“It’s just exploded in color,” said Jay Read, who owns High Sierra ATV tours in Chilcoot with his wife, Lisa. “Just every color you can think of.”

Late spring typically is a great time to see the hillsides of eastern Plumas County covered in wildflowers, Read said.

“There are flowers all over the place,” he said. “It just started. The warm weather let them happen.”

The flowers had been late blooming this year, he said, because of the continuation of cold weather. The flowers need heat to bloom.

“It definitely was a delayed season this year,” said Read.

Colorful flowers in bloom include: Applegate’s paintbrush, purple phlox, yellow mule’s ears and buttercups. Also adding color to the hillsides are yellow bitterbrush, red snow plants, light purple Brewer’s lupine and Mahala mat, also known as squaw carpet, an ivy-like shrub with small blue flowers.

Read predicts the wildflowers will be in bloom through June at lower elevations around 5,000 feet and through July at higher elevations closer to 8,000 feet.

At the height of the period, the hillsides “look like a carpet of wildflowers in every color of the rainbow and at every height,” he said. “Some of the flowers are 4 or 5 feet high when they bloom. It’s amazing.”

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