The final installment of Tom Ridge’s PCT photos to inspire you to get out and walk the trail begins with this image from Gomez Meadows. I had to look up Gomez Meadows before I could place it . . . on the Kern Plateau just north of Olancha Peak. Aided by my journal, I remember rounding the edges of this meadow on a frosty morning not far from the terrain featured in Vivian Reese Hill’s picture posted on March 21.
Sarcodes sanguinea, commonly called snow plant, is a strikingly beautiful, parasitic plant that derives sustenance and nutrients from fungi that attach to roots of trees. Lacking chlorophyll, the snow plant is unable to photosynthesize. For that reason, a symbiotic relationship exists between the snow plant and the fungus; the plant provides fixed carbon to the fungus and in return, the fungus provides mineral nutrients, water and protection from pathogens to the snow plant.
The plant’s above ground tissue includes a distinctive bright scarlet red flowers wrapped in many straplike, pointed bracts with fringed edges, themselves bright red to orange in color. The snow plant can be found as far north as the Cascades in the Umpqua River area.
Dry Creek Falls near Cascade Locks . . . as the trail itself also plunges down toward the Columbia River and the Bridge of the Gods. This is not on the Eagle Creek alternative but near the main PCT.