I love visiting Colorado.  It doesn't matter to me what season because each season has its special views. 

This was my 2nd year to visit the Gunnison and Crested Butted area in the summer.  Last year I visited in July and there were some wildflowers. There weren't many still blooming.

This year was a whole different story.  Apparently with the large amount of snow they had this prior winter, the wildflowers were much better than usual with more varieties and they were staying nice later in the season up in the higher altitudes.

So the challenge was on, where to find the best variety of these wildflowers and then to capture their beauty... 

We heard that north of Crested Butte the flowers were still good. I checked out the trails and found one that was off of Gothic Road that sounded good and about the right distance for the time we had.  It was called Snodgrass Trail.  The first thing I noticed was the increase in purple flowers.  The year before there were none and this year there were atleast 3 varieties.

The Larkspur (Delphinium barbeyi) was the most prevelant but there still was some Lupines and I am still working on the names of the other - might be monkshood  (Aconitum).

I can't count the number of different types of wildflowers that we saw.  There were t the larkspur, the indian paintbrush, the fleabane, the columbine (Aquilegia caerulea) and on and on. Still trying to figure out what the pink fuzzy ones are LOL

The False Hellebore was interesting and really tall!!  Up high we hiked through places where it towered over us.  I felt like I was walking through a jungle.  

One of the special flowers was the Monument plant  (Frasera speciosa)  It is is a mast flowering species, with significant flowering occurring every 2-7 years in response to an environmental cue.  We were told it had been 5 years since it had bloomed in the area. It is a monocarpic perennial, it grows for 22-80 years, flowers once and then dies. Wow!

All of these we found while hiking the Snodgrass Trail.  What a wondrous area!!  It is so nice to be able to bring home these wonderful memories of all the spectacular views with wildflowers in this little corner of Colorado!