After spending some time hiking the plateaus searching for wildflowers, I decided to see what I could find in a more forested hike. I chose to check out Cape Horn mostly because it’s only about 45 minutes from my house and the wildflower reports were awesome. I was not disappointed. I’ve never seen delphinium that were 4ft tall let hundreds and hundreds of them!
The trail winds up the gorge for about 800 feet, but the many switchbacks and many photo stops along the way make it very easy. The trail is in great shape and just a really pleasant experience. The whole trail funs about 7 miles, I only did a couple miles, but the flowers were awesome. I could not get enough of these aliens….I mean Fragrant Fringecups. They come in several different shades of red and also plain white.
I never got a shot that I was proud of showing the multitude of the huge delphinium, so here is a closeup of the flower. It’s full name is Poison Larkspur, Delphinium trolliifolium and as the name says, if you were to eat enough of the blossoms you could die. Note to self, don’t eat stuff in the forest that you don’t know about!
There was a great assortment of flowers to photograph along the trail and that is why it took me almost 2 hrs to hike about a mile. No really it was the photographing and not the walking!
While I was walking I was kind of looking for mushrooms and I found this snail doing his snail thing. And there was a patch of light on a moss covered log about 2 feet from the snail and I am sure that was where it wanted to be. I’m very kind to nature and so I helped Mr. Snail over to the nice place in the forest. Fortunately, I also had a camera along and so I snapped a few images, you know to send it in to Good Samaratins anonymous.
The shy snail actually won the photography battle…I waited for 55 minutes to get a head shot, not happening. I guess it was so happy and content that it took a little nap. On the positive side of things, because I really wanted to get the snail shot I stuck around and it made me look much more closely to the things nearby and I found some really nice and really small wildflowers.
About the Cape Horn Trail
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The hiking peeps rate this one as moderate and I’d say my photographer walking with gear rating would be easy to moderate. My rating is on doing just the first couple of miles…but from I’ve read it the first part is the hardest part and it really was not that hard.
Oregon Wildflower Portfolio
I suppose I should actually make a Columbia Gorge gallery on my website, but in the mean time the photos from Cape Horn are living in my Oregon Wildflower portfolio. You can order prints or if you’d like to license the images for your personal needs, we can do that too! The Oregon Wildflower Gallery is…HERE.
Nature Photography Workshops
If you like what you’ve been seeing and reading perhaps you’d like to join me and Brenda Berry next year for a Waterfalls and Wildflowers photography workshop in the Columbia Gorge. You can read all about what we’ll be up to and register for this cool photography workshop on my Wildlife, Nature and Creative Photography Workshops page…HERE.
