Blanchard Mountain wander

We had a fun day roaming the trails of  Blanchard mountain today. 

We chose to start from the Samish Overlook parking lot. It has a wonderful view of Skagit county and it is a hang glider launch site.

 The trail crosses a couple of creeks as it winds it way up. I took a video of the first creek crossing. You can watch it here - https://youtu.be/fh77ujRVzHI.

It was very cold when we took a break at Oyster Dome. There was a bitter wind when we stopped at the top. A little overcast for our view, but still nice.

We then headed towards Lily lake.

A bit of snow on the trail.

Lily lake.

Up to North Butte for lunch.

I have an app on my phone that add the gps info. to the photo taken. If you enlarge it you'll see the coordinates, the elevation - in meters and feet and the date and time the photo was taken.

  Kindof fun!

It wasn't as cold on the North Butte as we were protected from the wind a bit better that at Oyster Dome. So we enjoyed a more leisurely food stop there.

On our way down to Lizard Lake we ran into snow again. I brought my Yaktraks but didn't need to use them. The footing was fine.

Lizard Lake still frozen.

After taking some time to enjoy looking at the frozen lake and the many trees chewed on by Beavers we made our way back to the trail and headed towards Lily lake again.

We didn't go quit as far as Lily lake, but headed out on Max's shortcut. 

I love this trail.

The sun decided to play hide and seek while we were on Max's shortcut trail. I tried to capture how it made the forest look. This was the best I got.

Max's shortcut connects to the Larry Reed trail, just a couple of more miles and we'd be back at the Samish Overlook. For some reason, I guess it's my age and the generation I grew up in. I always call this trail the Larry Bird trail. Oops.

Garmin stats:

Total miles hiked - 8.6 miles

 minimum atltitude - 1079 feet

maximum altitude - 2237 feet

total ascent - 1847 feet

total descent - 2149 feet