Alpine blooms in Rocky Mountain National Park
Alpine Forget-me-not flowers are given the correct naming, one cannot forget these tiny flowers with their bright colors. These flowers made the alpine meadow more beautiful!!
Everyone would have heard about Tulips bloom, Spring Cherry blossoms, Super blooms in desert regions but not many are aware of Alpine blooms. Alpine blooms are not easy to see as it is very specific to season and terrain. So unless anyone is interested to see unique wildflowers in that altitude braving the cold and other difficulties, there is no point in doing that hike. As wildflower lovers, our sole point of hiking is to see beautiful wildflowers in different terrains. When we heard about the alpine blooms in rockies we didn’t want to miss the rare opportunity. We quickly made our travel arrangements to Rocky mountain national park and started learning about wildflowers in the rockies area.
We always travel in such a way that we reach the destination by early morning, so that we can enjoy the place in glowing morning sunlight. Our main focus was to see Alpine blooms but we were thrilled to see wide variety of wildflowers while driving in the Rocky mountains range.
Mountain harebell or Alaska harebell are elegant looking flowers we saw in the Rocky Mountains range. The rain drops just added extra beauty to this pleasant looking flower.
The jagged mountain peaks, roaring water, fluttering butterflies and colorful wildflowers were mind blowing. We wished to stop at every mile as everything looked beautiful. When we couldn’t resist our temptation, we stopped and took a moment to absorb everything around us. The flowers looked very lovely in closer look with previous night raindrops. That was our first visit to rocky mountain range, so we were seeing all those wildflowers for the first time. We were very happy that we picked the correct season to visit the Rocky mountain national park. While we were affixed with the wild beauties infront of us, something drew my special attention which looked like some magical flower. The Pasque flower had just grown out of nowhere and popping their heads out of the ground. Our expectation about alpine blooms got multiplied tenfold.
Pasque flower is one of our very favorite flowers. Being from South India, we are not used to spring flowers. So seeing spring flowers is always special to us.
The weather was pleasant and we continued our drive. Soon we started seeing the distant snow covered mountains. The idea was to see alpine flowers on top of these mountains. Even if the snow had melted like we thought, it should be freezing cold in those mountains. So we thought to reach the alpine bloom trail by noon when the temperature was manageable by us. In the mean time, we decided to roam around few other trails. We stopped at the first trail we came across but unfortunately there was a signboard saying the trail was closed. Just nearby the trail there was a beautiful meadow, so we decided to wander in that area. It was a bright day and all the flowers looked like some extra layer of color was mashed up on them.
Snow covered mountains are always majestic! This view showed us the different level of this rocky mountain with different weather pattern. The varying weather with the altitude is the reason for wide range of vegetation.
As we are biodiversity lovers, we couldn’t miss the birds and butterflies in rocky mountain. So we chased behind them and we encountered many mammals also in this trip. We didn’t see any tourists in this area, so its just us and the wildbeings in the rockies. We just enjoyed the solitude in the wilderness and sauntered in the meadow seeing the wildflowers in yellow, blue, pink, white, violet, red and few other color combinations. Even after seeing so many wildflowers, I was dumbstruck by seeing one special flower which I didn’t expect in that terrain. On seeing my expression, Vinod came to see what I was looking at and he was also in for a shock. We both were thrilled to see the cactus bloom in rocky mountain national park. Cactus is not native to India, so seeing Cactus in wild was a dream for us.
When I spotted this Mountain Ball cactus , it really looked like the flower was glowing. The baby pink color increased the beauty of this gorgeous flower.
