July 13 - Silver, Solitude, Twin Lakes Loop

Heading out for a quick hike after work today. The destination is a hike from Silver Lake to Lake Solitude then up to Twin Lakes and then back to Silver Lake (a ~4 mile loop).

Warm sunny day with temps near 90 in the valley. I head up to Big Cottonwood Canyon to the end of the road (almost) stopping at the Silver Interpretative Center. It's a nice 73 degrees up here (yea!)

I head counter-clockwise around Silver Lake starting around 4:30pm. Sun is still above the mountains and there are many people out here tonight.

The dragonflies are around.

I want to hike in as much shade as possible (simply because it's cooler) so I head to Lake Solitude first. The trail to this lake is for the most part covered by aspens or pines. But there's still flowers: Thimbleberry blooms, bluebells, geraniums, tall jacob's ladder, paintbrush, white columbine, .....

Even though it's later in the afternoon, I'm seeing a few 2-tailed Swallowtails and Weidemeyer's Admiral zipping around.

I arrive at Lake Solitude and stop to look around as there's usually good flowers here. Unfortunately we haven't had much rain and everything is very dry including the flowers/plants. Not too impressive this year. :(

But there's a Stellar's Jay making a bit of noise in one of the pine trees.

I head right around the lake to hook up with the trail heading up above Twin Lakes. On the far side of the lake along the edge of the trail, there's a female deer munching on the vegetation. She looks at me as I pass her on the other side of the trail (not 8 ft away) and she keeps eating - doesn't care.

Up, up, up I go! Only stopping for a few nice flowers.

Yea, I finally make it to Twin Lakes intersection and find a nice spot for supper! Great views!

And wonderful flowers.

Time to head down.

I get to the Twin Lakes dam and decide to venture down to the lake. Lots of activity of the non-human-kind here -- baby ground squirrels running everywhere!! So cute!

(And no humans to be seen - very strange for such a lovely day.)

Head down thru the shade and flowers.

I make it down to the ridge above Silver Lake and see a Pika cross the trail.

A little further along and there's another Pika!

Wonderful hike!