Railroad Grade 2012

Al signing us in at the trailhead

Ten of my favorite people, who belong to the Senior Trailblazers, met at the Senior Center this morning to plan our hike to Railroad Grade this morning, with the sun shining immoderately and even with some fairly warm temperatures. Last year when we did this hike, we didn't have nearly as nice a day. Check it out here.

There is still snow in the High Country, but today we didn't have to worry about it; the hike is moderate through Schreiber's Meadow as we trek towards the place where we need to make a decision to go right to Railroad Grade or left to Park Butte. Once we turned toward Railroad Grade, we began to climb until we reached the really amazing trail that ascends towards Mt. Baker. This is a climbing route, and here is the description from Ken Wilcox's book, Hiking Whatcom County:

At a junction in the broad meadow (2.2 miles), continue straight for Baker Pass and Park Butte, or head up the stone staircase to the right to view the snout of the Easton Glacier by way of the Railroad Grade, a lateral moraine leading smoothly up to the glacier. This is the climbers' route, and the home of hordes of hoary marmots.

Every one of us decided to take the precipitous trail, which has a few scary spots but is basically pretty easy to follow, moving ever upwards towards the climbers' camp (which we didn't reach). The clouds came and went, but the breeze kept us cool.

Here we are on the Grade, following our leader, Al, who decided to try to get a bit farther towards the camp than he has ever done before. We followed, some of us anxious to stop for lunch, but our two new hikers (Ross on his second hike with us) and Liz (on her very first one) decided to follow Al. Although as you can see from this picture it looks like a short stroll over to the glacier and Mt. Baker's summit, it's actually quite far and a technical route.

This is Ross, showing how close to him Mt. Baker looks. But it's really quite a ways. Five hikers followed Al as he decided to add another fifteen minutes to the hike, while the rest of us retreated and stopped to have some lunch. It was after noon, but they went another quarter mile before turning around to join us. You can see them coming towards us here.

Those are the Black Buttes behind them, with lots of beautiful wildflowers in front. Once they reached  us, they joined the rest of us who had already satisfied our appetites and were spending some time just looking around at the incredibly beautiful place we had reached. The light breeze and the cool temperatures, the view and the company made us simply grateful to be there. And then we started to head back down.

You could tell that this was not a really hard hike for us hardened Trailblazers, because the conversation continued all the way to the cars. By the time we got there, we had covered around seven and a half miles there and back, and covered around 2,300 feet up and down. It was another really satisfying day, and I am so grateful to be feeling not even a little bit tired as I sit here writing this post. When I think of the fact that I am four years older than when I started hiking with this group, I realize that I am stronger than I was back then, when this hike wore me out. I'm ready to make another "extra" hike next Monday! Stay tuned!
:-)