The weather we have been having lately here in the Pacific Northwest has not been super motivating for getting up into the mountains, particularly with the avalanche conditions that come with new, wet snow. It reminds me of the time we were down along the Columbia Gorge in December and the forecast was nothing but rain.
We spent the night at the Beacon Rock Campground where there are a couple of first come, first serve sites close to the boat launch. In the morning, the skies were grey but the rain was holding off. We could see that the surrounding cliffs of the river gorge were dusted with snow.
After ascending Beacon Rock, we had about two hours before our favorite place opened in Hood River so we drive up through Carson to check out the Wind River Arboretum for the first time. The rain grew more chunky as we made our way up the Wind River Valley and there was snow on the ground when we arrived at the trailhead about 11:30am.
The trailhead was not hard to find, there are signs for the arboretum along the road. Turning right into the parking area, there was about room for two cars right at the trail’s beginning next to the old forestry buildings and about room for 6 more scattered nearby.
We were greeted first by the large slice of Douglas Fir nestled under a shelter, so hard to imagine a tree that large! To the left was a sign for the arboretum flanked by two monkey puzzle trees.
From here, the trail is a little confusing as far as where to start as we could see four options: left, left center, right center and right. There was a map inside the Douglas Fir shelter that showed us the arboretum was a large main loop with several spur trails running through it so we opted to go right and stay on the outside of the loop at first.
All along the trail, there are grey posts with markers every 10 feet or so for the trees that were once planted in the logging experimental forest. The arboretum is also divided up into sections: pine, cedar, larches, etc. Most of the trees also had small silver “dog tags” that must have been how they kept track of them individually.
As it was winter, the deciduous trees were bare and the evergreens were covered in so much moss and lichen it was sometimes hard to identify the species. But it was fun to try and find all the trees named, some from all over the world like Poland, Japan, New Zealand, Austria, and Argentina. My forestry major hubby is awesome to have along when guessing trees!
It was obvious that they are doing trail work on the trail, it was wide and clear other than the thin layer of snow. On the back end of the loop, the widened trail began its loop back but another more brushy trail continued onto the “new plantings” section. At first we were wondering it we had left the arboretum altogether when it ran up against an old road, crossed a stream and there were no markers but it eventually did reconnect with the main trail to head back towards the trailhead. There was also a nice picnic table next to the stream we crossed that would make for a nice spot to snack.
Our favorites were, of course, the GIANT sequoias near the beginning/end of the loop. After seeing these, we could also see they were dotted around the government buildings, too. And on the “juniper” spur we found 3 really sad junipers which were defying nature with offshoots of new growth that were the only sign the trees had any life.
Overall, the trail made for a wonderful rainy day exploration and I would give lots of time for searching for the trees named on the markers and pondering at why they needed an entire experimental forest to learn that native trees will always grow better. The entire loop plus two crossings through came to just a mile so I imagine if you walked everything you might get to about 1.25 miles total. I can’t wait to go back in spring or summer and see it with all the leaves on the trees!
I have more information about the Wind River Experimental Arboretum on this page.
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