North Butte Trailblazer hike

13 Trailblazers headed to the Blanchard Mountain parking lot for our scheduled North Butte hike. It was raining last night when I packed my hiking pack, so I had put in my rain poncho. When I awoke this morning and saw blue sky I decided to be optimistic and took my rain poncho out! It turned out to be the right decision, we had wonderful weather for today's hike.

We took the Lily and Lizard lakes trail.

We followed Max's shortcut towards Lily lake.

I took the two photos below to show the differences in the forest as we walked through it. The first photo is full of ferns and moss was on many of the trees around us. The second photo has little vegetation other than the large trees.

We walked past Lily lake on our way up to North Butte.

Thanks for taking my picture Joe!

Finally lunch!

After lunch I walked over to check out the view & wow I'm glad I did - 

Looking to the left

Looking to the right

As we walked back down the trail to the parking lot, I spied this serene spot in the forest. 

It was so peaceful, as if saying "Happy Trails to you".

Endomondo stats:

Total miles hiked - 9.45 miles

Minimum altitude - 863 feet

Maximum altitude - 2243 feet

Total ascent - 1667 feet

Total descent - 1840

Chuckanut Ridge, Rock Trail, Raptor Ridge

My husband and I have started hiking together on the weekends. Yesterday's hike he planned for us was to be long, it was!

Again he got out his trusty "Happy Trails" map and figured out a route for us.

We began at the North Chuckanut Trail head as we did last Sunday. For this hike however we were headed towards the Chuckanut Ridge Trail.

It was about 35 degrees when we began our hike but we quickly got warm as we hiked "up" the trail. When we got to the viewpoint we stopped and took off our gloves, hats, and outer layer.

We continued walking "up" the spine of Chuckanut ridge towards Gates Overlook.

Finally our lunch spot in view. 

The view from the Gates Overlook never gets old. The photo below shows the view looking towards Bellingham Bay.

After lunch and a nice rest it was on to the Rock Tail. The WTA trail crew made a really nice series of steps down this trail. I've posted about it before, you can read that blog post here.

Here a a few pics from this section of the hike.

We then connected with the Lost Lake trail, you can just see the lake through the trees in the photo below.

We hiked for quite a ways on the Lost Lake trail before turning onto the Raptor Ridge trail.

I really enjoyed the long sweeping switchbacks as we made our way up, with the clear weather day we got in a nice view.

After a brief stop we then headed down to the Hemlock trail junction. I found and interesting post about this section of the trail. The author is describing the trail from the opposite direction we hiked it, so if you read this post from the Northwest Geological field trips site, just reverse the info. for what we did. Neither one of us had been on this particular section of the trail before and we were interested in taking it.

The trail then intersects with the Lost Lake trail, which took us back to our starting point - The North Chuckanut Trail head.

I like the word "Plethora", 

that is exactly how many trails are in the Chuckanut Mtn. trail system  ;-)

Endomondo stats:
Total miles hiked - 14 miles
Minimum altitude - 70 feet
Maximum altitude - 1888 feet
Total ascent - 2634 feet
Total descent - 2708 feet