Rainy Middle Fork road hike

Today twelve Senior Trailblazers met at the Senior Center with only a vague idea of where we would be going. Our scheduled hike, Hannegan Pass, is still not passable because of snow. In fact, the Bellingham Herald printed an article today that confirmed our fears: Artist Point, which we use to access many of our favorite hikes in the Mt. Baker area, will not be cleared of snow this year. So, today we chose to drive from our mostly blue skies in Bellingham up to the Middle Fork logging road, hoping for a view and determined to get some exercise, no matter what. We actually had a wonderful day last November when we previously visited this area. I wrote about it here (and you can see the views we missed today).

As we drove our three cars almost thirty miles up to our starting point, it began to rain. And rain. Hoping the sky was just getting the moisture out of its system and then it would be nice, we donned our rain gear and started up the road. It didn't let up, and by the time we had hiked over two miles, some were talking about going back. But we wanted to get a least the exercise we have grown accustomed to having, so we kept going until we got to the junction you see below. Some wanted to hike until 11:00 am on the lower road, which didn't climb so steeply, and others wanted to go up. Since we had our walkie-talkies with us, we split into two groups, with one group going up and the other going down. We agreed to turn around at 11 and head back down to the cars, which is what we did, meeting up again at this junction without any problem.

Sometimes the rain would let up and we would get hopeful for some views and the possibility that we might even dry out a little. At least it wasn't cold, with temperatures somewhere in the low 50s. But it didn't happen. Not knowing WHAT I would write about for this blog, and what pictures I might have to share, I took some pictures of the flowers, and this is the best I got.

I thought the green leaves (if you enlarge the picture you can see they are weighed down with rain), the rock and the flowers all made a nice little scene on an otherwise wet and rainy day. All in all, we covered more than seven miles and those of us who took the high road got somewhere around 2,000 feet elevation gain and loss, making it an acceptable hike. We are pretty hardy to spend five hours walking in the rain, making it back to the cars before even considering stopping for lunch. Some decided to take off and head back to the center, others (like us) got back to the highway and stopped by the side of the road for lunch.

Peggy has missed the last three hikes, since she went off on an adventure to Scotland and just returned late last week. She bought this plastic raincoat for that trip and never used it, but she certainly got a chance to see how it worked today. It's great to have her back! Better luck to all of us, weather wise, next week.
:-)