A snow, flower, and mosquito report: The 2 snow crossings on Sourdough Ridge will be gone in a few days and are easy to cross. The 3 snow fields from Frozen Lake down to the Berkeley Park junction are all very easy to cross. There is no snow on the Berkeley Park trail. Between Berkeley Camp and Grand Park, there are about 10 patches of snow across the trail that are all easy to cross. Taking the Wonderland east from Frozen Lake, there are 2 snow fields that are a little steep, this was the only snow on the route that slowed down our group of 7 Mountaineers (a few people got out their poles for these). We really enjoyed the flowers, especially in Berkeley Park (photo 1, cruising through the avalanche lilies in lower Berkeley Park).
The alpine areas on Sourdough Ridge, around Frozen Lake, and down towards Berkeley Park have many flowers. The Drummond's anemones, an early flower, are fading and mostly going to seed. There are lots of others in bloom: dwarf mountain lupine, pink and white mountain heather, veronica, magenta paintbrush, alpine buckwheat, alpine golden daisies, alpine asters, smelowskia, and more.
The dwarf mountain lupine and cliff paintbrush are blooming at the top of Berkeley Park with more to come. The lupine, heather, and magenta paintbrush are blooming at the beginning of the descent into the park (picture 2 and 0:58-1:22 on the video). There are many western anemones, glacier lilies, and avalanche lilies blooming through the rest of the park, though many of these are fading. There are patches of lupine and magenta paintbrush as you descend. The early wet area flowers, white marsh marigolds, Jeffrey's shooting stars, and bog/alpine laurel, are still around, but many are fading (picture 3). Sitka valerian is just starting to bloom, with lots to come. We saw one clump of the bright yellow Rainier lousewort. The heathers (white and pink) are in bloom in many areas, with more to come.
Heading to Grand Park we saw tiger lilies, beargrass, and some faded-to-white Oregon anemones. The western portion of Grand Park had lots of yellow, fan-leaf cinquefoil and Strickland's tauschia (thanks Keleigh for the ID), purple violets and veronica, patches of lupine in low/wet spots, and others.
Everywhere except on Sourdough Ridge and Frozen Lake, the mosquitos were numerous and aggressive.
The attached link has a YouTube playlist of individual flower videos for some of the flowers that we saw. These start with the location and environment where the flower was filmed, followed by 1 or 2 of the common names and the scientific name, and then followed by its family name, common and scientific. For myself, I am using these as a learning tool. I am also distributing these to the participants on the Mountaineers hikes that I lead. I am an intermediate when it comes to flower identification, so I could easily be wrong on some of these.
A partial flower list: western anemone, Cusick's veronica, magenta paintbrush, low Jacob's ladder, sitka valerian, lupine, little-flower penstemon, American bistort, dwarf mountain lupine, glacier lily, avalanche lily, western springbeauties, spreading phlox, alpine aster, woolly everlasting, pink mountain heather, showy sedge, glacier fleabane, bog/alpine laurel, Jeffery's shooting stars, white marsh marigolds, fan-leaf cinquefoil, magenta/mountain paintbrush, cliff paintbrush, Tolmie's saxifrage, white mountain heather, Drummonds anemone, alpine buckwheat, tufted saxifrage, smelowskia, alpine golden daisy, partridge foot, Davidson's penstemon, tiger lilies, beargrass, Oregon anemone, yellow and purple violets, a light-purple rockcress, bluebells, and many others.
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