Wonderful and windy Oyster Dome

Al, Kirk and Joy leading the group

Twelve intrepid Senior Trailblazers decided to brave today's discouraging forecast and hike up to Oyster Dome. The rain was forecast to start around 10:00am and keep up for days. Not to mention high winds, so I was a little surprised that so many of us decided to brave the elements. We go out rain or shine but our numbers are usually fewer when the weather looks bad. I went to that little search box on my sidebar and looked up previous trips up Oyster Dome, searching particularly for one time when we got drenched and didn't even stop for lunch. It was in November 2013.

Big leaf maple leaves littered the trail

It wasn't exactly warm, with a cold wind and the temperature in the mid-forties (8 C), and we were expected at any moment to encounter rain. I noticed that we have always done this hike in April and November, at the beginning and end of our winter season in the Chuckanuts. The trail has been improved greatly over the past few years, and we saw that construction is still continuing. It's almost easy (other than the elevation gain) to get to Oyster Dome.

At the Dome and the wind was fierce

It was still not raining by the time we reached the Dome around 10:30am, so we decided to descend to get out of the wind and make our way over to Lily Lake. We've almost always done a nice loop hike so that we don't have to go back down the steep and slippery trail to the Dome. They have added some signage that sort of tells the tale of Oyster Dome.

It's pretty graphic, don't you think?

At Lily Lake, we stopped for lunch. We looked for some place out of the wind, but we weren't really successful. It was tolerable, but nobody wanted to lounge around at lunch time, as you can see from this picture.

Al, Joy, Dave, Roger, Steve

Although it wasn't warm, you might be wondering about a missing element: rain. No rain! We couldn't believe our luck, but the hike wasn't over yet, since we were only at the halfway point here and still needed to head back via Max's Shortcut and Samish Overlook. We packed up and took off through the trees, where we could hear the wind howling overhead but only occasionally reaching us. You might notice there are no pictures at the Overlook: there were times we could barely stand up in the intense wind, so we scurried back into the trees to hike the final leg back to the cars.

Lots of yellow leaves

On this section of the trail, we continued to hear howling wind above us but felt protected from it, except for the possibility of a tree being uprooted and falling on us. But it was really rather strange: all that weather seemed very removed from us. Still no rain. Occasionally we had a drop or two, thinking it was the beginning, but then it stopped.

Carol and big leaf maple leaves

When we reached our cars, Carol decided to gather some of the beautiful leaves to take home to a friend, and I was delighted to take this picture. We had covered more than nine miles and up and down around 2,500 feet of elevation, so you might guess we were all tired. But the fact that the rain didn't impede our enjoyment and that we had so much fun together today reminds me why I love this group so much.
:-)