A very wet Thursday hike

At the beginning of today's hike

We only had nine intrepid souls show up on a day that was expected to be wet, very wet, and it lived up to expectations. Both groups were scheduled to go to the High Country, but with solid rain and thunderstorms in the forecast, we wisely called them off. Our group decided to drive to the Samish Bay trailhead and head up towards Oyster Dome and the Lily/Lizard Lake trail. It was raining when we started out, and it never stopped.

Dense wet foliage

Still, it was very beautiful, and we headed up to the trail junction and said we would make a decision once we reached it, whether to head up the rest of the way to Oyster Dome (where there would be no view) or off towards Lily and Lizard lakes. We skipped the final push to Oyster Dome and went towards the lakes.

The fast hikers waiting for me (Mel's picture)

The first part of this trail is rather steep, and I kept trying to keep up and wore myself out. Finally, I told Melanie (who was acting as sweep) that I needed to slow down. She caught this picture of me; she asked me to turn around before taking the picture. I've done this trail enough times to know that once we get to the junction, it's relatively flat, but I struggled to keep up with them.

Our trail

I don't have many pictures of today's adventure, because I was otherwise occupied: it was wet and I had to find my phone each time I wanted to snap something, and often by the time I fished it out from all my layers, the others were long gone.

Enormous skunk cabbage

You can't actually tell from this picture how large those cabbage leaves are, but trust me, they are huge. Shiny in the rain, I was determined to show them to you anyway. I didn't have any way to indicate their size. But the rain never let up, and by the time we had traveled towards the lakes, we decided to cut the hike short and take Max's Shortcut back to the cars. We only covered a bit under six miles and 1,200 feet of elevation today, and headed back to the Senior Center for lunch.

When we arrived and enjoyed a nice warm venue for lunch, we saw the other group arriving from their own hike, which was just as wet. They all looked as bedraggled as we felt. They did a local hike, hoping for the rain to let up, and when it didn't, they too came inside for a nice dry and warm lunch.

Next week, hopefully we will have another chance to take to the hills. I was very happy to have my friends with me as we braved the elements together. At least we didn't drive for over an hour in order to walk in the rain, when we had perfectly good rain right here in the Chuckanuts!
:-)