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A Walk to Eagle Meadow

We crossed Spring Creek on the footbridge. It has a ton of water for the 2nd half of July!
How a knot looks from inside a hollow tree.

I split a lot of firewood, and have learned how to read the wood to work with the knots. Knots are just branches, but I have never seen inside a hollow tree before to see the entire branch, or what the end of a knot looks like.

This is Eagle Creek as it runs into the sink hole.
Water disappears into the Eagle sink hole, and we strongly suspect it is the source of Spring Creek.
This is one of my favorite sections of trail in all of Mineral King, EXCEPT the mosquitoes and biting flies are always horrible here. This is the area where hikers decide if they are heading to Eagle Lake or to Mosquito Lakes (there are five).
There were still patches of snow on July 21.
This is Eagle Meadow, and the flowers did not disappoint.
Jeffrey Shooting Stars grow in water (hence, the many mosquitoes).

There weren’t as many flowers as we expected along the trail, because it is still early-ish, due to the heavy winter and late spring.

I like the color combination of Indian Paintbrush with sage.
This flower seems to be everywhere except in my many wildflower books. This time I was determined to find it and I did! It is called a Stout-beaked Toothwort. (I am not making this up!) Really, People-Who-Name-Flowers, couldn’t you do better than this?
The Mariposa Lilies were thick, and the slopes looked polka-dotted with them.

Neither one of us is a fan of the upper part of the Eagle Lake trail, and it was a hot day, so we turned around and got home in time for lunch. Thus, I have called this a “walk” instead of a “hike” (although Trail Guy carried lunch, just in case.)

4 Comments

  1. If I’ve gone that far I call it a hike, what beautiful pictures!

    • Thank you, Virginia!

  2. Beautiful photos! Brings back a lot of memories of that hike. But that last half mile . . . ugh! “Are we ever gonna get there?” “It’s just over the next ridge.” “OK, the next ridge.” “I promise, over the NEXT ridge!”

    Stout-beaked Toothwort! How DO they come up with these names??

    • Sharon, we chose the meadow as our destination because of that last mile to Eagle (ugh) and because I really only care about the flowers. There were hardly any on that sloping open grassy area because it was still too early, a shock in mid-July.

      I’ve noticed many flowers have “wort” as their last syllable. What means this??

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