Mt. Rainier

 

It was a beautiful sunny day and though we’ve yet to reach a 70 degree day, it was still perfect for a spring hike.  If you take your snow shoes. The famous fields of flowers at Paradise had avalanche debris instead of avalanche lilies, but any day you can lay in the sun is a great day.

 

I made my way down from the visitor center to Narada Falls.  It would be a great family trip if you had two cars. If you left Seattle at 9:00 you could be at Paradise by 11:30, have a nice lunch, take a couple of hours snow showing down to Narada Falls, head up to Paradise to pick up the second car, have some hot chocolate at the visitor center and then stop for wild mountain blackberry pie on the way out of the park.

A gentle walk through the trees and snow covered meadows. Okay, there are some steep sections, but at no point do you need ice axes or ropes.

and once you’re at the bottom a second car to take you back to Paradise. I had to walk back up the hill to get to my car, but it  is not really that bad.  For those wishing a more exact definition figure one rest stop every hour at which you consume two oreo cookies.  This was a two oreo trip.

And the views are great

Photos from trip

ps.  I did bring home a black berry pie from the Copper Creek Inn.

Blanchard Mountain

 

The temperature was heading into the low sixties and there was only a thin cloud cover.  Looks to be the best hiking day in the next week, so I headed up to Blanchard Mountain, just south of Bellingham.  The first thing I noticed was that it was a lot easier walking when you are not wearing snow shoes.  The trail was a pleasant ramble through the trees with the sunshine and cool breezes off of the water.

Along the way, I passed an woodpecker condominium.  Apparently, the housing crash hit them to, because it was unoccupied.

After three miles, I came to Lilly Lake which, depending on the temperature, can be a beautiful little lake or a mosquito infested bog.  Today it was a beautiful little lake.

I hiked around the lake, spurred on by a sign that read lake loop, and the mistaken belief that the sign implied there was a trail going around the lake.  It was more of a notion that you could get around the lake hacking your way through the bush.  There were fresh signs of beaver, but I didn’t see any in the lake.

The lake had lots of interesting other things in the water and pretty much kept me entertained for an hour as I hiked around it.

 

and the outlet stream was blocked by a log that kept everything floating on the surface back where it formed interesting patterns in the current.

I really, really liked the patterns and took so many pictures of it that even I couldn’t look at them all.  And then it was time to head back down the hill to where the trail broke out

into a lovely view of Padilla Bay.

The peak in the center is Mt Eire in Anacortes and the the right is Guemes Island.

Photos from hike

Tiger Mountain

 

The sun came out yesterday afternoon and I headed out for a couple of hours to enjoy it.  I was looking for signs of spring.  Any would do, I’m ready to be convinced summer is just around the corner. So I worked my way through the dense forest

 

Into the dark woods

To where things were really starting to be green.

 

and lose their winter colors

Rip van Winkle is definitely not a Northwest story.  If you fell to sleep in the forest for twenty years you would be reclaimed by the moss.

but the trail had a pleasant wooden bridge covering it

and green things were growing all over the place.

There isn’t much that can be more insignificant than being a bug on a weed, growing out of moss, that is growing eight feet off of the ground on a tree rooted in a fallen cedar.

unless it is of course being some kind of slime mold. How do you tell it is spring time in Seattle?  The  molds are starting to tan.

It was a most pleasant three hours of walking and spring was beginning to break forth.

 

 

Tiger Mt Photos

Windy Pass

 

I’m thinking that I still may be snow shoeing on the fourth of July, assuming that it isn’t raining.  On a sunny day last week, I headed up over Nordic Pass, and down the hill towards windy pass. It was a beautiful day, the ski areas were closed, and the pass was empty.  I was probably more thrilled about that than the businesses.

 

There were fine views of towards Silver/Tinkham peaks to the west.  Not sure which.  I’ve never seen it from this direction.

and nice to the north of Mt. Kent, McClellan Butte and I think Bandera.

 

On my way to windy pass, I passed by Rockdale lake, but by here I was starting to get lazy.  The snow had been very slushy and tiring, so I sat down on my foam pad and took a rest.  There are no pictures of me resting, but I assure you that I did a most excellent job.

I went about another mile along a stream, but them I turned around and headed back to the car where a cold container of chocolate milk was waiting for me in the snow.

Pictures from Windy Pass

Sunset Walk

 

It was May 1, and Molly and I decided to go on a sunset walk through the snow.

It was unusual in that you could see the sun and watch it set.  Along the way we saw some beaver. 

The lake, Mardee at Gold Creek, is about half melted out and there is four to five feet of snow on the ground.  It is still covering the picnic tables, although the tops of the BBQs are visible.

 

I counted six beaver swimming along doing synchronized swimming. 

 

They would disappear under the water when they heard my snow shoes, but they apparently have very short term memories and poor eye sight.  If I stood quiet for a few minutes they would swim back into view.

 

It was a lovely walk along the lake back to our car.

Pictures from sunset walk

Common Wealth Basin

 

The weather report was for partly sunny, which must have meant the chance of sunshine was part way between fantasy and  imaginary. Note, I did not process the following picture to make it black and white.  The grey skies did that for me.

But we headed up to the pass anyway and the snow is still deep.  How deep you say, here is Jim climbing up a snow bank.  They were eight to ten feet deep along the stream.  And that is at about 3800 feet of elevation.  There will be snow in the back country for a while.

Here we are heading into the partly sunny at the entrance to the basin.

The sunshine did allow us to photograph the rare and elusive Douglas fir shadow.

 

And the stream bed is very pretty when the sun shines on it .

 

We ran across some young people who had set up a winter camp.  They should wake up to a beautiful sunny morning on Sunday. They also invited us to use the great slide that they had made behind the tents.  You can see it to the left of the broken off trees with the snow piled on top. As you can tell from their short shirt sleeves, the weather was quite warm.  Well, it was warm for a winter campout.

There was some avalanche debris beside the trail.  Those snow blocks are about fie feet high, but it didn’t seem wise to stand beside them just to add scale for comparison.

But a slice of hot pizza and a drink at the end of the day made it a great trip.

 

 

Photos from hike