Wildflowers abound on the mountain

The following pictures show why I love coming to Mt. Rainier in the summer. Normally, the flowers are at their peak earlier than this, but because of the tremendous amount of snow this year, we hit it just right. One hiker we met explained that some of the trails on the mountain won't ever open up this year, because the snow will start falling in a couple of weeks, and everything will be buried.

The visitor's center had a book all about Mt. Rainier's flowers, so I bought it. The purple ones are Lupine. The bright pink are magenta paintbrush. The white ones to the far left, with the large heads, are called pasqueflowers. The tall, yellow blooms are called Lousewort. I enjoyed finding out the names as some of them are so unusual.