Glacier Basin — Monday, Jul. 11, 2022

Paul and I took a wildflower hike on the Glacier Basin trail with a touch of snow conditions exploration. The snow on the trail begins about 1/10 mile before the junction with the trail up to Burroughs Mt. We hiked a little ways beyond the junction and the trail was completely covered with snow. We started up the trail to Burroughs. I hiked this trail on July 1st last year and I am estimating that the snow melt is still a week behind where it was last year on July 1st, so it is 18 days (or so) behind last year.

 
We saw an adolescent, cinnamon-colored black bear ambling up the trail 1.5 miles from the trailhead as we were going down. We got off the trail to the south and the bear got off the trail to the north and got back on the trail after she/he passed us. We were more than 100 feet away from the bear, the photo is with a zoom lens and highly cropped. The beginning of the attached video has footage of the bear passing by us, the rest of it has scenes from the many streams the trail crosses (turn down your volume).   

Paul's list of flowering plants, butterflies, and mammals is below. We found many species of flowers, but there aren't a lot of big displays yet. There are only a few monkey flowers blooming, so many more to come. The many wet areas are the best spots for flowers: multiple species of violets, multiple species of willowherbs, heart leaved springbeauties, some shooting stars, beautiful and varied mosses, slender bog orchids, and more. I always learn something when I hike with Paul, today it was gooseberries have thorns, currants don't.