Plants tightly cespitose cushions with branched caudex. Stems prostrate to ascending, densely covered with marcescent, imbricate, reddish brown leaves, and terminal, green leaf rosettes. Leaves erect, thin; blade linear to narrowly oblanceolate, 1-10 × 0.5-1 mm, margins entire, ciliate, hairs forked or branched, apex acute to obtuse, surfaces densely hairy, often glabrescent, hairs forked and branched. Scapes 1-3 mm in early anthesis, to 2 cm in fruit, densely hairy, hairs branched and stellate. Inflorescences 1-flowered, bracteate, sometimes ebracteate; bract 1, ovate-lanceolate, 1-2 × 0.5-1 mm, glabrous. Pedicels absent. Flowers: calyx 3-5 × 2-3 mm, glabrous; corolla rose-pink, limb 5- 8 mm diam., lobes 3-5 × 1 mm, margins entire.

Flowering early summer. Rocky sites, scree slopes in mountains; 300-1800 m; B.C., Yukon; Alaska.

Douglasia gormanii occurs throughout the mountains of central and southern Alaska and the Yukon; it is replaced by D. arctica to the north and by D. ochotensis and D. beringenis to the west.