Today we continue our long walk, now above White Chief, heading through some of the finest flowers in memory.
Is this an elderberry? Maybe. It looks a little different than the ones growing lower down.
Off-Trail Guy took this tree photo for you, Jess! (And why was this hike easier when you were with us?)
This is the view from the top of the ridge between White Chief and Farewell Canyon. Now you don’t have to struggle ever upward because we did it for you.
The Pennyroyal was thick. Too bad this isn’t a scratch-n-sniff.
I’m not going to sugar-coat this hike. It was harder to get to the top of the ridge than I remember, not as hard to come down the other side, but then pretty hard to pick footing through all the growth. It’s hard to step wisely when the ground isn’t visible, but there were no injuries. (Thank you for your concern.)
We call this Louise’s Spring because it is on one of her favorite slopes. The flowers were intensely abundant.
There were Larkspur, Lupine, and Sierra Stickseed, all blue. This photo doesn’t begin to tell the story (but at least your feet don’t hurt while reading about it.)
Who are you? Who-oo? Who-oo? (Those yellow look-alikes again.)
This is the foliage on this particular yellow look-alike, in case a blog reader is inclined to find its name.
This is part of my view while seated on my tookus during a short lunch break. Those yellow unknowns with a pop of purple in the center – a classic example of complementary colors. (Just had to throw that in in case you were wondering if I had abandoned my art career for a wildflower one.)
It is pretty unusual to have Languid Ladies (AKA Sierra Bluebells) in abundance in August.
Long hike, long post. To be continued. . . and here is an ad break.
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.
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. . .
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.
Due to a late winter, increased family responsibilities, time at Hume Lake, and a Shaver Lake reunion, my visits to Mineral King have been fewer this summer than in previous years. Have a look at a recent visit, a non-hiking sort of look.
It is a remarkable year for water and for flowers. This area usually has Tiger (or Leopard) Lilies, but this year it has many other flowers as well.
In spite of having spots instead of stripes, these are more commonly called “Tiger” lilies than they are called “Leopard” lilies.
Yet another yellow flower that looks like many others, this one is Arrowroot Groundsel (and doesn’t appear in my book).
This blog post is sponsored by Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names.
And that’s all the advertising you will ever find on my blog. No pop-ups or moving little boxes to click shut. Ever. So there.
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.
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.)
I liked sitting by the stream to paint, so I set up the next day in the morning so it would be shady. The idea was to paint the same scene with different lighting, but I ended up leaving out the juniper this time. Why? Because I wanted to, and I am the boss of my painting.
This time I used the lid of the palette to balance, because the less stuff I have to juggle, the better.
But wait! Before I started this painting, I decided to try one from my memory and a sketch I had made the evening before. Because we are fairly social on our road, evenings, especially on holiday weekends, are for neighbors, not for working. So it wasn’t convenient or friendly to disappear to work when people had braved that road and wanted to socialize.
Ummm, no. This will need some work in the studio.
Vandever & Stream, 8×8″, sold.
There is a theme here.
There. I’m done with plein air in Mineral King posts for awhile. I just wanted you to know that I am still working, even though it seems as if I just goof off in Mineral King in the summer.
After painting Empire and Vandever with the Crowley Cabin in Mineral King, plein air (on location), my confidence built. But, I didn’t like schlepping the easel around or setting it up, so I tried it sitting down by the Honeymoon Cabin (at the beginning of the Eagle/Mosquito trail). This was most pleasant, right by the stream. But in the afternoon, it was not in the shade, and there was no convenient place to put my palette. If it ain’t one thing, it’s anuthuh.
This scene?
No, I think this way with the juniper instead.
I had company.
Trail guy borrowed a sign from inside the Honeymoon Cabin (a mini museum) to rest the canvas on.
There was a root that made a perfect foot rest.
“Vandever, Stream, Juniper”, 8×8″, oil on wrapped canvas, $100
A number of years ago (feels like 6, must be 10) I tried painting on location from the bridge in Mineral King. I had no instruction and no idea of how to proceed.
Painting in Mineral King in 2007 – it was TWELVE YEARS AGO! (I still have that shirt.)
Trail Guy and I walked to the bridge and inspected the views and possible areas to set up. The bridge is narrower now, so setting up on it is asking to be hit by someone’s rearview mirror, or moving every time a car comes.
This is from the bridge, a perfect scene, but one that can only happen via photos or with lots of trotting back and forth across the bridge. (There is no bridge troll, so it could work.)
This was about the only option, in spite of the uneven ground.
The stream didn’t really show despite being on a bridge. Too many willows.
The juniper blocks the top of Vandever, so I moved it.
Once again, I relied on the sketch to tell me what to include and what might fit.
First, the underpainting.
Second, the greens. Looks terrible, but has promise at this stage.
Better.
It’s kind of interesting to see the evolving canvas and the scene in one shot.
Suddenly, I was tired of dealing with uneven ground, people stopping by, and painting outside, so I packed it up and walked back to the cabin to finish.
I’ve painted this scene about 50 or 60 times, and drawn it in pencil at least a dozen more. So, I felt confident finishing it up at home.
Almost finished.
“Crowley Cabin”, 8×10″, oil on wrapped canvas, $125.
Remember that I went down to Georgia (no, I’m not the devil) to take a plein air painting workshop from Laurel Daniel? The goal was to be able to do plein air painting in Mineral King.
I was a little nervous, having waited 3 months to attempt the techniques again. Mineral King feels so public, probably because it is, and I was glad there weren’t many people around yet. Still, I set up my easel in an obscure place, and remained invisible in the shade despite my trusty red backpack.
See? My set up is barely visible.
The plan was to paint Empire (the rock outcropping, not the highest part of the ridge) with a few cabins below.
Too much – needs to be narrowed down.
Maybe this horizontal view?
Nah. Let’s go vertical. (“Let’s”? Got a mouse in your easel?)
I reread my notes and then just began as if I knew what I was doing.
The sketch helped me see which elements I had decided to leave in the scene.
When I started adding the color, I forgot to stop and take photos of the more intermediate steps.
No one noticed, because no one passed by. I was glad.
Starting to look like something!
This was the view from my place in the shade.
Here is the finished piece, dry and scanned after I got back home. (It was tricky business finding a place to put the painting to dry in our 400 square foot cabin, but we are always innovative with the limited space.
Empire & Cabins, 8×10″, oil on wrapped canvas, $125
The whole time I wondered what Laurel would say, and tried to remember some of the things she worked on with me. There is probably too much detail in this for her, but I am the boss of my painting now.
On July 4, Trail Guy and I hiked to Timber Gap. The flowers were early, but abundant, and the gap still had snow. We met a couple of hardy backpackers who planned a long trip in a short number of days. Then we took the old wagon road out of Timber Gap, and traversed the slope back down to the trail.
Mineral King valley view from the trail.
This little nondescript stream was flowing quite strong beneath Empire.
Red, white, and blue.
The Phlox were thick, along with Blue Lips.
Snow in Timber Gap.
Trail Guy was explaining things of Mineral King to two hardy backpackers.
The old wagon road was built by the miners and used to get to the mines on Empire. We use it to create a sort of mini-loop on an otherwise up-and-back trail.
This view from the old wagon road is one of the reasons to take this hike.
Trail Guy likes the word “traverse” and picks good routes for me to follow.
While traversing down to the trail, I watched the ground carefully. It was not a hardship view.
That snow-packed area in the distance is White Chief.
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.
