Trail Guy Went to White Chief

Look at the fancy road! (For my far-away readers, that’s Sawtooth in the distance.)

Trail Guy, being retired, spends more time in The Land of No Electricity, Internet, or Phones (unless one has StarLink, which your Central Calif. Artist does not—surprised by this?) than I do. He actually had time to hike, working around all his obligations/helpfulness to neighbors.

You can tell he took these photos by the spots in the upper right of many of them.

White Chief peak has a flat top.
There is a pond, if you know how to find it. (It’s there even if you don’t know how to find it.)
Everyone’s favorite juniper tree.

When I made it up the hill, I spent some time contemplating wildflowers. A plan is beginning to formulate, but it isn’t ready for public consumption just yet.

Thus we conclude another photo tour of Mineral King.

Seeking Wildflowers in Mineral King

If you cannot see the photos through your email subscription, you can see them by going to the blog on the internet. cabinart.net/blog.

The trail to Franklin Lakes and Farewell Gap has terrific wildflower variety this summer.

Mariposa lilies are like polka-dots over the landscape, among the sage. Very prolific this year!
This is a juniper tree. It isn’t a wildflower. I just wanted to show you the bark.

This is the weird view of Farewell Gap with all the overlapping ravines.

Flax were plentiful along the trail, and the red ones are Indian paintbrush. The white ones? Meh. But I love seeing red, white, and blue together, so I took this shot looking down into the canyon.

There was a tremendous variety along the trail to the junction.

The pennyroyal were very thick and fragrant, as always.

I guess you had to be there to get a feel for all the variety along the trail. 

Sometimes Pride of the mountain grows on rocky ledges that don’t appear to have enough dirt for anything to grow.

Same for this penstemon, the variety which I have forgotten (did I ever know it?)

This trail junction was our destination, and it is usually solid with a zillion different flowers. This year it wasn’t special, but the trail getting to the junction was simply amazing with the variety.

This is looking back down at those overlapping ravines in the canyon.

Angelica was very impressive. It looks like cow parsnip, but its leaves are lacy rather than solid. Maybe that’s why it has a prettier name than cow parsnip.

Franklin falls is quite impressive in spite of the low water year. That is arrowleaf groundsel in the foreground.

Let’s end our tour with a rainbow.

I have about 4 copies of Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names remaining. Want one?

Mineral King Wildflowers

I finished 8 little oil paintings of Mineral King wildflowers and realized that every single photo I chose to paint from was from the same trail. Well, duh. That trail, the Franklin/Farewell Gap trail, is always the best place to find reliable wildflowers. There are other places that are off-trail, but I don’t want to put that type of information on the World Wide Web.

Okay, time for painting #1, titled “Mineral King Wildflowers 1” (Clever, I know.)

6×6″, $60, oil on wrapped canvas, ready to hang

 

Mineral King Wildflower Quest

A friend told me about a new wildflower by Crystal Creek, so Trail Guy, The Farmer, Hiking Buddy, and I went to see.

When she described the flower, I said, “Sounds like Nettleleaf Horsemint”. But she didn’t remember a serrated leave edge, and I can rarely resist the call of a new flower.

it is on the left side of this picture and I KNOW it is Nettleleaf Horsemint.
Taller than last year’s model.
Brighter, too.
Still so many flowers in September, still so green! (This was a week ago, so it may have changed.)

Crimson Columbine in September?! Yeppers. (They are small – can you see them?)
And the Bigelow Sneezeweed are still going strong.

I dragged my hiking partners along for a quest that ended in nothing except a good time in a beautiful place on a great day. Well, wah.

100 page paperback, flowers in photos, common names only, lots of chatty commentary, $20 including tax.
Available here
Also available at the Three Rivers Historical Museum, Silver City Store, from me if I put them in my car, or Amazon.

Hiking to the Flowers, Part 2

Trail Guy and I parted ways at the junction. He wanted to go off-trail, and Prudence told me to stick to the trail. (I do best when I listen to her.) These are his photos from across the East Fork of the Kaweah, on the north-facing slopes of Farewell Canyon.

That’s not a wildflower!

Tomorrow I’ll show you photos of my hike the 4 miles back to Mineral King, on the trail.

Secret Walk in Mineral King

I mentioned a friend in a recent post, someone I have mostly known through email correspondence. Last week she showed me a trail I have never heard of, and it seems to me that it might be very localized secret. So, out of respect for people’s privacy, I will simply show you photos but keep the identifying information quiet.

