Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Hike 2013.020 -- Hike to Henninger Flats


Hiked Sunday, April 7. Over two weeks ago, I hiked Henninger Flats. It was my first time up there this year, which seems just completely amazing, since it's usually among my most frequently-hiked paths. But I'm just not getting as much time for hiking as I have in past years, and I've been doing a larger proportion of the hikes I do take further afield than usual.

Plenty of descriptions on how to get here elsewhere, so I won't bother with any description, except to say it's about a 100 minute roundtrip hike if I'm just walking, and closer to two hours if I stop for lots of pictures. On this day, it was closer to two hours.

The two-hour mark is important, because if you park on Pinecrest on a weekday, you're limited to two hours parking. You can't park there at all on weekends. At least you can't park legally, although the last time I was there, there were about five illegally parked cars right near the gate, and none of them had tickets. So how rigorously is this parking restriction enforce? I have no idea. And I don't tempt fate.

Not a lot of flowers along the trail, because it's been a dry winter and spring. The one exception was the trees within a U-shaped bow in the trail. Another was near the top, where the wall held many lupine, and fair amounts of chia, sunflowers, vetch, and assorted other flowers. They were quite dense there compared to elsewhere.

It's about 5.5 miles roundtrip from Pinecrest, with a pretty substantial altitude gain. The whole way is either paved (the first 1/8 mile, until you cross the bridge) or a dirt road, as wide as a two-lane road.

There's one small area with a bunch of daisies. I'm pretty sure they were planted there after the road was reopened following a multi-year closure. The daisies are slowly expanding each year.

Canterbury bell are common.

Sage, too, of course.

Don't recognize this flower.

Lupine, of course.

Common vetch. Sometimes, they're kinda purple. Sometimes, they're kinda red.

Sunflower, but they also call the petals a corona, I think. See how that ties into astronomy?

3 comments:

  1. The one you said you can't tell what it is, is red clover.

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  2. The one you have as common vetch, is purple vetch. :)

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  3. Thanks. I thought the colors were just variations of the same plant; didn't know they had separate names!

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