked from the gate at Observation Gap up the gravel road to the lookout, Suzie Savoie, co-tourguide, named wildflowers for us—fleabane, owl clover, wild buckwheat, bee balm, yarrow, balsam, scarlet gilia, Oregon sunshine, the Applegate's very special split-hair paintbrush, and, with special reverence, Henderson horkelia, which grows in eight places in the world, seven of which are in the Siskiyous.  

    Several redtail hawks circled around Dutchman Peak. A kestrel landed in a tree further down the slope above Silver Fork, which was named, we were told, for a man named Silvee, corrupted into Silver, who lived at Donomore Meadow, where we stopped later in the day. The largest spread of mules' ears Suzie knows of in the Siskiyous (and Suzie knows her flowers!) massed at one end of the meadow, which then dropped a level to stretch to the distant forest beyond and the Pacific Crest Trail in that forest. 

    We were on the Siskiyou Crest itself. We drove through hemlock forests and Shasta red firs, broke the trees into more overlooks of the Siskiyous on both the Applegate and the Klamath sides. We could see the Red Buttes Wilderness Area, Preston Peak, Scraggy Peak, Kangaroo, Humpy Mountain and Grayback Mountain (between which I live), and numerous other peaks. For a brief period, when the smoke lifted, we caught a glimpse of magnificent Mt. Shasta. We were in the forests of the Siskiyous and viewing the wonderland of its watersheds. We stopped to view rare wildflowers: Jaynes Canyon buckwheat and Douglas's buckwheat, in addition to the aforementioned split-hair paintbrush and Henderson's horkelia. 

Stopping to view split-hair paintbrush on Dutchman Peak

We drove on narrow roads through deep canyons, where rock cliffs loomed above us and massive evergreens stuck roots into the soil so the trunks could rise vertically as the earth slanted sharply beneath them to unseen depths at the bottom of the canyon. Our road was a narrow shelf cut into that canyon wall. We also drove through acres of house-tall mullein and masses of thistles on land owned and logged by Fruit Growers Supply. It was sobering to contemplate that this ruined land is what these other forests would look like if they were sold to timber interests. 

    Home again, my head was aswirl as I tried to grasp the momentousness of what I had seen. These are the Siskiyous, my mountains. This is the home of rare plants found in few other places in the world. This is the home of the raptors and butterflies I had seen that day, of the Pacific fisher that only the front car on our five-car caravan was lucky enough to see, of the bears, cougars, bobcats, ringtail cats, and numerous other fauna species I have seen at my home. These are the Siskiyous, my mountains, which I had seen that day from a different, entirely encompassing perspective. These are the rare and beautiful Siskiyou Mountains.

    I love my mountains.

(Above photo by Liza Crosse. All other photos by Suzie Savoie)