Hike leaders Rachel Freifelder and Lo Goldberg are the main guides today, with Rachel studied fire ecology as a graduate student at Stanford University. However, she's too soft-speaking, and didn't offer any new info wrt forest fire or recovery. Lo speaks clearly and is a good organizer. She prefers to be referred to as they, which is quite a confusing pronoun to be used on one person. I found that Zak Weinstein of the Native Plant Society of Oregon is most knowledgable. Mia from Bark is also outspoken and enthusiastic. 30 is a large group on a narrow trail.The highlight today is the endemic Clackamas Iris. Quite a number of them, right by the trail. Another highlight is the one and only White Shooting Star near the river. fern with 2 kinds of leaves is interesting. Most common is Frigecup and Tolmiea Menziesii. The rest of the outing is somewhat boring, because we had to wait around a lot.
End of the outing is writing letters to the local forest ranger, expressing our wish of not developing more roads and cuts in this area. Where we sat to write letter has a pool with 4 newt. Kids were having fun here. We had one mother with her two unwilling kids on this trip.
Went to Ridgefield NWR for sunset. Saw 4 deer, 1 heron, 2 bittern, 1 owl (a highlight), 6 coypu (nutra), 1 rabbit, a few red-winged black birds. The gate is supposed to close at 8:30pm, so can not wait till sunset. I didn't want to test the accuracy of the sign.
