Madrone Crest 2010

Click any picture to enlarge

When I woke last night at 2:00 am to the sound of the rain drumming on the roof, I groaned and figured we would be hiking today in rain and mud. Since I didn't think too many would show up, I considered not going myself. But then I thought well, what if it clears up? What if they go hiking and I stay home and it turns out to be NICE? So I got up, pulled on my rain pants and headed to the Senior Center. Thirteen hardy souls (including me) showed up, with more than two-thirds of us already in our rain gear. The above picture shows that, although it wasn't sunny, we only got a few sprinkles. Ward is waiting for me to take a picture of the madrone tree, showing its unique peeling bark.

The hike starts out from the Interurban trailhead and, as you can see from this picture, it's pretty green even in the middle of winter. That's the payoff from all the Pacific Northwest rain: lots of moss and greenery. The trail follows an old logging road (the Hemlock Trail), then we turned off onto the Salal Trail and up to a signpost after a few miles.

We had just come off the Salal Trail showing the Madrone Crest trail 1.2 miles behind us, and also Madrone Crest 1.0 miles to the right. The hike is familiar to all of us, and we knew that we couldn't go wrong no matter which way we went, but there was some discussion about the best way to proceed. You can see that we were all dressed for the cool weather except for Mikey Poppins (half of him is visible on the right, next to Fred), who was wearing his shorts and t-shirt in 45-degree weather. He was prepared in case the weather turned wet, but sometimes I wonder what planet he was born on, to be as comfy in the damp coolness as he seems to be. :-)

Once we got to the viewpoint, where Mt. Baker is rumored to be somewhere behind those clouds, we decided to have a quick snack (it was only 10:30 am) and turn around and head back to the Senior Center for lunch. Last year I got a nice picture of Mt. Baker, but this year a picture of Peggy drinking her hot tea will suffice. (The link takes you to last year's hike, where I also discuss some of the features of the madrone tree.) There were a few madrone trees at the Crest (the first picture), and I also saw this one showing the colors of the season:

The bark on these trees is incredibly colorful and peels back to reveal a nice golden color, as you can see in the first picture. The day's mileage turned out to be a little more than 7.5 miles and up and down 1,500 feet of elevation. Compared to last week's climb to Oyster Dome, this seemed almost easy. As we headed back down to the cars and lunch at the Senior Center, we did see lots of mushrooms sprouting from the undergrowth. Nobody knew if these are edible or not, but Bob offered, "Sure they are, at least once."

:-)