Thursday we headed to Lake Whatcom to hike up the Chanterelle trail. Our plan was to exit at one of the road crossings and return by way of the power line road. This way we would get in a loop hike. As we made our way to the parking lot we saw a couple of runners just past the gate and heading up the road. I'll share more about the runners farther along in this post.
We stopped at the trailhead sign to check out the info.
Madrona💓
A road crossing to another section of the up.
My husband had been on the lookout for a tool to bring on our hikes to work on drainage for wet areas as we hike. He found a nice sturdy light weight one. He was happy doing his trail work.
Our moderate winter weather has kept the mushrooms growing. My husband spied this adorable one growing on a downed log.
We stopped at the viewpoint for a quick snack and a drink of warm broth, before heading farther up the trail.
The view from the overlook.
As we were making our way up the trail from the overlook we met the runners that we'd seen at the start of our hike. They had run up the road and were now coming back via the trail. They had run to the Acme diner up and over Stewart mtn. for lunch. Of course I asked them what they ate. They had Burgers and Blood Mary's. Wow, so that made their distance total about 24 miles. Not a bad way to get to a restaurant for lunch. I marked where Acme is on the map below with a red dot in relation to the trails we did for our route. They went A LOT farther than we did.
We came to where we needed to make a decision for our descent. The Upper Brown Pow trail (a mountain bike trail) junction led out to the road, but we decided to continue to the trail terminus. So onward it was. As I was standing at the corner of the trail I looked back at where the sign was for the Upper Brown Pow trail, it was upended when the tree on the right was uprooted. The sign post was now leaning against a tree. The trail sign on the left is after the hairpin turn.
Taking the hairpin turn towards the terminus and more up.
There was so much blow down in this area. I'm not sure what group did the trail clean up, but it was greatly appreciated by us. All of their hard work kept the trail obstacle free.
Our first glimpse of snow on the ground. It was raining and we could hear the rain buzzing on the power lines above.
It didn't take long and we were hiking along the light dusting of snow on the ground.
As the snow got deeper Scoutina couldn't resist a good snow roll. Click on the link to watch her happiness
After a few more switchbacks we were at the terminus.
Our usual lunch spot below the branches. There are a couple of planks on some rocks that make a nice sitting place. It was quite chilly and with gloves off to eat our hands got very cold. It was nice to finish eating and put on our gloves and pack to get walking and get our blood moving for warmth.
As we descended by the road it didn't take us long to warm up, not enough to take off our layers but enough to be comfortable. It was misty so we kept our rain coats on.
I didn't know if the clouds would be high enough for us to get a view, but we were able to see the lake from the road.
As we went down the road we passed by the trail junctions signs.
More scenic views and power line views
The chart below shows our up and down. As you can see, the down was a bit steeper.
It was a chilly, drizzly day. I'm glad we chose to go to the top before joining the road. It was a great adventure.
Total miles hiked: 9.6
Total ascent: 2175 feet
