It's a great time to hike around at 7-8000' in Yosemite, with an exceptional quantity and diversity of plants in bloom now. Along Glacier Point Road, check Summit Meadow (Shootings Stars!), McGurk, Peregoy, and upper Sentinel Creek meadows and bring your camera and a field guide. Hiking to Ostrander Lake this morning we saw almost 4 dozen species of flowers in bloom. Highlights included corn lily 5 feet tall, alpine lilies 4-5 feet tall, several lupines, lots of purple Erigeron, abundant larkspur and Calochortus. Now's the time to get out there. Very few mosquitoes.
We also encountered Williamson's sapsucker, hermit thrush, western bluebird, mountain chickadee, yellow-rumped warbler, olive-sided flycatcher and Clark's nutcracker.
Great masses of cumuli build to the east, making 'higher Sierras' and we expect rain somewhere in the higher country.
I was at Summit Meadow on 7/14 -- an amazing display of shooting stars, bistort, camas lily, and monkeyflower, as well as wild strawberries and western violets at the drier edge. We parked right next to a patch of red columbine.
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