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.)

Hiking Mineral King – The Nature Trail

This hardly qualifies as hiking – a one mile walk up a trail from Cold Springs Campground in Mineral King. There is always a great variety of wildflowers, and there are aspen trees, a little area of conifers, views of Sawtooth Peak, and a desert-ish area of sage, along with plenty of places to get your feet wet.

This sort of trail bed is called “rip-rap”. It is hard to walk on, both up and downhill.

Sawtooth is back there, but the light was not conducive to capturing it with my Press-Here-Dummy camera.

Sawtooth’s Peak is just out of sight in the back on the right. (yes, poetry, I know. . .)

Trail Guy along the Nature Trail that ought to be called the “Wildflower Walk” (thanks, Melissa!)

Someone was very vocal and visual about his opposition to Disney building a ski resort in Mineral King. Wow – carvings on aspen last a very long time.

There’s Sawtooth! (different day, different light)