Yellow, but Not Mellow

Yesterday's hike was more about the adventure and less about flowers.  But of course, we saw some beauties as always.  Lynn and Bob were camped over in the Two Medicine campground on the east side of the Park; I drove over early yesterday morning, and Lynn and I hiked up part of the Pitamakan trail.  This is a view up to Pitamakan Pass.

Lupine in the foreground; Flinsch Peak and Mt. Moran;
Pitamakan Pass is actually way to the right of Mt. Moran.

However, we went "off-trail" to the right, hiking up a gorgeous creek, seeing if we could get to a small lake below Red Mountain.  Red Mountain is on the right and we are trying to get to the U-shaped basin below the snowy head-wall in the center.

When we first got to the creek and left the main trail, we found a gorgeous flower garden:

Galardia, Northern Bedstraw and Yarrow

Showy Fleabane and Harebells were in there as well

As we got up to the high country, we noticed most of the flowers we saw were yellow (or cream or white), hence the title of this post.

Monkeyflower

Stonecrop

Stonecrop

Silverleaf Groundsel

Alpine Goldenrod

St. Johns-wort

Fernleaf Parsley

Parrot's Beak Lousewort

Golden Aster

Golden Aster

the opening buds of Golden Aster are very distinctive with hairy bracts, stem and leaves.

Shrubby Cinquefoil

White Cinquefoil

Yellow Buckwheat

Cushion Buckwheat

However there were a few blue renegades which were especially stunning after all the yellow.

Yellow Buckwheat and Blue Penstemon

Blue Penstemon

Blue Penstemon, Cushion Buckwheat, Northern Bedstraw and Yarrow.

Shooting Stars and Western Saxifrage--this was growing up high on a wet ledge.

Me by the shooting star ledge.

Larkspur

Looking back down the valley from where we came--the campground
is around BEHIND the mountain on the right!

When we finally got up to the high ridge that we were shooting for, we realized there was at least 2 or 3 more miles of bushwacking to do to get to the lake.  We decided to go for one more hour, "get to that ridge over there" and see what it looked like.  Hurray!  We could SEE the lake!  That was close enough to our goal that we counted it good.  Good thing, because there was NO WAY we could get through the next mile of thick trees that were still between us and the lake.

The lake is at the base of the lowest snowfields.

We took a nice long rest where there was another little drippy seep, with a little pool for our tired feet!

a sweet little flower garden above the seep

We still had to negotiate the 3-4 miles we had bushwacked in, and then 3 more miles back along the trail. So we were tired girls when we got back to the campground.  But we had good weather all day, and NO ACCIDENTS!  As we were hiking back along the trail, we wondered how many bears, sheep and goats had seen us--we sure hadn't seen any of them!

Jubilant adventurers!