Wildflower salvage kicks off construction at Suttle Lake

Forest Service workers salvaged wildflowers from a construction site at Suttle Lake.

Forest Service crews broke ground at Suttle Lake Resort last week, beginning a summer full of changes for the popular recreation area.

But crews were not building the new entrance road or helping with resort improvements. They were digging up and saving wildflowers and other native plants.

Construction of a new, safer entrance road to Suttle Lake Resort and Cinder Beach is set to begin in late June. The new road will pass through a shady conifer forest before crossing Lake Creek and entering the Suttle Lake resort area in the vicinity of the old Suttle Lake Guard Station.

The Environmental Assessment approving the project identified the need for extensive revegetation in trampled areas of the resort, campgrounds, and an old entrance road and required both plants and topsoil to be salvaged and saved for restoration use.

The Forest Service Job Corps crew from Curlew, Washington and Sisters Silviculture crew worked to salvage more than 100 plants including prince's pine, red flowering currant, wild rose, vine maple, and twinflower.

Crews had special permission to dig plants that are ordinarily illegal to transplant, such as lilies, trillium, solomon seal and lady's slipper orchids, to save them from being destroyed. Cuttings were even taken from a Pacific yew tree for rooting.

Plants were carefully potted into donated containers supplied by Dayton Lanphear of Sunny Days Nursery, who donated hundreds of pots for the project. Most of the plants were then transported to the new Sisters High School greenhouse and will be cared for by biology teacher Rima Givot and the Forest Service.

Curlew Crew members enjoyed their up close and personal encounter with Sisters wildflowers.

Crew member Ryan Hamilton watered each transplant carefully with buckets of water dipped from Lake Creek.

"I've learned about plants that live in the forest that you normally don't notice," Hamilton said. "I think the Rattlesnake plantain are really cool."

Robert Slebos was struck by the differences from Northern Washington forests.

"It was nice to see all kinds of neat looking plants that grow in the forests here in Sisters," he said.

Ryan Mullein was just glad to be here.

"This Oregon trip's been fantastic and today I learned about the root ball of plants," he said.

After most plants are removed, Suttle Lake Resort will begin stockpiling topsoil and upper duff layers to save organic compost and seeds called the "soil seed bank."

Contractors working for the Forest Service will then remove trees and start road construction. For more information call 549-7727.

Editor's note: Pajutee is the Sisters Ranger District Ecologist.