Thursday, February 14, 2019

Railroad trail/Whatcom falls park Snow hike

We headed into Bellingham for our hike today since the wind blows out here in the north Whatcom County. I really wanted to get a snow walk in before it all melted and that's really not possible here once we turn the corner of our road and get to the open fields where the wind really blows. Bellingham was an excellent choice, the snow was flat, no wind except for a breeze a couple of times since we were in the forest the whole time. When we arrived back at our house, the wind was still blowing and as I sit to write this blog post it is snowing again. So pretty!

We started at the Barkley Haggens parking lot and headed down the Railroad trail. *We wore our hiking boots, no Yaktrax were required!


A cute little fellow along the trail.


We crossed the Alabama hill pedestrian bridge and I took a photo of the view looking out at Bellingham and Alabama hill.


We continued heading towards Whatcom Falls park. 
where we took a left and headed towards Scudder pond.


I loved the contrast of colors and textures in the scene below. Click to enlarge the photo below and you'll see Cattails, tall brown grasses and Rose hips along with the icy pond.

We heard many Red wing black birds singing, so I took a video.
Enjoy!

A walk through Bloedel Donovan park.


Then off towards Whatcom falls park.
Click to enlarge the photo below, what do you see sitting on the bench across the lake?

A Merganser and some Mallard ducks and another view of the fellow sitting on the bench.

We walked by the hatchery at the park, it's not many times we get a chance to walk in the park with this much snow on the ground.



We walked on to the creek side trail and the off leash dog corridor.



We had an interesting experience in the off leash area. A couple of dog walkers we coming towards us with probably a dozen dogs all off leash. The dogs were having a great time!

We then took a right turn and headed to the new parking area just off of Yew street road. We passed a very happy snow boarder walking up the hill, he passed us on his way down the hill and going over some jumps he'd put together.


This was the only road walking we did, just about .20 of a mile until we got to our trail again.

We got to walk up some stairs, different with snow on them and a little slick!

How fitting for Valentines day. A heart shape in the snow, surrounding a small melted out pond.

A convenient rock table for a lunch spot.

Another view of the creek along the trail as we made our way back towards Whatcom falls park.

These steps were pretty icy near the top.

A nice day for a city trail hike, the trails weren't very crowded. We did see several skiers though, I thought that was fun. Time to cross the Alabama pedestrian bridge again and head back to Barkley village.

One of the skiers coming towards us in the distance.

Back to our start.

Relive video of our route:

Garmin stats: 
Total miles hiked - 8.69
total ascent - 1394 feet
total descent - 548 feet