Tiffany Mountain Roadless Area

Index to the other Roadless areas in the Western Okanogan National Forest

Selected campfire stories from this area from Lost and Forgotten - A Trail Guide to Roadless Area Hikes and Vistas in Western Okanogan County

Tiffany Mountain, RA 429

Tiffany roadless area is a botanical wonderland, complete with two official Botanical Areas: Tiffany and Roger Lake. Tiffany Mountain is an alpine bald, which is to say it is rounded and bare, and quite unlike the subalpine krumholz parklands North Cascadians are more familiar with. The peak also sports commanding vistas of the North Cascades, and is readily recognized from the west as a rounded, gray-green knob. Tiffany is gray-green from a distance, due to its specialized, turf-like flora, which is dominated by foot-tall stands of grasses, dainty forbs, a nearly continuous carpet of mosses, and a display of ground-hugging lichens colored in the soft tones of an Andrew Wyeth painting. In Preliminary Notes on the Lichens of Roger Lake and Vicinity (1993), Bruce Ryan aptly put it thus: "The most striking aspect of the lichen vegetation is probably the well-developed flora on soil and moss, which is represented by diverse and luxuriant patches of Cladonia and Peltigera species, but also by extensive mats of Solorina crocea and various crustose species. . .".

Eventually all seasoned visitors to the North Cascades make it here and notice this is not at all like the North Cascades. Like adjacent Twentymile roadless area, the terrain is marked by low, rolling forested slopes punctuated by wetlands and meadows.

Roadless Area Map of this area (data from Pacific Biodiversity Institute).