June 7, 2013

Treks reveal distinctive forests of Cascade Mountains — with photo gallery

News and Information

In the course “Spring Comes to the Cascades,” students don’t just read about the forests of the Western Cascade Mountains – they hike and snowshoe through them.

Students loop measuring tape around tree trunk

Natalie Oppliger, Taylor Biaggi and Ryan Steele take measurements in an old-growth stand during a trek up Mount Si.Sandra Hines

Along the way they learn how climate, elevation, disturbances such as fire and insects and other factors shape the forests. Tom Hinckley, professor of environmental and forest sciences, originated the course 12 years ago and has taught it every year since, even now that he’s retired.

Students don’t just learn from Hinckley, but from each other as well. Part of the homework involves researching assigned topics and explaining about plants – from the diminutive avalanche lily to towering Pacific silver fir tree – and processes – such as how long-ago glaciers and volcanoes shaped the topography and how topography then influences soils, water and vegetation.

The class is offered through the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, part of the College of the Environment, but the graduate and undergraduate students enrolled this year were studying everything from human physiology to fisheries.

Your trusty UW Today reporter snapped photos and survived all three field trips, including the final journey in the Teanaway region near Cle Elum, where the 2.5-mile climb involved an elevation change of 2,400 feet. Half the climb was in snow. (O.K., so your reporter wasn’t intrepid enough to make it to top of Iron Peak. She didn’t want to risk a newspaper, or UW Today, headline saying, “UW undergraduates carry 59-year-old woman off mountain.”)

: Natalie Oppliger learns how to identify western hemlock foliage.

: Eboni Cooper and Eve Rickenbaker consider the difference between herb robert, an invasive plant, and bleeding heart, a native.

: Jamie Bass shows a core she collected from a tree to Kathleen Delos Reyes.

: Hiking a low-elevation western hemlock-Douglas fir forest on Mount Si.

: Matt Grund takes notes during a classmate’s report.

: Nicola Follis collects forest fungi.

: Ryan Steele measures the diameter of an old growth tree.

: Amaryillis Maynard and Matt Haack identify trees in an exercise taking forest measurements.

: Robbie Gread questions instructor Tom Hinckley about forest measurement techniques.

: Amaryillis Maynard learns to identify silver fir foliage.

: Kathleen Delos Reyes adds notes to her journal. Producing a journal of observations, homework assignments and data was a class requirement.

: Kathleen Delos Reyes sketches understory plants in her journal.

: Snowshoes were necessary for the trek through a mountain hemlock-Pacific silver fir forest near Snoqualmie Summit.

: Hilary Loya on snowshoes.

: Julie Hower adjusts her boots.

: Sandra Hines, intrepid UW Today reporter, snowshoes during the field trip near Snoqualmie Summit.

: In places on the way down, it was easiest just to sit and slide.

: Students were assigned fact sheets, like this one on the avalanche lily by Emily Chedek, that they then used to inform the rest of the class about plants and processes.