 |
| A day of breath taking, including scenery (Katie Kotynski photo) |
 |
| It was an uphill battle of nearly 2,000 feet |
 |
| The pink Douglasia with the yellow Yellowstone Draba alpine flowers |
 |
| Sawtooth Mountain across the valley |
 |
| A nice bighorn ram |
An annual early Spring hike in the Wagner Basin of the Rocky Mountain Front has become a satisfying tradition.
By the middle of April the first of the alpine flowers are out, things are starting to green up and the bighorn sheep invariably show themselves.
And, oh yes, the ticks are out.
The hike starts off Hannan Gulch off the Sun River below Gibson Dam on the southern flank of Castle Reef Mountain
It's strictly social trails, out and back.
There are the usual sights: the pictographs, the skull tree, beaver dams in the swamp.
This is an approach used by Castle Reef mountain climbers.
Katie put together a group of 12 hikers and everyone made it to the top of the high ridge to the east of the basin, covering nearly 5 miles and 2,000 feet of elevation gain.
We saw several bands of bighorn ewes, a little one, and a full curl ram.
The alpine flowers were a delight, particularly fields of magenta Douglasia. It was the day before Easter and we were treated to the white Easter flowers, saw a couple patches of purple Pasque flowers, several yellow bells (fritilary), shooting stars, Yellowstone draba, white phlox, prairie smoke, Oregon grape.
The high mountains, like Sawtooth were snow capped, but the south face of Castle Reef was snow free.
This is a lightly used area, but we saw at least three other hiking parties. I think one of them was headed up to climb Castle Reef.
No comments:
Post a Comment