My Everyday Photos

My husband wrote a song called Climb to the Top of the World and I thought of that when we reached this mountaintop on Tuesday.

It was a chilly day and the wind was blowing pretty hard at home and I almost didn’t go. Then I remembered that Luna does much better on hikes when the weather is not the best in my mind. She just doesn’t tolerate the heat well anymore. So off we went with a rain jacket for me and carrying extra water for the dogs. It was 48 at the 6560′ trailhead and I was glad to have a warmer jacket too. The dogs thought it was perfect.

The trail goes steeply through a burned forest and then into high meadows before going straight up through the rocky mountainside. Just before the last big ascent, there is a rock that holds any water from recent precipitation and I don’t know if Luna remembers it or if she can smell it but long before I got there, she was slurping up the remnants of the dirty puddle. I gave her clean water too and used some of that to replenish the puddle.

The views at the 8245′ summit just can’t be beat. Mountains everywhere. The flowers are just beginning. In a week or two, they will be glorious.

paintbrush

pretty yellow composite

lupine

paintbrush

Burned in 2006

whitebark pine

chipmunk

Olive-sided Flycatcher

resting

drinking

shooting stars

old, well-worn trail

cooling off

Clark Mountain?

Just up

on top

Top of the World

Tiffany Lake

I don’t know this one

or this one

I heard a pika

Horned Lark

Lewisia pygmaea, dwarf lewisia

Prairie smoke

alpine larch still wearing its spring green

there was a chipmunk

old nest box no longer on a tree

raven

Roger Lake. Who was Roger?

paintbrush

lupine and saxifrage

saxifrage, but what species?

wild strawberry growing out of a rock and trying to start a new plant

Bog orchids and lupine growing along the road

bog orchid

paintbrush