The Fryingpan Fifty

How many wildflowers can be seen on a stroll at Mount rainier? Let’s count among a rainbow of colors

- ANDY DAPPEN

It’s known as one of Mt. Rainier’s most spectacular hikes. Some love it for the in-your-face views of The Mountain, others for the diversity of terrain visited as you gradually climb from lush old-growth into barren lands above timberline.

The description of wildflowers, however, catches my attention.

The hike along Fryingpan Creek to the old stone structure at Summerland and beyond to the high pass at Panhandle Gap is described as a walk through a carpet of wildflowers or a stroll through a rainbow of colors.

For people like me who often walk as far or as fast as possible, this hike might be a lesson in slowing down to smell the flowers.

Rather than racing through the area, my wife and I decide we will amble up to Panhandle Gap identifying wildflowers. In fact, finding 50 different wildflowers has such a nice ring to it that this becomes our quest.

On a day in mid-August last year when the wildflowers are exploding in the high-country, we go in search of the Fryingpan 50.

The initial two miles through old-growth forests of Douglas firs, cedars and hemlocks are dark. Relatively little light hits the forest floor and the understory is sparse.

Among the dead logs and duff are the green leaves of Western trillium, queen’s cup, Canadian dogwood, vanilla leaf and pathfinder. All of these plants have bloomed earlier in the summer so we cannot claim them as flowers.

But identifying flora without flowers takes even more knowledge of the plant, so I give us a half-point for each of these finds.

In the dark forest, we do see twinflower and false Solomon seal blooming. We also use our guide, Wildflowers of Mount Rainier, to identify three bloomers that are new to us — a diminutive saxifrage named foamflower, an orchid with a rattle-like head named rattlesnake plantain, and a heath family member that is oddly lopsided named one-sided wintergreen.