Last year I couldn’t go to the Perkins Peak area until Fall because there had been a huge washout on the road. This year the road was good and I looked forward to the flowers with great anticipation. But it was a disappointing trip.

The weather looked uncertain.

And the flowers were sparse and scrappy. Like the roadsides and early stuff in the garden, the plants had bolted early or simply failed to appear. I had to hunt for anything worth photographing.

A patch of paintbrush showing several different shades.

The only halfway decent clump of columbine

Mountain goldenrod was almost the only species doing well.

The road above the treeline was quite barren.

Except for one or two clumps of alpine harebell

And a native dandelion – a different species from the common roadside dandelion, which is introduced.

The diverse-leaved penstemon is normally abundant. but all I found were a few scruffy clumps.

The creek was a little more promising. Predominately globe flowers,

With some clumps of mountain marsh marigold.

The bog laurel was so close to the ground it was hard to find any I could photograph.

Roseroot was clumped in places

And a single, alien-looking puffball the size of a baseball squatted on a piece of dirt. I have not seen one up there before..

I was able to frame a clump of penstemon with the mountain behind.

A few clumps of heather.

At the next wet area I found some mountain buttercups. It had started to rain at this point.

The day was only half over but the lack of flowers and poor weather was no fun. So I turned for home. There were storms over the Chilcotin,

And I hoped for rain at home, but when I turned into my driveway, there had not been a drop.

This is what the mountains looked like at the end of June 2021. Actually on the first day of the heat dome. Note that, not only are there many more flowers, but also there is a great deal more snow on the mountains. And 2020.

My neighbour, Jade, wanted to get up there, too. She planned a major high-altitude hike. The following day, the weather was much the same. But on the Sunday or the long weekend, she hit absolutely perfect weather. Here is the view from near the top of Perkins Peak.

She was incredibly lucky. The next day the smoke built up again.