A Climb to the Ridge

Friday, September 7, 2012

Friedrich Wilderness Park, Main Loop Trail

Today's photos:

Today I walked clockwise around the Main Loop Trail at Friedrich Wilderness Park. This is one of the more physically demanding, ADA level 4, nature trails in Bexar County. Just the fact that I am able to walk these trails at all, astounds me. According to the topographic map of the park, the trail ascends about 250 feet from an elevation of 1150 feet at the parking lot to the ridge of the main hill in the park at an elevation of 1400 feet.

This is the first of two sets of photos from this walk. I will post the second set, "Along the Ridge," on Tuesday. As I was doing the initial edit of the photos, I was a bit surprised to find that visually, there is an obvious difference between the two sets.

In this first set, two creatures are prominently featured, the first flora and the second fauna. The plant with the yellow flowers in the 4th and 7th through 10th photos is Lindheimer's Senna. Where gayfeather is a predominate fall blooming flower along the Leon Creek, Lindheimer's Senna predominates in the higher upland. This plant is named after Ferdinand Lindheimer who first identified it. Lindheimer is frequently referred to as the "Father of Texas Botany" and credited with the discovery of several hundred species of plants in Texas.

The last five photos in the series are of a rock squirrel. This was my first encounter in the park on my several walks there with a non-human mammal. I really did a double take when I first saw it, even though the park provides an ideal habitat for the squirrel. The vast majority of the parkland is away from the trails, so it is easy for the animals that live there to avoid human contact.