Chanterelle Connector trail loop hike

We decided to hike the full loop of the new Chanterelle Connector trail today. In April did a short hike on the new trail. We started our hike at the Hertz trail and walked along Lake Whatcom to connect with the new trail and made our way up to the viewpoint. You can read about that hike HERE.

We began at 7:30 in the cool of the morning to help her out and to give us plenty of time to complete the hike. I hadn't hiked this far in quite awhile so I didn't quite know how I would do. I've been doing lots of elliptical and incline workouts on the treadmill at our gym, so today was a chance to see if all of my hard work would pay off. 

Today we started at the upper parking lot and walked up the the original Chanterelle viewpoint before making our way around the loop. We planned on finished going down the stairs this time.

I took several photos, so I made them into collages so the photo scrolling won't be so long.

Click or Zoom on the photos to view them larger.

It was a quiet trail today. On the loop trail before we got to the lake we only saw 5 people and 1 other dog besides our Scoutina.

The collage below shows our start and the view at the Chanterelle overlook. We stopped at the overlook and I put a neck buff on our dog and filled it with ice cubes. The ice hangs down close to her neck not on her back. She doesn't do well in temps above 70 degrees, so I discovered that this plus giving her lots of water as we hike helps her tolerate warm temps a bit better. Thankfully this trail is mostly in the shade so that was a real help to her. 

We then made our way up to the terminus, or top of the hike. In the collage below you can see that there were flowers and heart rocks, bridges and signs along the way. Also, Scoutina is sporting her buff filled with ice.

We ate at the terminus.

I decided to video the Foxgloves as I walked down the trail, they were just that beautiful.

After lunch we hiked down to the viewpoint that we hiked to in April, but this time we came from a different direction. Then it was down the nearly 300 steps. We've taught Scoutina the word "slow". She was great!

We finally made it back to the lake trail and walked the flat surface back to the parking lot. Scoutina had a few swims as we made our way back.

My husband got 11.5 miles on his Garmin and I got 11.8. We hiked to both viewpoints and we each had our own meanderings as we went along, so that's why the difference. We'd heard distances from 10.8 to 11 miles for totals so we didn't know exactly what our Garmin's would show on our tracking.

Total miles: 11.8

Total ascent: 2,451 feet

Total descent: 2,385 feet

A great day on the trail💓