Catherine Creek and Balfour-Klickitat Trail

[sprengers4jc]

We heard that there were grass widows springing up in eastern Washington. Normally, these flowers grow beginning in mid-March. I haven't felt the best this past week but felt I had enough energy for 4-5 easy miles of hiking. So off we went to the one place that we would be guaranteed to see grass widows if they were growing: Catherine Creek. We hiked to the Natural Arch and beyond and saw three of them. But it was the lower loops on the bluffs that yielded a few dozen of them growing. Spring is here! OK, not quite but it's fun to think about anyway. We also wanted to see the eagles we had heard about along the Klickitat River, so we headed there. We saw two bald and one golden eagle above the river. Overall, it was a great day and we logged about 4.5 miles total.

[BrianEdwards]

Nice little waterfall down in that canyon. More water then I would've expected

[sprengers4jc]

Thanks, Brian. We did this trail last year in mid-April and the water flow level looked identical this time, which I found weird since it's been such a dry winter overall.

[Ron Goodwin]

The round thing is an Osage Orange from the row of trees and a few scattered ones at Balfour-Klickitat. There is a good information sign there by the rest rooms that explain what they are and their use as fence rows in the Mid West where they came from. They are strange looking things.
On Thursday we saw 7 bald eagles on the delta in the Columbia, 5 at the end of the B-K trail and 6 up the Klickitat River which we hiked. From what the experts said at The Dalles Dam there should not be any Golden Eagles here, just immature bald eagles as it takes about 4 years to get the white tail and head.
Almost every year someone finds grass widows at Catherine Creek in January but they really are out in great numbers in March.

[sprengers4jc]

Ron, thank you for your reply. That is all great information to know. But now you ruined my idea that Spring is coming early because of the Grass Widows!

Ah, well. I guess Punxsutawney Phil beat us all to it anyway .

[drm]

The water supply for these creeks and waterfalls is very close by. So it is due to the rain in the last week really, with local seepage.

[sprengers4jc]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks, Dean!

[Jesse]

Forecast for the Catherine Creek area this week is for highs around 20 and lows in the single digits. We are still far from spring. I wonder how the grass widows will fare in that weather?

I live in Stevenson and we are expecting 50-75mph east winds out here by Wednesday, with wind chills below 0F.

February is most certainly a winter month!


http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/warnings.php?wf ... 0Statement

[Lekilei253]

Great tr! I headed out there today, in spite of the wind it was a beautiful day!