Anyway, many people know about the wildflowers on these meadows. It looks to me like the flowers are peaking, and should be pretty good in places for the next couple weeks. There is quite a variety of flower species, and some of the patches are really nice, but the patches aren't that large, and appear to have suffered some degree of "being loved to death" - i.e. I noticed a lot of smaller trampled plants near the trail. There's quite a bit of "dead space" between many of the plants. Part of this is due to the nature of the "soil", which is mostly a pumice base - very dry and porus. But, unfortunately, I think much of it is due to footsteps & people just plopping down for a break where the flowers once grew.
All that said, we only went up the cone peak side, and didn't have time to complete the whole loop up Iron Mt itself. The trail to the top of Iron Mt goes up the side we couldn't see, and I'm not sure what that area looks like exactly.
Well, a few photos are below. More on my site at:
http://www.phlumf.com/photos/ironmtn/
In the woods near the meadows:
About as nice as the display there was:
A view to the southwest:
Also, the Sullivan book (at least the version I have) will suggest you to park at milepost 46 on the road, but you can't park there now (there isn't much room there anyway). You have to park about .6 miles back at the trailhead, and walk below the road on a side-trail to get to the "milepost 46" location. It's no big deal...
