The Colorado Rockies

 
Both in 2020 and 2021 the brother next to me and I backpacked in the Rocky Mountains west of Aspen, Colorado.  Last year we did part of the Four Passes Loop in the Maroon Bells.  This year we hiked to Cathedral Lake and Electric Pass and this year we each took a grandson along.  Neither trip was for the purpose of seeing native orchids but we did see a few, all of them familiar to me from the Pacific Northwest.

Platanthera dilatata var dilatata (Tall White Northern Bog Orchid)

Platanthera huronensis (Green Bog Orchis)

Platanthera x estesii (Estes Hybrid Rein Orchis)

Goodyera oblongifolia (Giant Rattlesnake Orchis)

Heliotrope Ridge

 

2020 has not been a good year for native orchids, mostly because of covid.  We have not been able to do the hiking we usually do and many of our hikes have been in areas that were not shut down but had few or no native orchids.  We did manage a hike in the North Cascades to Heliotrope Ridge near Mount Baker but saw only three orchids, a Twayblade, which we saw along the trail and two Platantheras, which we saw at the traihead in a boggy area.

 

Neottia cordata var. nephrophylla (Western Heart-leaved Twayblade)

Platanthera stricta (Slender Bog Orchis)

Platanthera dilatata var. dilatata (White Bog Orchis)

2017, A Missed Year

 

2017 was a missed year for us as far as native orchids were concerned. I was in the hospital four times from March through August and did not really start feeling better until January of 2018.

Back on March 22 I went in to emergency at the local hospital with what I thought and the doctors first thought was appendicitis. An abdominal drain was put in to drain off the expected infection with an appendectomy scheduled several weeks later. The abdominal drain, however, produced no signs of infection but rather a kind of mucous and I was sent on to a specialist in Seattle who diagnosed the problem as mucinous neoplasms of the appendix, basically a tumor of the appendix that was producing a mucous-like substance that would in time strangle my organs and that could also have been cancerous. I had surgery on May 9 and had my appendix, part of my colon, gall bladder, omentum and peritoneum removed and was in the hospital recovering until May 24th (15 days). Thankfully, there were no signs of cancer.

While recovering from the surgery at home I ended up back in the hospital the end of June with blood clots in left leg and in my lungs. After spending several days in the hospital and being prescribed blood thinners I was sent home again and began the recovery from that problem.

Then the beginning of August I was back in the hospital, first in Bellingham and then after being transferred, in Seattle, this time for an obstructed bowel, the result of scar tissue. That stay lasted a week before the obstruction cleared and again I was sent home and have been home since gradually regaining my strength.

As a result of the surgeries and lengthy recovery I retired and we moved to Spokane, Washington, to be near our handicapped son.

The only native orchids I photographed in 2017 were a couple of orchids in Hyalite Canyon, Montana, and Yellowstone National Park.  We went on a family vacation to the Black Hills in July while I was recovering from surgery and bloodclots and we took two of our grandchildren back to Washington with us for the rest of the summer, stopping in the area of Bozeman, Montana, for a few days.  My father grew up in that area.  We also went on to Yellowstone National Park with them before heading to Washington and I photographed a few orchids in both places.

Hyalite Canyon, Montana

Platanthera dilatata var. albiflora (White Bog Orchid)

Yellowstone National Park

Platanthera dilatata var. albiflora (White Bog Orchid)

Platanthera x estesii (Estes' Hybrid Bog Orchid)

Platanthera stricta (Slender Bog Orchid)

Piperia (Platanthera) unalascensis (Alaskan Piperia)

Spiranthes romanzoffiana (Hooded Ladies' Tresses)

Four Orchids in Sherman Pass

Traveling to eastern Washington, I did some hiking in the area of Sherman Pass in Colville National Forest.  I was looking for the Northern Twayblade, Neottia borealis, a plant I had seen many times in the Canadian Rockies and never here in Washington.  Using GPS coordinates given me by a friend, I found it at the peak of its bloom right along the trail, about a dozen plants and growing with it, the Early Coralroot, Corallorhiza trifida, though that was very nearly finished blooming.  Later, continuing my trip, I stopped along the road to photograph a large colony of the Stream Orchid, Epipactis gigantea, and some Sierra Rein Orchis, Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys, growing with them.  The star of the show, though, was the Listera, a first for me in Washington.

Northern Twayblade

Neottia borealis

Early Coralroot

 Corallorhiza trifida

Stream Orchid

Epipactis gigantea

Sierra Rein Orchis

Platanthera dilatata var. leucostachys