Golden Time in the Mountains

It's Golden Time and the Alpine Larches (Larix lyalli) are preparing for winter. Like hardwoods, they are a deciduous tree although still a conifer. As the tree pulls its sugars and chlorophyll back to the roots, remaining pigments cause the tree's needles to flame a golden color. Beautiful, whether or not you know the cause:

Alpine Larch grow near treeline, typically at c. 9,000 feet elevation here in the norther Rockies near Butte, Montana. Here on a harsh, windswept rocky ridge, they grow as krumholz with stunted whitepark pines:

Pure stands -- "Larch Parks" or well spaced trees with heather or other groundcover -- are common along the Continental Divide in the Pintler Wilderness of southwest Montana. Five hundred year old trees are common, and some are found to be thousand years old--young by Bristelcone Pine standards, but not a bad age for a tree. With growth rates of less than one inch per century, size is deceptive: even the largest Alpine Larches seldom exceed two feet in diamter or sixty feet in height. Their beauty and the harsh places they live make a Golden Time visit mandatory each late September:

My visit this year was Goat Flat via Storm Lake Pass (in the Pintler). It's a fairly easy day hike--two hours in and one hour out if I'm in a hurry (which I seldom am). It's a great old trail. Three cheers to the trail crews that built stretches like this by laying up rock walls:

In more settled areas of the West, a sheer cliff like this mountainside above Storm Lake would attract dozens of climbers each weekend. I wonder if you could find a single piton on the place:

The early morning light was bright and clear, making for great shots of backlit trees and other things, like this Elk Thistle (Cirsium scariosum):

Ah, the climb is over. Here we are at Storm Lake Pass looking to Goat Flat. The trail is cut from solid rock along the face of Mount Tiny (far right in the photo):

MollyTheDog walks the patterned ground (raked into waves by wind and weather) of Goat Flat:

We hiked over to the ridge that leads to Kurt Peak, a popular vision quest site for the many tribes that used this area over the past ten thousand years or so. Eating elk jerky and an apple, I took in the many colors and shapes of lichen growing on the rocks there:

After meditating for a spell, the croaks and quorks of ravens drew me back into Nature. Two adults and two juveniles flew acrobatics over me and even "dropped a pack" (rolled over in flight) for me when I quorked back:

Soon they were joined by two falcons about their size. The ravens and falcons vied to see who could gyre up the thermal the quickest. The falcons easily won, and once they were above the ravens, my totem bird wisely decided to find another place to play on the wind:

Time to head home, ready to accept Fall's cooler temperatures and the onset of Winter.

[For an earlier trip to Goat Flat when wildflowers were in full bloom and for more about the Vision Quest site, Kurt Peak, see http://ecorover.blogspot.com/2008/07/pintler-wilderness-vision-quest.html .]