Alpine Wildflowers and Moose in the Mountains

With the arrival of warmer weather towards the end of June, it was time to get back up to the high country. This post's hike and observations happened in June, but I didn't get around to writing about it until today, July 4.

Went to Guanella Pass early Sunday morning of June 30, 2024 and started out on the Square Top Mountain trailhead, which is near Mt. Bierstadt (we had great views of Mt. Bierstadt during this hike). Mt. Bierstadt is a fourteener (14er), while Square Top falls just short at 13,794 feet in elevation (making it a thirteener (13er)), which is still impressive.

What was most immediately noticeable on this hike was the abundance of wildflowers along the trail. Some of these wildflowers are familiar to me from lower elevations (like paintbrushes, bluebells, penstemons, and fleabanes), although once you get into alpine ecosystems some of them tend to look a little different. For example, I've only ever seen Whipple's penstemon (Penstemon whippleanus), which has a dark Burgundy color (almost black in some cases), at higher elevations such as near Blue Lake in the Poudre Canyon near State Forest State Park. The paintbrushes at higher elevations also look a little different - Rhexia-leaf Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja rhexiifolia) seems to be more dominant up here, and usually has a more pink-maroon shading compared to the oranger looking paintbrushes at lower elevations and on the plains. Having that said, the paintbrushes on this trail were not very pink, so I'm not positive they were Rhexia. Among others, we also saw plenty of American bistort (Bistorta bistortoides), blue columbine (Aguilegia coerulea), beardtongues, silky phacelia (Phacelia sericea), and moss campion (Silene acaualis).

We also saw two moose in the distance. Moose were introduced to Colorado in North Park starting in 1978 from moose populations that were already established in Utah and Wyoming [1]. Since then, due to migration and several other introduction programs they have spread across the state and their numbers are growing in Colorado. I still don't have a great camera, so the photo I took was using my phone through a binocular lens.

In the end, we didn't get all the way to the summit of Square Top because we'd gotten a late start for the morning and a storm was brewing. That's the thing about Colorado in June, you have to expect that there will be lightening, thunder, and rain in the afternoons so it's important to get any big hiking goals finished early in the morning.

Still, the alpine tundra and subalpine forests in early summer are a beautiful place to be outdoors.