Yellow Hill

We drove out to the Teanaway Community Forest to hike up to Yellow Hill today, about 7.75 miles round trip with 2,800 ft of overall gain. We had the trail to ourselves. 

The first 1.3 miles is along a closed forest road.

Beautiful snowy covered trees in the morning sun

a little bit of fall color

The trail branches off from the road and starts going climbing steeply up.

The snow got deeper the higher up we hiked.

Views to the north from the first steep uphill

zoom of our view 

The trail drops about 300 ft before resuming uphill to Yellow Hill, seen in the distance.

The trail goes through the burn area into a healthy forest with large trees,

and small tress.

We were post holing in the snow about 10" deep as we reached 5,000 ft.

snow covered pine drops

We continued a short distance past Yellow Hill until we found a spot along the trail with some views. Great spot for a lunch break.

zoom of Koppen Mountain, where I hiked two weeks ago with no snow

zoom of Mount Stuart behind some clouds

Heading back down the trail 

views to the east

 

Yellow Hill

We drove out to the Teanaway Community Forest to hike up to Yellow Hill, 7.5 miles round trip with 2,800' of gain.
This was a wonderful wildflower hike on a cloudy day.
This meadow filled with paintbrush was near the parking area.

The trail starts by going up a forest road that is closed to cars, but open to motorbikes in the summer. There were many blooms along this road.
Lupine

asters and peas

The densest batch of asters I have seen.

This area was burned in the Jolly Mountain Fire a few years back, it is nice to see the wildflowers coming back so strongly.

Maybe a mile or so up the road, the trail to Yellow Hill branches off to the right and the trail becomes steeper.

We would see balsamroot in bloom as well.

Phlox and more paintbrush among the rocks

Below the clouds, we could see some of the Teanaway Peaks in the distance.


















Looking ahead towards the ridge that Yellow Hill is on. Here the trail would descend and rise and descend and rise a bit, before continuing up Yellow Hill.

Right next to the trail we saw these Steer's Head, this is the first time I have seen these flowers.

The last half mile or so was going around and up a snowy slope that was about 2 feet deep.
















The top of Yellow Hill was bare of snow at 5,527 ft.

Here there was a large field of avalanche lilies.














Through the trees, we had a peek of Mount Stuart and another peak.















some of the wildflowers we saw along the trail today: