Colorado Wildflowers

[Sideshow Bob]

I’m driving out to Colorado next week looking for wildflowers; does anyone know the status of areas such as Yankee Boy Basin and/or American Basin? Are there other areas that I should be exploring? Is this a good year or?

Thanks for any info you can share.

Gale

[Mark Stahlke]

Check the Rocky Mountain Nature Photographers (http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vf10&u=19159) web site for the latest updates on wildflower conditions.

[Keith Pitman]

I was in the area of Independence Pass this week and there were oodles of wildflowers. Not my subject matter, but I enjoyed them non-photographically.

[Sideshow Bob]

Thanks for the info. It looks like this is not a good year for Colorado wildflowers so I've decided not to go. For those of you who have not photographed the alpine wildflowers, attached are a couple of images from the summer of 2005. Maybe next year.

Gale

[Keith Pitman]

Yeah, that's what I saw.

[65Galaxie]

I just got back from RMNP and saw some flowers but nothing spectacular. On the hike to Emerald Lake I only saw a few Columbines. I always try to put something in the foreground of my wide angle shots but there wasn't a whole lot going on. The purple lupines looked like they were a week over the're peak.

P.S. I would love to get up to American Basin again. Took a 4x4 Jeep over the Alpine Loop about 4 yrs ago. I wonder if my V8 AWD Explorer would be up to the task. I took it up to Pierson Point east of Estes Park but not again. I scraped a few places coming down too fast (had to crawl down as slow as possible). There was a teenager taking up a Subaru AWD but I wouldn't want to look underneath the car! There was no way he was going to make it without scraping and bending underneath. I don't remember the Alpine loop being that bad.