Mt. Erie circumnavigation April 2025

 Yesterday we drove to Anacortes to hike. We started and finished at Heart lake.

I've had distances all over the place for this route from the Garmin watches I've had through the years. This is our 4th time hiking this route and the distances have been anywhere from 7 - 10 1/2  miles and between 1369 and 1877 for ascent. I've noticed that when we hike in rock cliff areas that my Garmin tracking goes off. I have had this happen on the Hertz trail and the Interurban trail. I also get more distance if I stop often and leave my tracking on while we are stopping for a long period of time, it seems to be pinging around me. I try to pause or resume later if we stop, but I don't always remember. So if we average the different times we've done this hike we'd come up with these numbers:

8.5 to 9 miles and around 1600 feet ascent. 

I was on the Trillium hunt, but never saw one. I did however see:

Big Leaf Maple flowers

Calypso Orchid

Skunk cabbage in bloom

Baby Ferns

Fawn Lilies

Currant blossoms

Scotchbroom

We hiked around Heart lake on trails #212 & 210

We then crossed Heart lake road and joined trail #247. I love the first section of this trail because it usually has water dripping over the rocks. I took a video that you can watch here: https://youtube.com/shorts/c18eL84H6jQ?feature=shared

While still on trail #247 the trail goes beside some climbing routes. The photo below shows some chains attached to the rock as well as a heart shaped hole in the rock. There are a few small climber trails along the route but stay on trail #247.

There are a couple of benches on the trail, the first one has a ever disappearing view of Lake Erie. The tress keep getting taller.

We then hiked on upward past the second bench and to the next viewpoint. Our dog Scoutina enjoyed the view of Campbell lake.

After enjoying the view we hiked down and joined trail #22, it climbs to reach the junction of trail #21.

We stayed on trail #21until we came to trail #313. We hiked on #313 for just a short distance before crossing the road to the Heart Lake parking lot. I walked down to the lake to get a photo of Mt. Erie in the distance. I always like to look back at where we'd been. Such a nice day on the trail.

I created a screenshot from a map on Gaia (https://www.gaiagps.com/). I put red dots on our route. If you enlarge it you'll also see the trail numbers.

I hope I added enough info. on this post to help you to follow our route. 

If you do hike it let me know if you like it as much as we do.