Tue Jun 15, 2004 3:05 pm Miller - Iron Bear Loop - 6/12/04
I have to admit that this is a pretty lousy hike. It can have motorcycles and it can be dry and hot. There are only a couple of reasons why anybody would want to hike it. OK, it does have a nice forest walk along a creek. Then it has a good steep climb to the top of Miller. Yeah, there are stunning views of snow capped peaks. The flowers are stupendous right now.
Come to think of it, it does have a great off trail ridge ramble. There are more flowers than you can shake a stick at. It was lonesome on a Saturday in June. I saw 5 other hikers in 7 hours. Of course it is a real loop with not a step of retraced trail. Like I said, who would want to do a lousy hike like this?
At 13 miles and 3900' gained it's almost up to DayHike Mike's standards.
We did the loop on Friday. We did it counter clockwise instead hoping to have the sun at our back most of the time. The day was sunny and warm but there was a strong breeze which kept us cool. No bugs.
It took us 8 hours with stops for the wonderful vistas. We really enjoyed the section along the County Line trail. But what was really amazing is we only saw 1 other hiker and 0 motorcycles the whole day.
Interesting Delphinium on rock slides. Delphinium glareosum? (large flowered larkspur)
Nice larkspur Marta. Did you follow the trail or run the ridge to the top of Miller? Some of the best flowers were from the summit of Miller down to the County Line Trail.
We followed the trail. We will have to try the ridge walk next time. The area where we found the larkspur had a nice collection of rock flowers. We also found an unusual yellow columbine that we had never seen before on the steep section of County Line. We got to do it going down. The other flower that we wanted to see was Brownie Orchid. We found it last year when we did just the Miller section and found it again although it seemed a bit smaller and somewhat disrupted.
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Thanks for the pics and TR!
The other flower that we wanted to see was Brownie Orchid. We found it last year when we did just the Miller section and found it again although it seemed a bit smaller and somewhat disrupted.