Sauk mountain hike

 Friday (yesterday) was our son's 47th birthday, he invited us to hike Sauk mtn. for the day. I was excited to join him on a family hike. The last time I had hiked this trail was in 2016 with the Senior Trailblazers. You can read that post HERE.

It was a nice clear day when we began, it never got too hot or the bugs too bad as there was a nice gentle breeze blowing all day. I always love the view of the switchbacks from the parking lot. The road up wasn't too bad until just near the top. I was glad we have our high clearance truck for driving these kinds of roads now.

The flowers were still in bloom along the trail. I savored every view with hungry eyes. It's been awhile since I've hiked in the mountains.

View of the Skagit river below. We could even see out to the bay way in the distance.

Many butterflies as usual.

A grouse on a rock caught our dogs attention and then ours. As we watched the bird work it's way down the rock a couple of babies followed.

Looking up from the many switchbacks.

We found a few heart rocks on the trail.

Love the downhill view and watching the parking lot get smaller and farther away as we made our way up.

The parking lot is visible in the lower right at the bottom of the meadow.

The luxury of having others along on the hike means some photos of us💓

The view from the top as we made our turn to the back side of the mountain. Then we were done with the many switchbacks. I had heard that the switchback had seriously deteriorated in the years since I'd hiked it, but I didn't think it was any worse than we I'd done it before, so that was nice to see.

We saw and heard a Marmot really close to the trail, our son managed to get a great zoomed in close up of it.

I took a video of the east view of the trail before we summited. There was very few snow patches before the summit, much different than the last trip I'd done. Our dog enjoyed rolling in the snow before we made our way up to the summit.

Summit views

Another video, this time looking west.

Our dog Scoutina's first summit. She struggles with the heat so we got her a Ruffwear cooling vest, we're hopeful that it will allow her to join us on more of our longer summer mountain hikes.

We casually ate our lunches and enjoyed the views. Of course we sang happy birthday at the top. A couple of scenic pics from the top.

After making our way down from the summit we saw another Marmot laying on a rock. I zoomed way in with my cell phone. It kindof worked.

A quick photo of the outhouse near the parking lot. I love the little A frame building. Thankfully not to smelly or dirty this year and a big deal there was toilet paper!

I made a collage of the 2016 hike and compared it to a collage from yesterday.

Two different weather days, two different body types since 8 years ago, but still a great experience. I'm thankful for the ability to be on my favorite places once again.

Trail rating: Moderate

Total miles hiked: 4.2

Total ascent: 1230 feet

A nice Happy Birthday summit for our son💓

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💓