What a day we had

Intrepid Trailblazers Al, Jonelle, Steve

When I first started hiking with the Trailblazers more than three years ago, I was told not to watch the weather trying to decide whether we would go or not because, as Al said to me back then, "We go rain or shine." Today was not one of the shiny ones. Only four of us showed up on another rainy day, with rain or rain showers in the forecast for the entire day. I almost stayed home myself. I am sure glad I didn't, since it was an exceptionally wonderful day.

We were scheduled to drive up to the Mt. Baker Wilderness and make our first excursion of the year to Excelsior Pass. Al and Fred went there a week or so ago to check out the snow situation. Al wrote about it here. However, it's a fairly long drive, and I suggested that hiking locally in the rain was a bit more acceptable to me than driving for an hour and THEN hiking in the rain, so we decided to head up to the Clayton Beach parking lot and hike up to Burnout Point and then down to Fragrance Lake. We last went up there in March, with lots of snow. It looked very different just two months ago, with snow and fog; today everything is green and in bloom.

By the time we got to the first viewpoint, the rain had let up a bit and the wind was really blowing. We even had a view of the bay, which surprised me. When we started out, I thought it would be a repeat of last week's hike. I asked Al to take a picture of me with the view behind me. You can see by my transition lenses that we had no sun at this point.

I had taken off my jacket and draped it across my shoulders, since the hard uphill in this part of the trek was causing me to overheat. And the rain wasn't too bad anyway. Off we went up to the clearcut, the least attractive part of this hike. We didn't see Baker or have much view in the distance, but the clouds were lightening up and I got a good look at Lost Lake.

From this high point of our journey, we began a gradual downhill to Fragrance Lake, where we would stop for lunch. Along the way, Steve pointed out that the salmon berries are just beginning to ripen. I ate this one right after I took its picture; it was very tart and not quite ripe, but here it is almost mid-June and I'm already eating this year's fruit. In a few more days I suspect it would have been much better.

It's not quite in focus. I didn't have time to get it just right as I was trying not to hold up my friends from getting to our lunch spot. Once we got to Fragrance Lake and ate our lunch, suddenly we were inundated with lots of kids! It was quite a surprise, being a Thursday, but one of the teachers told us it that the entire third grade class from an elementary school in Burlington was enjoying the outdoors along with us. We decided to hike around the lake before heading back, and I got this picture of some of them on the other side of the lake.

That's where we had lunch a bit earlier. As you can see, nobody is huddled under trees trying to avoid the rain, because by this time it had stopped completely. On the way back down, we even began to cast a shadow, and then sun breaks filtered through the trees. It was far nicer than I could ever have imagined when I started out from home this morning. Here's a picture of Jonelle and all the incredible ferns that are now sharing their beauty with us.

When Jonelle saw this picture, she noticed her "hat hair" which we all had from the rain hats we wore earlier. I, however, couldn't help but see the way all the colors of spring showed up in this lovely picture. And now, as I sit here writing this, the rain has started again, much harder than anything we experienced today. We must be doing something right. By the time we reached the parking lot, we had covered almost ten miles and 2,100 feet of elevation gain and loss. It was a super wonderful day. I'm so glad I got myself out today, rain or shine!
:-)