White Chief as it appears in the coloring book “Heart of Mineral King”
Coloring books will be available again on July 1, 2016. You may order, but it will involve a wait. Thank you for your patience.
Languid Ladies in the foreground; Chihuahua Creek in the distance. I don’t think this has flowed for the past 4 summers, and Trail Guy thinks it will last through the whole month of June this year.Steps on a trail look friendly and helpful to me. Trail crew builders accuse step-builders of “making monuments to themselves”. Thank you, Monument Makers.Looking back toward Timber Gap, with patches of snow still on Empire to the right of Timber.This is sort of a boring photo of Indian Paintbrush, (red), Western Wallflower (yellow), and a bit of Larkspur (sort of bluish). I just got a little excited to see the 3 primary colors all together.We saw 2 of these mylar helium balloons. Partiers down in the valley (not Mineral King, but the San Joaquin Valley) don’t realize that when they let go of the strings of their balloons, they are littering.Oops. Tree failure.This tree is not a failure. It is a juniper, and it is Trail Guy’s favorite tree. It is a sign that the steepest part of the trail to White Chief is over. It is still steep, just not the steepest part.Here is an example of Phlox in all the variations of its whitish-purplish-pinkish glory.Hello White Chief! The peak is square topped and this is where you first see a glimpse of the canyon, which our 2 new trail friends called “enchanting”. (Hi Dean and Dave!)Enchanting canyon, to be sure, but where is the sunshine now?I tried to find the exact scene that I used in the coloring book drawing, but someone moved the logs or something. Some years they tilt the trail steeper than others, but this year they just messed with the logs. Who is this “they” and where is the sunshine??White Chief has many natural caves and several sinkholes.Love the dramatic lighting, but I think we might get wet.Not Trail Guy. He’s not getting wet with his high-tech poncho. He sort of looked like Moses, if he had pulled his arms out of the garbage bag and held his walking stick like a staff.Look at all this water! I’m outta here.See you later, White Chief.
