the wildflowers cometh

Here come the wildflowers!  While H was ridiculously busy Saturday morning - twelve mile trail run (his longest yet), lawn mowing, laundry and a short road ride (what the heck) - Milton and I had a repeat of our last weekend.  The dog and I got out of the house before 6 a.m. for our Dimple Dell loop.  When we got home (after pausing to watch the four resident neighborhood hawks for a while), Milton got snacks from our neighbor and then I headed up to Alta.

Orange paintbrush (great color)

The traffic on the canyon road was not as heavy as the previous Saturday, but there were still hundreds of cars at the White Pine trailhead (I can't even imagine trying to hike with all those people) and I had to park a little further up the road when I got to Alta.  Once hiking, it didn't seem quite so busy although I counted at least three photo shoots going on.  It's wildflower season, you see, and although they haven't hit peak bloom, the flowers are much better than they were last weekend.  And with the flowers come the hordes.

Horsemint

I was startled when I reached Catherine's Pass: I have never seen so many people at Catherine's Pass before.  And most of them seemed to be coming up from the Brighton side.  I didn't linger and ground out that last bit of up, trying to keep ahead of people.  At the Sunset Peak intersection, I turned towards the Supreme lift, which was great since most of these people seemed to be going to Sunset. 

Sulfur buckwheat (a favorite of mine)

I came out through the campground, then took the Home Run trail through the Sunnyside meadows instead of the main trail: this Home Run looks to have been built for MTBs as it is not as steep, packed dirt and with nice switchbacks.  The flowers are not quite as good along Home Run but there were fewer people.  So we'll call that a win.

Scarlet gilia - except it's in Little

Cottonwood Canyon so it's almost white

Sure do love the Wasatch wildflowers.  In addition to the ones pictured here, I saw bluebells, Wasatch penstemon, Lewis's flax, geraniums, showy daisies, silverleaf phacelia (just getting started), anemones (also just getting started - love these), columbine, king flax or maybe tansy mustard, sunflowers and western coneflowers (not blooming yet).  And I think I saw a bunch of elephantheads but it was from a distance and I couldn't get close enough to confirm.

Lupine and paintbrush