Picture of the week ~ Mount Baker

South Larrabee Tour

For today's training trail run my husband had planned a last minute12 mile route. Last night he had planned a 16 mile route for us that included the Mud lake area, but we woke to rain and chose a different route. We weren't too excited about beating the brush in the rain.

This is our first rainy day run for quite awhile. I almost had forgotten how to dress for it.

We parked at the Hiline road and began our journey running south on the Interurban trail.

When we got to the Lost Lake Larrabee State Park parking lot (formerly Clayton Beach parking lot), we headed up the old logging road.

 We planned on going up the Fragrance lake road to the Lost lake trail but when we got to the fork in the road we changed our plans and decided to head up to Burnout. We have hiked/ran there many times from the Lost lake trail and thought it might be fun to go from another direction. We weren't sure just how far this impromptu decision would change our miles today, but we were ready to see what the road was like. 

It was a lovely old logging road that was mostly "up". I really enjoyed it!

We only saw one other runner on this road, you can just see her ahead of my husband in the fog.

I was happy to see that my pants were doing their job, wicking the moisture away from my skin. See how it lays on top of the fabric?! It's nice to have clothes like this when it rains. The old cotton sweats we used to run in years ago would get so heavy with water in the rain. Hurray for improved running clothes!

We stopped at a side opening in the road to see if there was a view at all. To my surprise there was. The cloud layer was just high enough that we could see Skagit Valley and Bellingham Bay.

It was so cloudy/foggy at Burnout that there was no view. It was raining hard and the wind had come up pretty good by the time had gotten there. No time to stand around, I was getting cold.

We then got on the trail towards the Lost lake trail.

After running a short while we connected with the Lost lake trail. In the photo below the arrow is really pointing down the trail past to the other side of the sign. We had just come from the foggy trail.

We ran down the Lost lake trail to the Rock trail junction. We ran up the Rock trail and to the Gates Overlook parking lot.

As you can see there was no view.

Then it was run on the road for awhile to connect with the Fragrance lake trail.

We ran around the lake and then headed down the Fragrance lake trail towards the viewpoint.

A little bit of a view.

Then back down the trail to connect with the Interurban trail and head north to the Hiline road where we were parked. I was anxious to see the graph of our elevation gain from my garmin when we were done. Pretty cool, I was proud of us today.

We ended up running 2 miles farther than planned, but it was a great adventure!

Endomondo stats:

total miles - 14

minimum altitude - 236 feet

maximum altitude - 1909 feet

total ascent - 2720 feet

total descent - 2799

A great BEAST training day.

 Aroo!