After my summer on the road, this was probably my last chance to do any serious hiking. It was so late in the year, I expected the place to be pretty much dried up and gone by. That's what I've seen before at this time of year. But hey, it's the Washington mountains. They're pretty nice anytime, at least as long as you can walk in and back out again.
But I was greatly surprised by what I found. Due to heavy snow last winter, this place wasn't even accessible until early July, and quite a bit of snow remained in shaded gulleys. Most of the streams were still running, and danged if there wasn't a good supply of flowers still out!
Hardly any insects, though. I have mixed emotions about that -- no mosquitoes was nice, but at the cost of no neat flies or wasps or beetles... 
Anyway, here's what it looked like.
It should be noted, however, that all these flowers are obviously frost-tolerant in the extreme. I don't know exactly how cold it got overnight, but the tube on my water bottle froze solid inside the tent, and in the morning, there was a lot of this interesting ice form covering the hillsides. A closer view can be seen here.
By the way, here's a good illustration of why it's a good idea to pay attention to that stuff they tell you about weather being unpredictable in the mountains. The bottom panel is about an hour after the first, at very close to the same place. Yes, that white stuff blowing around is snow -- roughly 1/4-inch clusters of the stuff. A brief flurry, fortunately, though I was prepared to be snowbound a few days if it came to that.
Hope you enjoy the pictures. I sure enjoy the place!
--Rik
Technical: Canon A710 IS camera, no accessories. The top panel of the fourth image is a two-frame panorama, assembled with PTGui.