Wooly Mullein is not a native but grows along the Mineral King Road above the ranger station. I saw this on the way to meet my friend.
This is new to me – soft and furry like Lamb’s Ears (the plant, not an actual animal’s ears).
Our view.
Another unknown yellow.
An unknown little pink.
This is my first look at a Lewis Monkeyflower AND IT IS BLURRY!!
On the way back up the Nature Trail, I stopped to admire the aspens (and rest a little.)
Felwort is in bloom. I first saw this with another cabin neighbor/friend 2 years ago. It was A Moment To Remember. In real life it has more intense color, so much more that the first time I saw it, I thought it was lupine.

A Long Walk in Mineral King, Part 3

Are you all rested after the lunch break and ready to make like a cow-pie and hit the trail again? (Never mind. We weren’t on a trail yet.)

These Paintbrush (formerly known as Indian Paintbrush) were almost flourescent.
Maybe one day I will look for these little whites and actually find a name.

After our lunch break among the yellow unknowns, we crossed a little spring or drainage, a wet place that I named Everything Spring. Every possible wildflower was there and in bloom. EVERYTHING.

Look at these Elephant Heads! This was my first oh-my-goodness moment at Everything Spring.
Paintbrush, Angelica, Jeffrey Shooting Star, Tiger Lilies, Larkspur, Rein Orchis (weird word, I know), Elephant Heads, Crimson Columbine, Knotweed (not in any particular order in this list – just wanted you to see all the names)
Red, white and blue (with some pinky-purple for an accent)
One last look at Everything Spring, because there were still 4.5 miles to go.

After Everything Spring, we crossed a snowfield. There is still a ton of snow around Farewell Gap. It has a bit of a pinkish cast. Off-Trail Guy tested it to be sure it wasn’t some sort of collapsing snow bridge. It was slippery in my worn-out Teva sandals. (Sandals on snow are funny, but didn’t qualify for a photo.)

Tomorrow we shall conclude this long walk (AKA hike).

A Long Walk in Mineral King, Part 1

Actually, it was a hike. We went to White Chief, over the ridge to the Farewell Gap drainage, down to the snow survey site, crossed the stream on a snowfield, found our way to the Farewell/Franklin Trail, and then 4 miles back to the cabin.

This is how things looked around 9 a.m.
This footbridge across Spring Creek is immensely helpful.
Is this a dandelion? It looks different. You know how I feel about all those look-alike yellows!
This is for Jess; I miss my tree-hugger friend. We stopped here to put on mosquito repellent, just before getting into the lower White Chief canyon.
Looks easy here, but there are three steep sections to get to this place.
Lower White Chief Canyon
Mountain Jewelflower is sort of nondescript but was everywhere. The leaves show up more than the blossom.
Mountain Pride or Pride of the Mountains – either name is just as pretty.
Off-Trail Guy and his beloved Tiger Lilies

This post is getting too long, kind of like the hike was. To be continued. . .

Short Mineral King Walk

There is a trail in Mineral King called “The Nature Trail”, a one mile route that connects Cold Springs Campground (near the Ranger Station) to the Mineral King valley itself.

There was a meeting in the area near Cold Springs Campground, and I took the Zapato Express*, choosing to go down the trail instead of the road. We normally walk down the road and back up the trail, but I thought I’d probably be catching a ride back up and I didn’t want to miss the progression of summer along the trail.

The river is flowing steadily, a lot of water for August.
Many yellows look alike, in spite of the name of the yellow chapter in my book. I might be able to identify this, eventually.
Aster? Glacial Daisy? Something else? It was pale lavender, not the white it appears in this photo.
These are a bit different. Smaller, and a clump instead of a long stem, and growing in a dry area instead of a wet one, also lavender.
It wasn’t a requirement to wear a straw hat to the meeting, but you wouldn’t know by this photo.

Someone in her upper years of life requested a ride home in the 2-seater Botmobile, so I got to walk back up the trail, not a hardship by any stretch of the imagination.

Yarrow in the foreground; Black Wolf falls (Monarch Creek) in the fuzzy background.
I never tire of the aspens.
Almost back to the cabin. The flowers are just endlessly fabulous this year. (Nope, not my cabin in the photo. This is the World Wide Web, and I try to maintain a teensy bit of privacy.)
100 page paperback, flowers in photos, common names only, lots of chatty commentary, $20 including tax.
Available here
Also available at the Three Rivers Historical Museum, Silver City Store, from me if I put them in my car, or Amazon.

*This means I walked; “zapato” means shoe in Español.