INSIDE OUR PARKS Washington’s National Park Fund will hold its annual fundraiser auction May 11. Proceeds from the event will support programs and events at Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks.
The event will be held at The Mountaineers Program Center, 7700 Sand Point Way N.E., Seattle.
The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with a social hour and silent auction. Dinner will be at 6:30 p.m. followed by a program titled “Gifts in Action at Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic National Parks.” The evening concludes with a live auction.
Individual tickets are $100 and $125 after April 30. A table for eight is $800 or $1,000 after April 30. Tickets can be purchased online at brownpapertickets.com/ event/225005.
For more about the fund, go to wnpf.org.
LATE WINTER FUN
While the snowplay area is shut down and guided snowshoe walks are over for the season, there is still plenty of snow to enjoy at Paradise.
More snow early last week raised the total snow on the ground to 231 inches, 134 percent of normal for this time of year.
Mount Rainier Park visitors can still snowshoe on their own, and there are plenty of places to ski, cross-country ski and snowboard.
Check with the Longmire Museum at 360-569-6575 for road and snow conditions, or the Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center at Paradise (360-569-6571) on weekends.
The situation is similar at the Hurricane Ridge area of Olympic National Park. There are 159 inches of snow at Hurricane Ridge. Call 360-565-3131 for a 24-hour road and weather recording.
While the legal requirement to carry chains expired April 1, staffers at both parks recommend having them for traveling in the mountains.
ONLINE WILDFLOWER MAP
Once all that snow melts, folks will be wanting to head to the mountains to check out wildflowers. To help with that, the U.S. Forest Service has updated its online wildflower map with hundreds of locations in national forests for prime wildflower viewing. The website is at fs.fed.us/wildflowers/viewing/index. php.
The wildflower map includes 317 wildflower viewing areas, including 15 in Washington, on national forest lands. Information can be referenced by specific states, individual national forests and geographic regions. There are 15 sites in Washington on the map, including Tatoosh Ridge in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Mount Ellinor Trail in the Olympic National Forest.
A narrative for each location describes the viewing area’s botanical habitat, the types of wildflowers that can be found by season, and recommendations for the best time of year to visit. Information on safety advisories such as animal habitats, clothing recommendations, insect or plant cautions, and traffic and parking tips are included. Directions to the site, the closest town and contacts for more information are also offered.
The map is part of the agency’s “Celebrating Wildflowers” website which includes more than 10,000 plant images and information about the aesthetic, recreational, biological, medicinal, and economic values of native plants.
Jeffrey P. Mayor: 253-597-8640 jeff.mayor@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/adventure
