Looking for wildflowers, getting in shape

 

Bluebells were everywhere along the Pioneer Ridge Trail in the Little Belts

In the Highwoods, the Arrowleaf Balsam Roots were at their peak

More Arrowleafs in the Highwoods

We hit the road to see grandchildren last week in Salt Lake City, so hiking wasn't much of priority.

The scenery in the Salt Lake area is always spectacular.  I think it might be the prettiest city in the U.S.

However, the traffic is horrendous.  The growth in the Wasatch Valley between Ogden and Provo has been phenomenol and the freeways, which are scary, are a reflection.

On the way home we stopped in Helena and hunted for bitterroot blooms in the Scratchgravel Hills, but didn't find any.  We did discover that a hike in Helena before reaching Great Falls is a great way to refresh ourselves and to break up the 600 mile drive from Salt Lake.

We did take two other hikes, a short out and back Sunday in the Highwood Mountains along Center Ridge, where Katie counted 65 different wildflowers.  We hit the arrowleaf bloom at its heighth.  The spring rains have made this area greener than green. That small mountain range east of Great Falls is a treasure in the spring and fall.  You can have it when they let the cattle in to graze, though.  The cattle dominate the range during the summer months.

The next day I tested myself on the Pioneer Ridge loop in the Little Belt Mountains, charging up the trail to a ridgeline high point of nearly 2,000 feet in two miles in an hour and 10 minutes.  I felt pretty good about that. As I worked my way across the ridge on an abandoned Forest Service trail, dodging significant deadfall, the rain came down in torrents for about a half hour.  I got pretty soaked.  At the beginning of the hike I found blooming fairy slipper orchids.  Bluebells were the dominant flower throughout most of the hike, although on top there were fields of shooting stars.

Belt Creek was bank full from spring melt, but didn't look at though it would flood.

Meanwhile, when I got home there was news that rain and snowmelt had flooded rivers in Yellowstone and the park had to close all of its entrances.  Residents of Gardiner were trapped by flooding, houses fell into the Yellowstone River, which also inundated U.S. 89 at Yankee Jim Canyon.  It appears to be a historic flood.