Saddle Mountain Natural Area

From a geology point of view, Saddle Mountain is an odd ball that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the coast range in NW Oregon. It's a volcanic basalt monolith that pushed up through the ancient ocean and then broke apart. Because of its mass, it endured the subsequent flooding era and now sits about twice as high as the rest of the coast range in this area.

West end of the saddle - note trail on right.

This makes it a superb environment for unique flora, especially at the higher elevations. The hike to the 3,283 foot summit in the Saddle Mountain State Natural Area is a popular, but challenging one that can be made almost any time of year. Of course, we chose this week (6/19/2014) to make the hike, as it is at the wildflower bloom peak. It was a near perfect day for it too: mild temperatures, mostly sunny, and hardly any wind. We were not alone, even on a Wednesday and saw about a dozen other hikers over the entire trail.

The 2.5 mile trail gains 1,603 feet on the way to the bare summit and is rocky and steep in many spots. It begins in lush Alder forest and proceeds up through old stands of Douglas fir and Sitka spruce before emerging onto open rocky slopes. There was still some small runoff coming down a couple of seasonal creeks, but otherwise lush in the forest and dry in the rocky grasslands. The summit affords great views of the Pacific, Young's Bay in Astoria, and several Cascade peaks to the east. Sadly, there are also numerous forest clear-cuts in almost every direction visible from the summit.

The trail starts out in a mature Red Alder forest.

Use this link to see the rest of our Saddle Mountain Hike Photos.

As for the flowers, we spotted many familiar woodland blooms on the way up, but the real "motherload" was in the rocky, exposed areas in the last 3/4 mile, where we saw a huge variety of blooming flora. We spotted at least a dozen new ones for us.

Here's a sampling of the nearly 75 different flowers seen. These are mostly new ones for us. For this post, I've added a third-party viewer to display the photos. If this does not work for you, let me know as it is kind of a trial run.

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