Hiking at Park City

In my never ending quest to empty the dog's energy reserves, I have found a tough, but nice hike up in the Park City Ski Resort. It goes up to the top of a major ridge, at 8700 feet. The resort actually goes up to almost 10,000, but that would be a good bit more involved for hiking.

This is a view looking across the valley at our subdivision: April Mountain. If you double click on the picture, you can see a larger, more detailed version.



One of the most interesting things on the hike was the mix of colors. We have an extremely short growing season up here and I think that results in some cycle-compression. Here are some trees that are getting the jump on changing colors. We are still probably two weeks or more from the peak.



This picture was taken from the exact same spot, looking the other direction. It was a field of pretty purple wildflowers.


This doesn't show how pretty things really were, but up near the top was a huge field of yellow and purple.



...and down near the base, an entire drainage ditch was full of yellow flowers as far as you can see.



The mix of early fall foliage and late blooming wildflowers makes for a nice distraction as we slog up the mountainside!