Richards Hollow

I went on a hike at Richard Hollow with Cache Hikers yesterday. It's a 5.5 mi hike listed as moderate. I can see doing it as a mountain bike ride. There are some sections near the beginning that look pretty tough, but most of the trail looks pretty approachable. We did run into several people on motor bikes.

Richard's Hollow starts out from Left Hand Fork in Black Smith Fork Canyon. It goes through a fairly deep canyon before coming out into meadows. There's a nice waterfall near the beginning. You canget to the bottom of it by taking a short steep side trail.

We didn't make it to the top of the trail. We decided to stop for lunch and turn around near a series of Beaver pools. It was very serene. I had no idea that Beavers could have such an impact. There were a series of pools one after another that were quite large.

There were lots of wildflowers blooming. I had bought a field guide for the purpose of identifying them. I hoped that there would be a single comprehensive field guide that would have most of the flowers I was looking for. But I don't think there is such a book. Luckily, the Cache Hikers I was with yesterday were a great resource. They made the hike an enjoyable educational field trip.

I thought the most exciting wildflower find was the Sego Lily, near the trailhead, but we didn't see notice it until we were on our return. There were several on a sunny east facing slope.

List of wildflowers we saw (I didn't take the pictures in the links)

• aster - purple daisy-like
• monkey flower - yellow
• mountain bluebells - these are the ones that are waist
• flax
• sticky geranium - pink, five radically symmetrical petals, maple like leaves
• wild white geranium - look just like the sticky geranium, except white.
• white columbine
• indian paint brush - bright red at top of plant, very distinctive
• scarlet gilia - red tubular flowers on an elongated stem
• horsemint -
• yarrow - clustes of tiny white flowers with fern like leaves
• woodland star - white, dsitinctive shaped petal, I thought it looked like a snowflake
• wild sweet pea -
• cow parsnip - clusters of tiny white flowers look similar to yarrow, but the leaves are very different
• larkspur - purple, also called delphinium
• western salsify - I had been assuming that the giant dandilion puffs around here were from giant dandiloins, but they're from salsify