A walk on the wildflower side

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

CRESTED BUTTE - Mary and Luke Gradishar of Pueblo spent their honeymoon surrounded by flowers.

Not the typical bouquets of bridal flowers, but fields, meadows and mountains of wildflowers, thousands and thousands of wildflowers of nearly every imaginable color, all drawing cards for the annual Crested Butte Wildflower Festival.

It probably was the showiest and least-expensive part of their first week of married life. They even managed to delay the trip home Thursday morning with one final walk on the wildflower side.

"We have to drive home right after this walk but we couldn't resist staying as long as possible," said Mary, who teaches sixth grade at Fort Carson near Colorado Springs. "This was a beautiful place to spend a honeymoon."

And leave it to Crested Butte to take wildflower viewing, long considered the domain of sneakers-wearing little old ladies, to a new level.

In Crested Butte, where biking in summer and skiing in winter is a way of life and the next person you meet on the trail might be young or young-at-heart, wildflowering (the verb) can be a gentle walk around town or a day-long, 11-mile trek across East Maroon Pass and the Elk Mountains to Aspen.

"We're trying to broaden the festival's appeal and get it out of the ‘little old lady' list," Wildflower Festival Director Sue Wallace said with a laugh. "This is such an active area and as you can see from our brochure, there are some pretty rigorous activities this year."

Events this year included town wildflower and garden walks, backcountry wildflower hikes and treks, four-wheel-drive wildflower tours, art and music performances and workshops including botany, conservation, drawing, photography and medicinal plants, just to name a few.

And did I mention wildflower hikes?

"Our mission is education and there are many ways to do that," Wallace said. "And we want that education as a dynamic process, something everybody can enjoy."

The weeklong festival, which concluded its 22nd edition Sunday, draws about 1,500 attendees each year, Wallace said. The exact number is hard to discern since most of the participants enjoy more than one activity.

"This year the registrations started out a little slower, but the numbers eventually caught up with our historic levels," Wallace said. "I think people might have heard about all the snow we got and were afraid we still were covered."

The record snows (Crested Butte Ski Resort tallied a whopping 421 inches of snow) and a lingering spring meant the area's wildflowers got a bit of a late start but that snow also provided abundant soil moisture. Everywhere you look you'll find more flowers than residents recall seeing for more than a decade.

"I've been here 10 years and I've never seen flowers like this," said Ruth Berkshire, one of the 70 or so volunteers who help the wildflower festival happen. "And to think it was still snowing about a month ago."

That means there's a whole lot of growing going on in the 45-day frost-free period at Crested Butte's 8,800 foot elevation.

"It's an explosion of growth and color and it seems to happen overnight," said Kathy Darrow, the exuberant, self-described "extreme botanist" who authored the wildflower festival's semi-official guide book, "Wild About Wildflowers: Extreme Botanizing in Crested Butte, Wildflower Capital of Colorado."

"Depending on the aspect (to the sun) and the elevation, you'll find different flowers on different days," Darrow said. "Some flowers last for a while. Others, like Blue Flax, open only for a day and then go to seed."

Flower-walk guide Carolyn Blanchard moved to Crested Butte with her husband after seeing the floral glories of the 2000 wildflower festival.

"That's why I'm here," said Blanchard, an attorney who writes court appeals via the Internet. "After the 2000 Wildflower Festival, my husband and I decided on a five-year plan to live here and we moved here full-time in 2005."

Blanchard led a small gaggle of flower lovers around the outskirts of Crested Butte, traipsing along trails crossing flower-carpeted meadows and dipping into the dappled shade of aspen groves where blankets of columbines, Colorado's state flower, spread across the ground.

"These are aspen daisies and they always face the sun," said Blanchard, pointing to a maze of yellow daisies on a small hillock. Someone asked about a small yellow flower and Blanchard wasn't afraid to take an admittedly non-scientific approach.

"These, well, I'm not sure, they're some kind of composite, I think they're yellow asters, but we'll have to check the book to make sure," she offered. "Let's call them ‘Little Yellow Jobbies' for now."

Yep, it's tough to resist a wildflower festival in the Wildflower Capital of Colorado. Quibble if you wish but it's true. Even the state Legislature said so, with an official proclamation in 1989 designating Crested Butte as the state's wildflower capital.

But you don't need the slick suits in Denver to tell you what you can see for yourself. The Colorado high country is blooming beautiful right now and Crested Butte is the place to be.

Information about the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival is available at www.crestedbutte wildflowerfestival.com.