Eddy Peak in the Cherry Peak Roadless Area photographed from the Munson Creek trail head.
One of my favorite days of Spring usually comes on April 18th and for years on that day I have hiked two miles up the Munson Creek trail to an area where there is a large area of Trilliums in bloom. This year it has been cool and rainy with few sunny days and I suspected that the trilliums would be late so today I checked at the footbridge near the trail head where they bloom earlier and found they are just beginning. My hike will be put off another week or so because my favorite area is two thousand feet higher in elevation.
Pacific Trillium, (trillium ovatum)
Several other wildflowers have begun to appear now too:
Such a tiny (about .25 inches across) blossom and so fragile that it floats on even the tiniest breeze, it is still one of the earliest and hardiest of the wildflowers. Things cannot always be understood at the first glance.
Yellow Bell ~ Fritillaria pudica
A Whitetail doe was grazing on the hillside just below this small blossom in the evening of the second day of its bloom: in the morning the flower was gone. Life can take a sudden turn in this world in which we live.
After the late arrival of warm weather, the wildflowers in this part of Western Montana have been hurrying to catch up with spring. Here are more that have started blooming in May:
