Jardine Juniper Trail

What a difference in the snow pack from May 3rd. The Jardine Juniper Trail is almost entirely dry now. I hiked it yesterday, keeping an eye out for the trail's mountain bike potential. There were at least half a dozen tougher bikers on the trail. Still, I think it’s well beyond my current ability. The scariest part is a wobbly log bridge over some quick water. We saw some bikers just grab their bikes and carry them over it. Yikes! I had to shuffle across real slowly and I still nearly fell. Later in the season, it should be easy to just ride through the water a little down stream of the bridge. Still, even without snow and a wobbly bridge, I won’t be biking up to the Jardine Juniper anytime soon.

It’s 5.2 miles from the trail head to the tree. It’s a pretty steady climb the whole way. It gains over 2000”. The hike isn’t too difficult, but I won’t be taking any lowlander guests. Throw in an elevation factor and it would be dang tough. There are great views all the way up. My friend was playing shutter bug, so I don’t have too many pictures to share.

The word on the trail was to avoid the shady route and take the scenic route (a well marked option near the top) because of mud and snow pack. The scenic route definitely lives up to it's name. There was snow pack on the shady route, but definitely passable on foot (not bike). You can take one heading to the tree and the other going back. They split at the Jardine Juniper sign on the return.

I was quite obsessed with the wild flowers. I had noticed these flowers in Smithfield Canyon last week and then a vendor at the Gardner’s Market who sells local pictures has a picture of one and told me they are glacier lilies. There were plenty of those, mountain bluebells and yellow fritillaria.

That gave me this idea that I should get a field guide for wildflowers and carry it with me. Maybe I could try to see how many I could check off. I went to the Borders today to do that. There were a couple of guides that looked promising, focusing on Utah or the Rockies , but I decided that my test for a book would be whether or not I could find this plant I’m calling snoofpoof (because it looks like it would be in a Dr. Seuss book). No luck. Poor snoofpoof. It looks like the flower elitists don’t value you enough. So I couldn't bring myself to buy one.

The eponymous flora is an old juniper tree growing out of a rock. There seems to be some debate about the age. There is a painted over sign that claims that it is 3200. Reports on the Internet put it between 1500-3200 (can we get a dendrochronologist here?).It’s being touted as the oldest tree in the Rockies.

Update: Snoofpoofs are actually called Waterleaf. I saw one on the Birch Canyon Trail on 6.07 and it was purple instead of white. The Wasatch Bloomers website has a nice index of local wildflowers by color. Unfortunately, it appears that it hasn't been updated in years.