Waterworks Hill

For our second hike this morning, we drove to the Waterworks Trailhead in the NOrth Hills Open Space to hike up the ridge. We hiked most of the way along the North Ridge Trail and came back along the Cherry Gulch Trail to make a 3 mile loop with 500 ft of overall gain. Lovely views of the mountains surrounding Missoula and a different assortment of wildflowers in bloom from those we saw along our earlier hike this moring. Lovely hike on the edge of Missoula! Some of our views: Up on the ridge

Looking across a lupine filled meadow to Missoula to the south with snow capped Bitterroot Mountains and a zoom of one of the peaks in the Bitterroot

Looking across another flowered filled meadow towards a very distant Ch-paa-qn Peak to the northwest with a zoom of Ch-paa-qn Peak

Views towards the north across meadows towards the snowy Mission Mountains

Looking towards Mt Jumbo to the east

Another look towards the Mission Mountains as we descend down the Cherry Gulch Trail, balsaamroot and luping in the meadow

some of the wildflowers seen along the trail today:

Pattee Canyon Trails

We drove to the main Pattee Canyon TRailhead in the Lolo National Forest this morning anp put together some of the trails there to make a loop in the Ponderosa Forest. Our route was about 3 miles with 265 ft of overall gain. It was a little chilly as the sun was rising. We saw a black bear cross the trail and head up a hill (no photo) and a great variety of early wildflowers in bloom. Great moring! A few forest photos:

some of the wildflowers we saw in bloom this morning:

Bitterroot Trail

Ater our hike at the Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area, we did the short drive to the Wild Horse Wind Farm to check out their Bitterroot Trail to see if the bitterroot and cacti were in bloom. This is a short trail next to the visitor center, about 1 mile round trip with 150 ft of loss/gain. We saw bitterroot blooming on the lower half of the trail and one basalt cactus in bloom along with other wildflowers. Nice color along the trail!

We also had distant views of Mt Adams, Mt Rainier and the Goat Rocks

Some of the bitterroot we saw in bloom

A budding basalt cactus and a blosssom on a basalt cactus

Other wildflowers seen along the trail