South Lookout Mountain from Cain Lake

At the beginning of our hike today

It never fails to amaze me how many people will show up on a rainy day, like this one. It rained most of the night and was supposed to clear up by the afternoon, but seventeen Senior Trailblazers decided to do this one anyway. Maybe some of them felt like I did: not really looking forward to it, but wanting some good exercise, and this one, rated hard, would at least fill the bill.

Dense forest with sketchy trail (in spots)

Although the rain was light, it was present for most of the first part of the day, as we struggled up steeper and steeper spots making our way through the forest until we intersected with the road that goes to the top of the mountain.

Having a quick snack when we reached the road

Melanie took this picture of the group, which is good of everyone except one person, who looks like she ate a sour lemon. That would be me, in case you were wondering. I laughed when I saw it and decided to use it anyway.

The view from our lunch spot

We walked along the road for another half mile or so, and parked ourselves at our usual place for lunch. When we first arrived, there was no view at all, but the clouds lifted as we enjoyed lunch with only a light mist instead of raindrops.

Tom on his first hike with us

We have a new member, Tom, who just moved to Bellingham from Seattle a few months back and is looking for companions to enjoy the outdoors with. I figure we'll be seeing plenty of him, since he had no trouble with the trail and is a very friendly sort.

Settling in for lunch

You can see by the way everyone is dressed that it wasn't exactly warm, once we stopped hiking and felt the light breeze cool us off a bit. It wasn't really cold, maybe 10°C (50°F), but stopping for any amount of time without sunshine and a light breeze made it feel a bit nippy.

Plenty of raindrops still hanging around

I saw these pretty raindrops on a nearby tree as we lunched, which shows that we did have quite a bit of rain to deal with. By this time, however, we were ready to head back the way we had come, and we moved quickly going downhill. In no time at all, I was warm again and was able to take off my raincoat.

Hikers heading back down

By this time, we had brief showers, this time of the sunshine variety. Every now and then we'd get bathed by the sun, but there were more clouds than sun as we headed back to the cars. We covered around eight miles and 2,400 feet up and down on today's excursion into the wilderness. The company and lush forest made up for the less-than-perfect weather. We were all smiles by the time we reached the cars.
:-)