crazy wildflower hike

We chose to hike the Black Powder Trail to Black Powder Pass, a 2.0 mile hike to 12,200'. Little did we know that we were about to enter an alpine garden. The trail started out passing through some "typical" fields of daisies, paint brush, etc. We thought that these fields were really nice, but wait.....

About half way up, the trail moved above treeline and the ridge we were heading towards appeared full in front of us.

At this time, the garden did also. A small brook was cascading from the top and created a small drainage. It was in this drainage that we were treated to some of the most incredible wildflowers -- of all different kinds, many that I did could not identify.

I took WAY too many pictures, and probably put too many of them in this post. But here we go.  I just couldn't stop taking pictures, it was crazy ... and I hope you can understand why!

Starting out -- nice views of surrounding mountains. But, the further you go, the better it gets!


First field of wildflowers


Just crazy and we haven't come to the really crazy bits yet!


The start of the ribbon of creek side wildflowers. This is a the bottom of the drainage, flowers start here and go all the way up almost to the ridge.


A weird one


Alicia on the trail



Don't know this one - very dark purple almost black


So, this next set of pictures was taken along the creek, not all in the same place. I just kept walking and walking and taking pictures ... while smiling and shaking my head at what I was seeing.

I just wish that the sky was not so overcast (since the exposure washes out the image a bit)

















Arriving at the pass


Views from the pass


Alicia getting up to 12,200



At 12,200 the wildflowers became alpine again -- mostly meaning smaller



It was so nice I even took pictures coming down











Very different colors on these paint brush






THE END!

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