Just your typical Sunday afternoon

These past couple weeks have flown. Absolutely flown. They've been wonderful, but super busy. Between new and exciting (but time consuming) projects at my work, and staff retreats, camp, and leaders meetings with Jared's work, our weekdays have become a blur. Fortunately, we're both doing things we absolutely love. And the weekends leave us some time to play, too. Because that's one thing we've really discovered out here: the Pacific Northwest is God's playground.

This past Sunday, we went on a quick afternoon hike in the Mt. Baker area. It was one of those hikes that really reminds you just how much God loves us. I think it showed a bit of his playful side too--wildflowers and glaciers and waterfalls all within a glance of each other. 

The hike is called Heliotrope Ridge, and like many that we've decided to try, it's featured in the Best Wildflower Hikes of Washington book. This is actually the trail that people climbing Mt. Baker use. And we saw a lot of backpackers on their way down, bearing all their rope, their crampons, and other mountain climbing tools.

The book warned us that we'd have three creek crossings, which could be dangerous, depending on the hike. Well, usually those books exaggerate. But I think this time it fell a bit short--as in 5 or 6 creek crossings short. Before we even really got on the trail, we had to climb down the bank to cross the rushing river on a log. Apparently the normal route was over a snow bridge, but that had collapsed as it got warmer and melted. Fortunately, the trees out here are massive, so that log bridge was actually pretty comfortable :)

A lot of the hike was simply climbing through the lush forests, crossing the occasional stream. But every once and a while, we'd come across a more significant crossing that required hopping from rock to rock. One of the first ones had this waterfall in the background. It was a wonderful little spot to cool down.

 Did I mention it's peak wildflower season right now? Mmm hmm. Jared was trying to capture the flowers against the rushing water in these photos.

 

 We eventually grew pretty accustomed to seeing and crossing these rushing streams. And with Jared's help, I became pretty good at hopping from rock to rock. Only one wet foot by the end of the trail :)

The last mile of the hike was phenomenal. We had finally reached the sub-alpine meadow area--by far my favorite level. And did I mention it's peak wildflower season?

 The banks on either side of us were a blanket of purple, blue, yellow and green, with splashes of red here and there. These pictures definitely do not do it justice. But trust me, it was all we could do to not just stop and stare.

 But we kept going. And it's a good thing we did, because the sights just kept getting better and better. The trees disappeared and the whole skyline opened up, revealing hills lined with waterfall after waterfall. Everything just seemed to be rushing water, boulders, and flowers.

 And those of you who read my last post may recognize the peak showing his face in the back of this photo.

Considering that this is the hike people take to climb Mt. Baker, we couldn't be closer. But that didn't make him seem any more approachable. He certainly dominated the skyline.

 This is where we ended up. Essentially, this trail climbed up to the Coleman Glacier. Now, I've been to glaciers, but I don't remember them being anything like this. I always picture them as a snowfield. But this was crazy. Giant pits and ditches of ice, rushing water, and hard packed snow. There were a couple people out on the glacier, who we assumed were training for the summit. Hikers are always warned to stay off glaciers unless they have proper training, and I've always kind of shrugged that off as overly cautious. But oh man, after seeing this I can see why. It was intense. It just looked dangerous.

 It also gave us a strange desire to watch Bear Grylls in Man vs. Wild (one of our favorite tv shows from our college days).

 In short, it was a pretty awesome hike.

 If the weather cooperates, we're scheduled to do our first overnight backpacking trip together this weekend! I'm keeping my fingers crossed. After a hike like this, I want nothing more than to spend an entire day poking around and exploring up there. Although I wouldn't say no to a real toilet ;)