Today’s Walk – Beck Hill

May 1, 2025

I finally got somewhat caught up with garden and yard work and took a morning off for a short hike up Beck Hill, which is practically in my backyard. It’s a two-minute drive from my home to the access for the new Krestova Regional Park, and one of the trails through the parks leads to the hill, situated just north of Krestova.

This time of year there is still water in the small pond at the base of the hillside, and I found a couple of Barrow’s goldeneye ducks and a pair of mallards had made it their temporary home.

The morning light and the surrounding tall trees made for lovely reflections on the water.

As I started up the hill, I was happy to see the return of a wide variety of wildflowers: larkspur, desert parsley, Saskatoon, Oregon grape, woodland star, shooting star, blue-eyed Mary, balsamroot, death camas, pussytoes and paintbrush, among others.

A meadow of swale desert-parsley

The highly poisonous meadow death-camas

The view is not especially spectacular from here, but it gives a sense of the lay of the land, with the Goose Creek/Pass Creek valley and Mount Sentinel in the foreground and a few peaks of the Monashee Range in the distance. Most of the forest in the immediate foreground is in Krestova Regional Park, blocking the streets and homes of Krestova itself from view.

It seems to me that there has been a real decline in butterfly populations lately, so it was good to see at least a few had emerged.

A Stella orangetip butterfly (I think) perched on a woodland star blossom

One of the many delicate "blues" butterfly species

There were not a lot of birds to be seen, but I was able to capture two (not great, since they were so far away) images of a big bald eagle and a tiny calliope hummingbird - complete opposite ends of the spectrum, size-wise. The calliope is the smallest hummingbird in the Pacific Northwest area (according to my bird book).

Beck Hill (I have no knowledge about the origin of this name) has a combination of rocky outcrops, open meadows and patches of Douglas fir, lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest. This time of year, the meadows come alive with wildflowers, in a hurry to get their reproductive work done before the summer sun turns this south-facing hillside into a virtual desert.

Upland larkspur

Arrow-leaved balsamroot, with Saskatoon blossoms in the background

Few-flowered shooting star

It's great to have this small but rich enclave so close to home. It's only been the last few years that I've been exploring Beck Hill and surrounds, but I'll be returning often. I'm also grateful for the all local folk who advocated for and worked to bring about the establishment of the regional park. It's so good to know that this natural area is now protected from development and available for the enjoyment of the people.

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