2008 Wildflower Season - best locales?

[Randal_Schulhauser]

I've noticed with our December/January precipitation that the desert floor is beginning to "green-up". Desert wildflower bloom season is typically late January to mid April, depending upon the location, species, and other factors.

I was wondering if anyone can report wildflower "hot spots" for 2008?

RANDAL

[PrestonSands]

Good point. That shut my mouth!

[Randal_Schulhauser]

Anyone know the current wildflower bloom status at Lost Dutchman State Park? Thinking about hitting the trail to Siphon Draw...

[tibber]

Pinnacle Peak had incredible wildflowers after the 2004 rains. I got some incredible photos. I hiked it so many times during that season I actually put together a DVD of all the hikes with the wildflowers. Anyway, I am planning to head up there tomorrow (Thurs) with camera in tow. I will let you know the results. I hiked it last week and there were a few poppies blooming. The hike back in 2005 had a wonderful variety of wildflowers.
It seems to me that there is some sort of hike on the north side of the Beeline not too far from the Sahuaro Lake turnoff that is supposed to be a great place for wildflowers. I am thinking it's called Sugarloaf Mtn or something.

Oh and in 2005 the Lost Dutchman/Siphon Draw was awash in wildflowers and brittlebrush blooms. In fact, I sent my cousin a picture and he thought I somehow superimposed all of the green and gold ;-)

Angela

[joebartels]

Bruce & Jonathan have both recently reported in triplogs that the NW Superstitions are currently very light.

[tibber]

Pinnacle Peak has lots and lots of poppies and some lupine but other than that, still a little light... at least as compared to 2005. The globe mallow has only buds as do some of the other wildflowers and bushes. I did get some good photos out of the many I took. I will post some in a day or two.

But I would appreciate others letting us know where the wildflowers are blooming as they hike our wonderful trails. I love Mother Nature when she's in a good mood.

[AZLOT69]

Lost Dutchman State Park has not started yet. There are just a few flowers. Even at that, last weekend there was a backup of cars out of the park-they ran out of parking.

[Tortoise_Hiker]

I was at Lost Dutchman this morning.I hiked to the Praying Hands and only came across a few flowers. It is real green this year.By the sound of all the birds they are loving it.



Tortoise Hiker

[joebartels]

I added a couple features to the triplog (mainly because Al doesn't think there's enough features on site )

Conveniently located right next to the "Enter New Data" button are options for "Wildflower & Autumn Observation".

Options for Wildflowers Observed are
None
Isolated
Light
Moderate
Substantial
Extreme

I went through the last 140 triplogs (kind of quickly) and entered an observation based on the text/photos to get it started.

At the bottom of every non-forum page is a golden link to "Wildflower Report"

Should prove useful to those in frenzy
Will be interesting to see the data in a couple years too as I can implement it on TrailDEX Map

Note: if you're getting a page not found error, the page is cached. IE & Firefox try Ctrl-F5, other probably have to close and reopen the browser.

[Randal_Schulhauser]

I added a couple features to the triplog (mainly because Al doesn't think there's enough features on site )

Conveniently located right next to the "Enter New Data" button are options for "Wildflower & Autumn Observation".

Options for Wildflowers Observed are
None
Isolated
Light
Moderate
Substantial
Extreme

Cool new feature Joe!

[Al_HikesAZ]

I added a couple features to the triplog (mainly because Al doesn't think there's enough features on site )

Oh boy a new feature. :kf: I think I've figured out about 1/2 the current features. I'm still trying to find that map that told me my current vectors.
"Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart."
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, p. 205"

"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. " Douglas Adams

Joe - have you ever considered adding linear maps as a feature?
Given two vector spaces V and W over the same field F, one can define linear maps or “linear transformations” from V to W. These are functions f:V → W that are compatible with the relevant structure — i.e., they preserve sums and scalar products. The set of all linear maps from V to W, denoted HomF (V, W), is also a vector space over F. When bases for both V and W are given, linear maps can be expressed in terms of components as matrices.

[joebartels]

it's been my observation when you put V and W together you get a nice performance vehicle that breaks down often

[nonot]

Linear mapping is fine and all, but I never quite grasped the concept of the Kalman filter.

[Al_HikesAZ]

. . . but I never quite grasped the concept of the Kalman filter.

In a nutshell, The Kalman Filter exploits the dynamics of a HAZ Discussion Thread to remove the effects of "Noise" and to provide a good estimate of when a HAZ Discussion Thread will veer off target. A Bartelsian dialectic is then applied to put a thread back on target or lock. An example of a great Bartelsian dialectic is:

HOW 'BOUT DEM WILDFLOWERS HUH?

[Hoffmaster]

"Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart."
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, p. 205"

"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which. " Douglas Adams

Classic! Douglas Adams is one of my literary heros. I don't know if that's good or bad, but I love his writing.



Is the Kalman filter going bezerk yet?

[tibber]

yep, caught the new tags on the wildflower density levels. Thank you, that will be helpful.

and by the way, you guys are so funny sometimes!