Wildflower Hiking

One of my favorite things to do now in the summer is to go wildflower hiking with my friend Lynn.  On Thursday we took another friend Diana, up to Logan Pass to celebrate her birthday; no flowers up there, just snow and goats!

Anna, Lynn, Diana at Logan Pass

Mountain goats are a unique feature of Glacier Park

 So we drove on down the road for a woodsy walk to some beautiful waterfalls and found some early blooms.

Glacier Lily and Pasqueflower

St. Mary's Falls

Foamflower--tiny!

On Friday, Lynn and I drove over to the east side of the park in her motor-home.  We hiked up to Iceberg Lake in hopes of finding a special variety of columbine that grows on the slopes above the lake.  On the way, the beargrass was spectacular and it was hard not to get diverted from our mission!

in this photo you can see better why it is called bear-grass

a new beargrass bud just beginning to open up--like little explosions!

Beargrass buds

So after a 5-mile hike to Iceberg Lake, we climbed up above the lake on a rocky scree-field to find our special flowers--Jones' Columbine is very blue and rare.  We found that our flowers had already bloomed and gone to seed! But they had hybridized with some yellow columbine to create some unique combinations that were just as beautiful.

above Iceberg Lake; we had to cross those snowfields down around the lake as well

Yellow center with blue wings

White centers with blue wings

Lynn took some photos of me taking photos and it gives you an idea of where we are--don't look Mom!

a bouquet of blue columbine above us...

...Iceberg Lake below us;
I am holding the camera and Lynn is pressing the shutter button!

We camped that night and slept right through a big rainstorm with lightning and thunder!  It was still raining the next morning so we took our time to get ready.  We drove back toward our next goal: finding bitterroot on the Firebrand Pass trail.  First we found wild hollyhocks along the roadside (and they looked so good with my new raincoat!).

Hurray! We found some very sweet pink flowers on a dry rocky hillside just as we had expected! (Actually they were in the same spot we had found them last year :-)

Bitterroot; Montana's State Flower;
notice no folliage, just stems coming right out of the ground.

 The weather had cleared off by the afternoon and we walked into some lovely meadows and aspen groves and found lots of flower gardens.

This is a big plant called Cow Parsnip; these flowers were literally at eye-level, 5-6 feet tall (2 meters).

HUGE mushrooms growing on the forest floor!

Meadows of geranium, aster and cinquefoil.

Warren is trying to reach his goal of 100 summits in Glacier Park this summer; he is currently somewhere in the 90's.  So he was off climbing peaks while Lynn and I searched for flowers.  He is climbing 3 more days this week and I hope to join him toward Thursday.  Hopefully that can be my next posting.  Hilsen!