Return to the High Country

At the Goat Mountain trailhead

What a beautiful day! Fourteen Senior Trailblazers met at the Senior Center with hopes that we could forget our regularly scheduled hike and instead head up to the High Country. And that's just what we did. After some discussion, we decided to attempt the Goat Mountain overlook. We piled into four cars and headed to our starting point. Although it rained all day long in Bellingham yesterday, today was forecast to be much warmer and partly cloudy. We hoped that whatever snow fell in up high would be minimal, so that we could make it all the way to the overlook.

Our first signs of snow

We walked quite awhile before we ran into any snow at all, and much of it was like this, just a dusting as we made our way upwards. In total, we climbed 2,700 feet (823 meters) of elevation today, and much of the last part was in real snow. Here's what the meadow looked like when we reached it.

Yes, lots of snow, and plenty of sunshine too

It's less than a mile to the overlook from this point, but it is steep and slow going through the snow. Some of us (like me) forgot to add our snow baskets to our trekking poles, which made the going quite a bit harder, with nothing to push against as our poles slipped through the fresh snow. But we gamely headed on up.

Sharon and Carol with Mt. Baker in the background

The higher we climbed, the better the views. If you look at the left-hand side of the picture, you can see the depth of the snow, much of it fresh from the previous day, and it just continued to get deeper. But we made it to the overlook around 1:00pm and sat down to have our well deserved lunch.

Gazing out at the view

It's quite a spectacular view from here, with all our favorite mountains visible, and here you also see three Tilley hats (Doug, Bob, and Al) on three of my favorite hikers. Mine was still hanging on the wall at home, since I really did think that all the weather would make it seriously cloudy today. I had only a baseball cap and my sunglasses to shelter me from the intense sun. It was enough, but I sure missed my Tilley hat!

Bob and Mt. Sefrit behind him

I am adding this picture to point out a curious observation: all the other pictures I'm showing you today were taken with my Canon camera. This one is taken with my iPhone 6. Am I wrong in thinking that the sky and the colors are superior? I have "doctored" all the camera pictures by enhancing and boosting the colors, but this one is just the way I took it.

Starting our return trip

This part of the day's exertions was by far the hardest for me: I was heading downhill in fresh snow, with the sun having degraded much of the sunniest parts, and I kept falling and trying to haul myself back up with no baskets on my poles. It was terrible. Fortunately, Kirk offered to lend me his (with baskets) until we got to more reasonable terrain. I was very grateful.

The lower trail is free of snow

Finally we returned to the more easily traveled trail, free of snow and giving us a chance to pick up the pace to the cars. I don't know how tired everyone else was, but that entire section with the snow was enough to make the mere seven+ miles we covered today feel much longer. However, now that I'm sitting in my favorite chair with my wine next to me, I'm feeling very grateful to have been given the chance to visit the High Country this year, in March! What a day!
:-)