Selah Butte — Friday, May. 29, 2009

Central Washington > Yakima

We turned off State Route 821 (Yakima Canyon Road) onto Selah Springs Dr.and drove 3.2 miles to the parking area as described in Best Desert Hikes Washington by Dan Nelson and Alan Bauer. The last half of this road is very rocky, but driveable for most vehicles if driven slowly and carefully! After passing through the gate at 1.6 miles from 821 we were on BLM land. There were fields of "spent" large-headed clover which must have been beautiful in their prime! There were several Horned Larks perching on the sagebrush as we drove the road to the TH. The Hooker's balsamroot was also "spent", but we decided to walk north along the ridge to the first white pole to hopefully find some fresh flowers! At about 1/8 of a mile from the TH we were glad we had decided to walk as we began to see fields of thyme-leaved buckwheat and bitterroot.It was difficult to walk and not step on the bitterroot! How beautiful were these fields and the view down to the Yakima River! We hiked about 2 miles one way.The temperature was in the low 90's, but there was a breeze which made the heat tolerable! The bitterroot were just starting to bloom so should be good for 1-2 more weeks! We also saw, Oregon sunshine, pentstemon,thread-leaved phacelia,and Hooker's onion. We saw very few hedgehog cactus and their blooms were "spent".