Hike #29 2021

June 12th, 2021

Our spring and early summer hikes tend to revolve around wildflowers, especially during this time when there’s still snow (the slushy, post-holy type) in the high mountains and too dry lower down. Though there’s plenty of middle ground between the two, some areas only have a few wildflowers whereas others are full of them, and of course we aim for the latter. The past couple weeks we’ve come across lots of yellow wildflowers, specifically false lupine, which are definitely high up on my list of favorite flowers to see. We’ll do the same trail multiple times just to see the false lupine’s grow.

We have a couple go-to trails that are relatively close to our house, and this is one of them. It’s not overly busy due to the small trailhead only being able to hold a handful of cars and has some great views of the surrounding Rocky Mountains, plus you get your workout in with the gradual uphill climb. Though this trail is many miles long, we usually only go about 2 miles in and 2 miles back because that’s where the best views (and wildflowers) are.

We started our hike at 5:15am and hiked 4 miles with 1000 ft of elevation gain. Scroll through the pictures below to see the views and the wildflowers we encountered!

Once we reached our turn around point we were quite pleased with the abundance of false lupine. There were also some purple orchids in the area which were a nice treat. The false lupine still has about a week to go until it reaches it’s peak so we’ll be back to take a look soon!