Silver Star Mountain September 2022

Classic fall hike on the westside of the Cascades and a short hour from home. While the trail to the summit is not very aesthetic, its frankly an eroded logging road, the foliage was in its early autumn glory and the air was full of the sounds of fall: grasshoppers. The trail starts in fairly old stands of second growth Douglas fir and transitions to older stands of silver and nobel fir in its upper reaches. From the summit are clear views of the Cascade volcanoes, Rainier, St. Helens, Adams and Hood . Unfortunately on this day there was a fair amount of haze from Oregon and Washington wildfires.

The trail to Silver Star is located in the Yacolt Burn State Forest and Gifford Pinchot National Forest, the site of a major conflagration that burned 238,000 acres in 1902. Thirty eight people perished in the blaze that burned parts of Clark, Skamania and Cowlitz counties. Over 12 billion board feet of timber went up in smoke.

Fires as large as the Yacolt Burn, once rare, are now much more common due to climate change. If there is anything hopeful, its that the Yacolt State Forest demonstrates that the land is resilient and that in time the forest will recover.