Fave Hike: Timber-South Fork Baker, Great Basin National Park

The Timber-South Fork Baker Loop trail is so good I've already done it twice this year. It's about 5 miles (8 km) long and 1600 ft (500 m) elevation gain. It's not easy, but it's so beautiful.

The lower part is relatively flat, but then the trail starts getting into the trees and steeper.

There are always great wildflowers to admire, like this milkvetch.

We chose to go up the steeper Timber Creek side. There are some switchbacks, but we still had to take a number of breathing breaks.

On this late May trip, the aspens were just leafing out near the top.

A big limber pine has died.

Some of the aspens have weird bulges.

We even found a patch of snow!

We had intended to spend some time relaxing in the big meadow at the top, but we heard thunder!

We figured we shouldn't dawdle too long. (And we wondered at the trail signs, some with mileages and some without. It's good to take distances with a grain of salt.)

It started raining on us as we started down the South Fork Baker side, with more thunder. I had been so hot at the beginning of the hike that I had walked in the creek and wetted my shirt. Now, the rain was cooling us off.

We stopped for a selfie once we felt like we were in a safe place.

Most of the trail was tree-free, but this recently fallen one had us scrambling.

This trail is so picturesque!

The lower big meadow only had a few flowers blooming.

The Oregon grape (Mahonia repens) was impressive.

And then we were crossing the last bridges and back to the car.

We fortunately had a final wow--a yellow-bellied marmot!

Just a couple weeks later, I was up in the lower meadow (Baker-South Fork Baker loop, also a lovely hike), and the meadow was full of shooting stars!

This heart-leaf arnica made me laugh. It looks like how I feel most days--giving it my best to stand tall, but definitely a little disheveled and trying to pull it all together.

It's fun to play with the slo mo settings on phones!

A couple weeks after that, it was time to do the Timber-South Fork Baker loop again. This time we had blue skies, no  thunderstorms in the upper meadow. We had nice views of the backside of Wheeler Peak and Doso Doyabi. 

We also enjoyed seeing some very different flowers, like this Rocky Mountain columbine.

In the lower meadow, most of the shooting stars had dimmed, but the bistort was going strong.

Fresh off the Great Basin Bumble Bee BioBlitz, we were ultra-aware of bumble bees. And we saw two!

One of the first things to look for to determine if it's a bumble bee (vs. some other kind of bee or a fly mimic) is the pollen sac on the back leg. And it's really hairy, which is another feature off bumble bees. This lady has a huge yellow one! Then you look at the pattern of the tergites (6 back segments on the abdomen (remember head-thorax-abdomen as the three main body parts of an insect)). This one has some notable orange. 

You can upload photos to iNaturalist for guesses on identifications, as well as the Bumble Bee Atlas.

We spent quite a lot of time with the bees. Then we walked, and I challenged Desert Girl to find an orchid. What?! An orchid in the Great Basin desert? Well, it doesn't grow in dry areas, it certainly likes wet spots and it's rather small, but it's still an orchid.


Isn't it a beauty?

 Hopefully I'll get to hike this trail a couple more times this year and see what other changes I notice. While it's fun to hike new trails to see what's there, it's also great to repeat some faves to see how they change through the seasons. 

2023 SuperBloom in and near Great Basin National Park

 

With the amazing snow we had this past winter, we knew the wildflowers would be good. We just didn't know how good they would be! The Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza saggita) was amazing up Baker Creek.

The contrast with the snow on the mountains made the colors pop even more!

I love seeing cactus bloom, as the delicate flowers make such an interesting contrast with the spiky spines. Here's Pediocactus simpsonii, and I have to admit that I know it by it's scientific name and not it's common name. But I looked up the common name for you, and here's what I found: Simpson’s Footcactus, Mountain Ball Cactus, Simpson´s Hedgehog Cactus, Snowball Pediocactus. So there are plenty of common names to choose from!

Over in Spring Valley (and quite a few other places), the globemallow put on a spectacular show.

The bluebells are numerous and especially pretty after a rain.

I think this is Engelmann''s Hedgehog Cactus (Echinocereus engelmannii). So beautiful on a cloudy day.

The flowers are gorgeous.

The superbloom of Arrowleaf Balsamroot was also found in part of the burned area on the Osceola Ditch Trail.

Although it's so cool to look at the sea of color, I also like taking a closer look at individual flowers. I think this is a Hemipteran (true bug).

And here's a ladybug hiding out.

I've been wanting to take more Milky Way photos with flowers, but have been struggling with wind making the flowers blurry. Here are some Prickly Poppies with the Milky Way.

And some Palmer's Penstemon with the Milky Way. Even though the photos aren't turning out how I want, it's still beautiful to observe the night sky in such gorgeous conditions.

A closeup of the Palmer's Penstemon, those sexy beasts!

The Arrowleaf Balsamroot also decorated Strawberry Creek.

A friend shared a Facebook post about an unusual flower in Spring Valley. I was intrigued and investigated and found it to be Toano Milkvetch, which has a limited distribution. Nevertheless, it was easy to find in 2023 along the sides of the highway!

Most milkvetch grows low to the ground, but Toano Milkvetch gets over a meter high!

And then I saw some in a different color and had to stop again!

The white verion of Toano Milkvetch! You can even see the highway in this photo.

The Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia polycantha) has been flowering well this year.

Up in the meadow in South Fork Baker Creek, the shooting stars are amazing in early July.

They are such delicate flowers. It sure would be fun to be lying next to the shooting stars and look up into the night sky and see a real shooting star. (Of course, they grow in kind of wet soils, so maybe this is better off as a dream than reality.)

Groundsels are blooming well, but what really caught my attention were the aphids, the oval dark insects on the plant. They are true bugs (Hemiptera), and I'm organizing the Hemiptera BioBlitz at Great Basin National Park August 15-17, so paying extra attention to them. About 5,000 species of aphids are known, with several hundred recognized as pests. Some are specialists, only feeding on one species of plant, while others are generalists. What I find is cool is that the aphids such sap out of the plant, making honeydew. Ants have a mutualist relationship with the aphids, climbing up the plant to suck the honeydew (free lunch!) and protecting the aphids from predators. 

One more superbloom photo to close out this post. I am trying to put more of my flower and insect photos on iNaturalist, especially since the timing of some of these flowers is so late this year. It's great to record the phenology (timing) of the plants so we know how they can vary. I hope you have been able to see some beautiful flowers this summer!