Mineral Basin Wildflowers

The week after we went to Lake Catherine, the girls and I had a free afternoon, so we decided to go up to Snowbird and see more flowers! (We have been here before, years ago, but not on this exact hike.) This time we rode the ski lift up the hardest and steepest parts, so it didn't even feel like much of a real hike! It was so pretty and peaceful on the lift. I love riding ski lifts because they are so quiet! You feel like you're a bird flying. It's even better than the tram (which is also fun, and doesn't have a height requirement, so it's good if you are bringing babies!…but I was glad not to be. Ha ha).

It was REALLY crowded and busy the day we went, a Friday. We had to park waaaay out at the end of the lot, and we felt lucky to find a place even there! And of course, once we'd walked in to the lodge, I realized I'd left my money in the car, so I had to run a mile back for it. It was a hot day, but a little more bearable at Snowbird than at home…and even nicer once we got up the mountain a little.

There was a baby duck in the pond on the way up. Cute.

From the ski lift, we could see the red and blue trams going along to one side of us.

Once we got off the ski lift and looked at the view, we walked through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain, into Mineral Basin. And there…

were the most flowers I have ever seen in one place. We thought flowers on the Lake Catherine hike had been extravagant. But this was just too much! We didn't know what to do! We couldn't even take it all in! I kept thinking about a description I'd read recently of someone's near-death experience, where he talked about the colors and flowers being like nothing he had seen on earth. I thought, "Nowhere on earth…except here! Surely there could be nowhere more beautiful than here?"

Once we got into the Mineral Basin, there was really no one around! A few people taking pictures right near the tunnel (and who took our picture for us!). And a few looking out from the view at the top of the tram. But no one hiking the trail with us, and no one in the flower meadows. It was lovely and peaceful and I was glad to have it to ourselves, but I also couldn't believe it. Why isn't the whole world here seeing this?!

We hiked along a narrow trail that was kind of rocky at first, and past it on the hillsides you could see these huge washes of color that we knew were more flowers.

Then the trail started winding through the flower meadows themselves. We loved it because the trail was so tiny you could imagine that we were the only ones who had ever been here, discovering this place for the very first time. The flowers grew right up to the trail and it felt like walking IN a garden. Instead of just BY a garden. The most beautiful garden made by the most accomplished gardener. How can anyone see beauty like this and not just feel overwhelmed with gratitude and awe to Heavenly Father for conceiving of, making, preserving such a place? If I could go anywhere on earth—anywhere!—I would choose right here.

(For these wide views, I was using my phone camera, since I had a smaller lens on the real camera. I love the combination of the flower fields with the distant mountains, but the colors didn't get captured quite as clearly.)

It was a fairly flat hike, winding through the meadows, and up this high the air wasn't terribly hot even though it was midday.

Sometimes there were huge patches of just one kind of flower.

Sometimes they all grew together in a rainbow.

In some areas the whole character of the hillsides changed: orange paintbrush and field mint and purple aster rather than lupine and goldenaster and yellow arnica. I'm not sure what was different: the angle of the slope, maybe? Or the amount of available water? The orange-and-purple sections did seem generally rockier.

We went slow. Ate our little granola bar picnic.

Saw millions of butterflies.

Rested on rocks in the quiet air and the warm sun. We didn't ever want to leave!

The paintbrush in these yellow-and-purple meadows was mostly pink rather than orange. 

Some of the blues and purples were lupine. Some were larkspur.

There was so much beauty! Too much to hold.

As we rode the ski lift back down the mountain at the end of the afternoon, I almost felt like crying. It was all just so beautiful and I felt so happy, and of course being happy makes me sad at the same time—that I can't hold onto always these little girls and this exact happiness forever. I said to the girls, "We will always remember this day." And we will.