Bitterroot Trail

Ater our hike at the Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area, we did the short drive to the Wild Horse Wind Farm to check out their Bitterroot Trail to see if the bitterroot and cacti were in bloom. This is a short trail next to the visitor center, about 1 mile round trip with 150 ft of loss/gain. We saw bitterroot blooming on the lower half of the trail and one basalt cactus in bloom along with other wildflowers. Nice color along the trail!

We also had distant views of Mt Adams, Mt Rainier and the Goat Rocks

Some of the bitterroot we saw in bloom

A budding basalt cactus and a blosssom on a basalt cactus

Other wildflowers seen along the trail

Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area

We drove to the Corrals Trailhead at the Whiskey Dick Unit of the Wenas Wildlife Area, hoping to hike up to the ridge where I heard the bitterroot and cacti were in bloom along with other wildflowers. When we reached the parking area there was a road work going on in the parking lot and we discovered this route was closed for road work. We were informed the next trailhead was open, so we continued to the Pumphouse Road Trailhead. The Pumphouse Road is a green dot road which was now open to motorized vehicles, so a short distance up the road, we turned off onto a little used foot trail. This trail ultimatley joins the road that was closed, so we hiked out 2.5 miles before turning around. This trail did not go up to the ridge, but we enjoyed the rolling hills and wildflowers that were in bloom. It was very windy making close up photos of the flowers a bit challenging.There were many pygmy horned lizards on the trail, we had to be careful not to accidently step on them. Overall our trip was 5 miles round trip with 500 ft of gain.

Zooms of one of the pygmy horned lizards we saw, a gopher snake and two butterflies

some of the wildflowers we saw this mornng