Wildflower updates, 2007

[Bryan Pezman]

Originally Posted by Joshua Hardin

I was in RMNP on Saturday and several lupine and what appeared to be purple penstemons on the road to Bear Lake. There was some chiming bells and paintbrush along the river on the trail to Dream Lake. Up on Trail Ridge there were a couple alpine sunflowers and some sky pilot at the Forest Canyon Overlook but they were not prolific. Sky pilot is pictured above.

Looks like things are about to peak up there Joshua! I'm hoping the Utah fires dont make it too smokey for the area. Have you seen any lupine or columbine up at the park?

[Joshua Hardin]

Yea, the haze lately has been nastily cloaking some mountain views. I guess on the bright side it's also made for some interesting red colors during sunsets and sunrises. The rain today should help. I haven't been to RMNP over the past week, but rumor has it there are some scattered columbine on Trail Ridge.

Last weekend I hiked to Shrine Ridge near Vail. Things are looking very nice there: The paintbrush growing from the stumps along the trail look as good as last year and the ridge with the view of Mt. of the Holy Cross looks much, much better than last year with a lot more lupine, aster, alpine sunflower and paintbrush. I'm planning to head up there again and will post something later. All we need is the haze to decrease sometime in the next few days.

[Joshua Hardin]

Here is a snapshot of Shrine Ridge from Saturday to go with my post above and show the current conditions.

[Scott Bacon]

Looks nice! :-)

[Mel Ladewig]

I posted on RMNP recently about Cloyses Lake July 5-7. One thing I didn't expand on was the flowers up there. The flowers were very nice. Perhaps not for their density, but for the variety we found. We saw paintbrush in Red, Orange, Pink, Salmon, Purple, Magenta, White and Yellow along the trail to Pear Lake. My wife pointed out a very nice patch of columbine and there was a large variety of other forest and alpine wildfowers. The bog flowers were coming along nicely including lots of elephant head in large clusters. This wasn't like an Ice Lake basin or Yankee Boy, but the flowers were still excellent.

forest flowers


alpine paintbrush, buttercups and others.

[Mike McCombs]

Up on Fall River Road near timberline there are quite a few pristine looking columbines to be found everywhere. Along with not-so-pristine mosquitos! Bring your best repellent if you go there.

[Mel Ladewig]

Originally Posted by Mike McCombs

Up on Fall River Road near timberline there are quite a few pristine looking columbines to be found everywhere. Along with not-so-pristine mosquitos! Bring your best repellent if you go there.

The mosquitoes have been fierce everywhere this year.

Mel-

[David Deitemeyer]

The paintbrush seems to be doing really well this year. I have also found some good pockets of columbines close to Colorado Springs, though they are like over their peak now.