We had made trips previously to Bigbend National Park and Death Valley National Park just to see cactus blooms. I thought we could see Cactus plants only in desert terrain, so seeing them in a green meadow was a pretty staggering experience. We were satisfied with the wildflower show in the meadow and we started our drive to alpine trail. If you have to visit alpine trails in India, you have to walk for few days which we did in Great Himalayan National Park and Valley Of Flowers National Park. It was a great experience to hike and see wildflowers. We didn’t have the luxury of time when we went to Rocky Mountains, so we opted for the quick approach to reach the alpine. For those wishing to experience the tundra without hiking miles above tree line, the alpine trail in Rocky Mountains is the best. When we reached the alpine trail in noon there were few tourists. Everyone was covered in winter clothing but the weather outside looked just like a bright sunny day. I stepped out of the car and the cold wind pricked my skin.
The grasses may look dry but the Bighorn sheeps didn’t mind that. It was just another fine day in Rockies for them unlike us who thought the weather was too cold.
I quickly got back inside for the warmth of the heater in the car. After some quick warm up, we also wrapped ourselves in winter clothes and stepped outside to face the cold wind. Weather plays an important role when you are in outdoors. If you are not well planned to handle severe cold, hot or rainy weather , you will not enjoy the place even when you are in one of the most beautiful places in the world. We had some bitter experiences when we started our travelling, so we had learnt from that to be prepared for harsh weather. Unlike us, animals in the wild are well adapted to the terrain they live in like the Bighorn sheeps who didn’t seem to care about the cold wind.
These are the photos that doesn’t show the actual reality of the place. It looks like the place is just with dry grasses but there were beautiful alpine blooms in my every step. I was walking carefully not to put my foot on any of these tiny plants.
We were all geared up and started walking in the alpine trail to see the beautiful blooms. The alpine blooms didn’t look like Super blooms or Kurinji blooms to change the color of the hill. I got scared initially seeing the mountains as they were partially covered with snow , dry grasses and there was no sign of wildflowers. Once we started walking, we realized that was the whole point of alpine blooms. They are tiny flowers which bloom just after the snow melts, so they are visible only when we look closely. Once our eye got set to this new terrain, we started seeing new wildflowers at every step.
Dwarf clover was one of the first alpine blooms I saw in Rocky mountain alpine trail.
There were wildflowers in various growth level like few just poking there buds , few with leaves and flowers and few in full bloom but no leaves. We were marveled at those tiny flowers which were stuck on the snow covered alpine meadow. If we had come after few weeks, we would have missed these tiny alpine blooms as they all would have overtaken by tall summer plants.It was very tough to photograph the tiny blooms in that cold wind.
Alpine buttercup is my favorite alpine flower in rocky mountains. They were peeking from the rock crevices and their bright color gave them the exotic look.
Other tourists who had come just to experience tundra were intrigued by our activities like bending down on the knees to see something tiny on the ground , keenly searching for different flowers , cautiously keeping our steps so that we don’t step on the tiny wildflowers and shielding the plants from wind while taking photographs. We showed the blooms to few curious fellow travelers and they were surprised to see the colorful wildflowers in alpine. We wished to see Columbine flowers in Rocky Mountain National Park but we knew they are summer flowers. So we knew it was a compromise to see either Summer flowers or Alpine blooms.
Mustard flowers are common everywhere but in alpine all plants are special. This Rocky Mountain draba also not an exception.
There are few unique characteristics about the alpine flowers which makes them so worthy to hike up to the high altitude mountains. The alpine blooms are tiny to shield themselves from the harsh weather. They are very brightly colored to attract the pollinators which are very less in number in that tough climate. The alpine flowers usually bloom in bunches , again to protect from cold weather and for successful pollination. The low-lying sweep of colors by the alpine flowering plants should attract the pollinators in a short amount of time frame. There are few alpine flowers which just bloom from the rocks like the Snow Lotus which is in our wishlist. The evergreen foliage, thick leaves, cushion flowers are characteristics of alpine flowers to withstand the cold, dry wind.
Alpine Kittentail, another perfect example of alpine flower.
The alpine blooms could be seen only in few places around the world and we witnessed the colorful alpine flora in the beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park. We spent good time with the alpine blooms till the wind started getting fiercer and we decided to return to our campsite. Seeing the alpine blooms was once in a lifetime experience for us and we really enjoyed that to the fullest.