A day at Sunrise on Mt. Rainier

[mmegaera]

A view of the Mountain from the Shadow Lake trail.

Late summer in early July

My friend Loralee and I went to Mt. Rainier for a wildflower jaunt on Wednesday. This just goes to prove that I have an unending jones for wildflowers, because I’d just seen tons of them on my trip to the Canadian Rockies.

It was hot in the lowlands, our 14th consecutive day above 80 — we tied a record yesterday with another one — so the 70s predicted for Sunrise at 6300 feet (about 1920 meters) on the east side of the Mountain sounded wonderful. (it’s been remedied by the long overdue return of our onshore flow, the wind off the ocean that we often refer to here as our natural air conditioning — so far, today’s high’s been about 70F (about 21C)).

We stopped to pick up what I always think of as an insta-picnic at Subway on our way up, and got to Sunrise around noon. We had a lovely picnic, then I went for my usual jaunt around back behind Sunrise to Shadow Lake while Loralee strolled closer by.

If I hadn’t known for a fact that it was July 8th, I’d have sworn it was the middle of August. There’s usually at least some snow on the ground near or on the trail this early in the season, the pasqueflowers aren’t quite over, and there’s glacier lilies everywhere.

On this July 8th, there was no snow whatsoever except way up on the Mountain, the phlox that normally blooms in late July was all but finished (I found maybe two clumps that hadn’t gone to seed), the lupines were past their prime, and there were August asters everywhere.

It was still gorgeous, as usual, but still.

Here’s some of what I saw today:

Pasqueflower seed mopheads.

Davidson’s penstemon.

One of about two patches of alpine phlox that weren’t finished blooming for the season.

I don’t know what kind of butterfly/moth this is, but they were all over the place.

The only four-legged critter I saw on my walk (he’s a least chipmunk).  There were rumors of bears, but I was just as glad not to see them.  I prefer bear-watching from my car, thanks.

A rather low and murky Shadow Lake.

Harebells! In early July! As Ivan Vorpatril would say, that’s just Wrong.

Lupine pooling in the meadow.

A not-normally-this low creekbed, with lousewort (what an awful name) and bistort.

Mostly lupine, with about half a dozen neighbors including white lovage.

Broadleaved arnica.

Scarlet paintbrush and asters..

False hellebore, which always looks like mutant cornstalks to me, with asters in the background.

A single alpine aster flower.

All in all, given the lack of winter and a so-far unreasonably hot spring and summer, not bad.

But, as I said to Loralee on our way down the mountain, “Harebells! In early July!”

Mirrored from M.M. Justus -- adventures in the supernatural Old West.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

*giggles a lot at the mopheads*

Sort of like smoke bushes!

[mmegaera]

Kinda! The flower part is actually very pretty, but when they go to seed they look like they need a haircut really badly.

[archangelbeth]

*giggles a lot*