Mount Baker

This is a 10,700+ ft active volcano in the North Cascades range that I had read was gorgeous to hike around. It’s also apparently a great ski area, for those of you so inclined.

It was less than a 2 hr drive from the west side of North Cascades NP, and the weather forecast wasn’t the greatest, so we did our big hike the day we arrived.

That’s actually Mount Shuksan peaking out of the clouds, in the picture above. We never did see Mount Baker, but we did enjoy our hike on the Chain of Lakes Loop (6 1/2 miles with 1,800+ ft of elevation gain). We started at the edge of this bowl…

… and hiked down to the lakes…

… sighting our first Marmot -

why did the marmot cross the road?

They are the size of groundhogs that we have around our house, and I’ll have much better pictures in later posts.

You know I’m always on the lookout for reflections…

… and the wildflowers made a nice accent.

We hiked around Bagley Lake…

… and up the side of the bowl I showed at the beginning, passing nooks filled with wildflowers -

We kept on climbing…

… and when we reached the pass (Herman’s Saddle), we caught our breath and looked back on where we came from -

And this is where we were headed -

This is the view we had of Iceberg Lake…

… and this was a view (from very nearly the same spot) that someone posted on AllTrails 2 days ago -

Amazing what clouds can hide!

It was nice that the clouds broke up some for the second half of the hike…

… letting us enjoy the blues of the many lakes we passed -

It was pretty neat to see wildflowers around Iceberg Lake -

We enjoyed the vistas and valleys (even without Mount Baker) -

We finished our hike, and then visited Picture Lake…

… where Mount Shuksan made a partial appearance -

Since the weather was predicted to turn to rain the next day, we decided to visit a local park, and were treated to an entirely different ecosystem -

There were some massive trees..

… and some furry ones -

There was even a pretty little waterfall -

We really got into the varied plant life in this area, and it was similar to Glacier NP. This is a close up of what is commonly called “glacier corn”..

That’s all from here. Stay tuned for Mt. Rainier.