Golden Beauty

Our golden trees are called tamarack or larch

What with all those huckleberries to pick and school getting started, my wildflower adventures came to a close.  I don't think I'll be posting again until next spring, but if I find some special winter beauty to capture, I'll let my faithful readers know.  Recently, Lynn and I went for a drive to see the fall colors, so now I have some treasures to share.

This is Mount St. Nicholas, usually visible as a rocky thumb pointing up at the sky.  Warren and Colter have climbed this mountain.  We've had stormy weather since I took this photo, and I would imagine that it is all white with snow now.

Another view of Mount St. Nicholas.

We took a short walk and found this frosty little nook in the woods where the cold and ice had transformed the leaves and plants into a wonderland.

This is what self-heal looks like after the flower is done.

These are little Twinflower stems and seedheads.

A Yarrow leaf.

Goldenrod

Fireweed seed/stalk

Snowberry

Very Berry Mountain!

The berries are ripe on Big Mountain.  I've taken a break from Glacier Park, working at school a little, and picking Huckleberries a lot!  This is a banner year for hucks, and there is a bumper crop up there. As all good huck-pickers, I won't divulge my special picking spot, or admit to how many GALLONS I have in the freezer (at least here on-line), but we'll be able to taste summer all winter!

Sometimes they are really blue, like a blueberry:

Sometimes they are almost black:

 Sometimes they are in among lovely green leaves:

 And sometimes the leaves are spotted:

Or even turning color:

They make really tasty "ants on a log" for lunch:

And you get really sticky fingers by the end of the day:

In addition to the huckleberries, there are other berries on the mountain--the bears can have those, I don't care.   You may remember the flower of Twisted Stalk from an earlier post; now the berries are orange and dangling so artistically:

I don't know if animals eat the berries on the Devil's Club, but they are striking in the green forest:

I've been eating the Thimbleberries that are ready.  You can't really gather them unless you snipped off the whole top, so I just pull off the red part and pop it in my mouth!

The Goldenrod is lovely and the Fireweed is just about blooming and going to seed.  It has been so fun to sit perched up on the mountain above the Flathead Valley and collecting treasures!

Sigh.....back to school tomorrow.  Stay tuned for further adventures....

Mt. Reynold's Diagonal

On Thursday, August 15th, I climbed to the top of Mt. Reynolds (9125') with Warren, using the Diagonal Route!  This was a pretty big accomplishment for my old knees and ankles!  I couldn't have done it without Warren's encouragement and patience.

We have been to the top of Reynolds before, when the kids were teenagers.  You go up a climbers' trail around to the south side of the mountain, and then negotiate some cliffy rock and scree slopes to get to the top.  This time, however, we climbed up through a chute on the northwest shoulder of the mountain to get to a goat-trail that crosses the north face of the mountain--the side visible from Logan Pass.  You might be able to see the diagonal line about two-thirds of the way up in this photo:

Here is a photo where I zoomed into see the goat-trail:

The diagonal goat-trail is impressive, but it wasn't the hardest part.  It took a lot of work to get up that two-thirds of the mountain first!  We hiked up the Hidden Lake trail, and then went south along the climbers trail until we were at a little pass at the snowline (referring to the above photo).  Then we left the trail all together and scrambled up this chute:

Later in the day (we had come full circle) I took this photo of the chute with sun on it:

At the top of the chute and looking back down at Hidden Lake and Bearhat Mountain:

At the top of the chute and looking up at Reynolds:

If you look back at the big photo of Reynolds, we are now on the first "bump" on the right-hand side of the mountain.  Then we still had to scramble up a steep scree slope to get to the goat-trail at the base of the cliffs:

We finally got there.  The North Face Diagonal goat-trail is basically a line between the cliffs and the scree:

At the end of the goat-trail, on the north-east shoulder of Reynolds.  You can see Going-to-the-Sun Mountain behind Warren, St. Mary's Lake, and the lower ridge is Heavy Runner Mountain.

The view east:

The view to the North-east, looking back at Logan Pass; the highway and visitor's center are at the bottom of the photo, and at the top are Mt. Gould, Bishop's Cap, and Mt. Pollack.

The view to the North-west, Hidden Lake, Mt. Cannon and Mt. Clements:

View to the South-east, is Blackfoot Glacier; Jackson Glacier is to the right, but covered up by Fusilade:

After we got to the north-east shoulder, we went around the mountain a bit, and then up through the cliffs.  Warren called it "class 4 rock climbing" and I confess, it was a bit scary for me.

 But my arms and knees pulled me up through it all and I got to the top!  I did it!

What the top of Mt. Reynolds looks like:

Oh yeah, this is a flower blog, right?  I couldn't pay a whole lot of attention to flowers on this climb; actually there weren't many on the rocky stuff up high. But, there were a few beauties:

Alpine Fireweed

Groundsel above Hidden Lake

Bladder Campion

The views of the mountains from up high was spectacular to say the least!  Reynolds is the highest point in that immediate area.  This is Mt. Clements that towers over Logan Pass:

You can see the Hidden Lake Trail at the base of it.
The next photo is of the Dragon's Tail, and Sperry Glacier beyond it. I took this from half-way up:

I took this photo from the top of Reynolds and you can see more.  Dragon's Tail in front; from left to right in back is Sperry Glacier and Gunsight Mountain, Mt. Edwards, Little Matterhorn, and Mt. Brown.  You can barely make out Lake MacDonald beyond that.

Another view of the north face on our return down.

We also cut off the trail and went down through the flower meadows that Lynn and I have been going through, so Warren could see the Triple Falls.  It was exceptionally pretty in the afternoon light.

It's fitting that Warren and I should be summitting mountains together: it has been our 30th wedding anniversary this summer!  Our marriage has had its "ups and downs" like any other, but we are "rock steady" and ready for another 30 years!!  Thanks for getting me up the mountain Warren!