Burnout Trailblazer hike

 Today 11 of us started at the Fragrance lake trailhead on Cleater road for our Senior Trailblazer hike.

After walking about 1 mile down hill we joined Fragrance lake road. Our fearless leader Owen (for this hike) checked out the trail sign before we headed towards the Burnout road.

The slide is still there, but the trail isn't closed to hiking.

The waterfall along the road had a good amount of water flowing in it.

Time to head uphill on the Burnout rd.

We stopped at the first viewpoint, I liked the shadows behind the hikers.

A nice view.

We had a few skinny trees that had fallen in our last wind storm, but not difficult to step over. This tree in the photo below was our largest tree to get over before we got to the top of Burnout.

Views of the San Juan islands from Burnout.

There was a chilly breeze blowing at Burnout, so we headed up to another viewpoint that would give us a view to the east and hopefully out of the wind. There was still a breeze but it wasn't too bad.

The new blanket of snow helped Mt. Baker and the Twin Sisters range to look magnificent.

Looking down towards Lake Samish.

After lunch and a conversation we agreed to head to the Rock trail and the Gates overlook before going to the cars.

Checking out the Lost lake trail sign.

Wonderful rock formations along the trail after turning on the Rock trail.

We had a major tree fall on the trail, it fell on one of the stair sections. It was interesting to pick how to get up and past the tree. Some climbed over the fallen tree, others climbed up the dirt bank. We all made it past and continued up the stairways.

We stopped at Gates overlook to enjoy the views before heading down the road to where the cars were parked.

View from Gates overlook.

Trail rating: the people in the car we drove in declared our hike mod/hard

Totals miles: 8.8

Total ascent: 1876 feet

Everyone seemed to like the route and the last addition that Owen had proposed. This was a substitute hike as the leader of the scheduled hike to the Anacortes area wasn't able to lead his intended hike.

It was nice of Owen to step in and lead us on this hike, and bonus the weather stayed nice enough for us to get some great views.