Traffic was normal for a Thursday, that is, light. I met no one on the way to the Dinkey Lakes/Willow Meadow Trailhead on the increasingly narrow road from Tamarack Ridge. One car was parked at the Swamp Lake 4WD road when I got to the end of the road. Three fishermen were going in to catch their lunch. After they started back to their car that afternoon, I had the entire wilderness to myself.
Old and out of shape with a 35 pound pack, it was slow going. I finally made it to First Dinkey Lake at about 1:45. There was a fair amount of snow on the Three Sisters.
First Dinkey Lake with Three Sisters on the skyline
At about 2:30 I was at the base of the trail that ascends to Second Dinkey Lake. The flower I am surveying, Lewisia leeana, is highly concentrated along this stretch of trail. There wasn't a single plant blooming. But it wasn't only L leeana that was not blooming, nothing else was, either. I saw only a few flowers on my way in. https://www.inaturalist.org/calendar/se ... /2021/5/27
I don't know what I expected, but I thought there might be more than there were. I saw way more flowers than this on a May 26 dayhike in 2013, another drought year. [https://www.inaturalist.org/calendar/se ... /2013/5/26]
A little after three, I was at my campsite at Second Dinkey Lake.
Second Dinkey Lake
That night, I slept cold until I figured out how my sleeping bag was made. The design was the old fashioned head to toe tube type which requires the user to shift the down up and down the tube. Using it the previous two seasons, I had never been cold and I hadn't needed to shift the down. Once I adjusted it, sleep came more easily.
Since there were very few flowers, I headed back home the next morning. I met half a dozen groups on their way in for the Memorial Day weekend. I dreaded the rough parts of forest road 9S62, but even though I met a couple of cars on some of the nastiest sections, we all survived just fine.
