Hello Mr. Baker!

Last Saturday, Jared and I were handed a gem of a day: blue skies, sunshine, and a big old mountain range waiting to be explored. Since arriving in BC, the two of us have developed a bit of an infatuation with Mt. Baker. So we hopped in our car, grabbed our Best Wildflower Trails of Washington book, zipped over the border into Washington, and drove to the trailhead. It was a curvy twelve miles down gravel forestry roads to get there, but it was well worth it. The views on the way up were spectacular.

The trail basically started out with a two mile uphill climb through the woods. About a mile in, we met up with a man who gave us some bad news: the trail was still snowy, the flowers sparse. But the views at the top were still supposed to be spectacular. This year was especially snowy in the mountains, and mixed with the cold summer/spring we've had so far, the snow's been a bit reluctant to leave. But we decided to treck on anyway. And thank goodness we did. There was some snow.

 Well, quite a bit of snow.

But within no time, we hiked right out of the treeline and the snowfields and onto a sight straight from heaven itself. Or at least the Sound of Music. Just try to tell me these hills aren't alive :)

 

And there were flowers. They were a bit small and shy, maybe not as abundant as they should be in a couple weeks, maybe not the bright primary colors we were promised, but they were still there--just waiting to be appreciated .

 

 And some of those beautiful reds poked their heads out.

  

 

  

And these little yellow guys were just everywhere. (this photo isn't ours, by the way.)

But I've got to admit, the blue skies and Mr. Baker smiling at us right up over the horizon sort of outshone the flowers. It was hard to tear my eyes away.

 

The trail came out on an alpine meadow adorned mountain ridge. It was one of these sweet flexible hikes where you can hike along the ridge to your heart's delight. The only problem was the snow.

 It disappeared in spots, but grew a bit more abundant as we climbed higher. And the drop offs became a bit steeper as well.

 

 But we kept going. And with each slip and slide across the snow, we were one step closer to Mr. Baker. There he is,smiling  all proud on the horizon.

We spent an amazing morning exploring the area, enjoying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches perched on a little peak, and becoming more and more convinced that we should try backpacking together (me, at least. Jared was already convinced about 4 years ago).

And to be honest, we spent a bit of time plotting how to get to the top of Mr. Baker. From our perspective, we could just keep going and going and going on our ridge until we got right to the top. But the clouds started growing a bit heavier, and we had to admit that we weren't exactly prepared for the trip. Apparently it takes more than PB&J, a new pair of hiking pants, and half a pop-tart to complete the climb. Maybe another time.

The snow was firm enough that we could hike right on top without sinking down. But the downhill slopes were still a bit tricky. I ended up taking a little bit of a slide down one small patch, but fortunately a small tree caught me before I could go too far. This picture shows just how much snow is left to melt.

 

Our little Kia made us proud this trip. She may be small, but she handled the rocks and gravel like a pro. Sort of.

 Once we got off the mountain, we pulled off for a nap next to the river.

All and all, it was a pretty spectacular day. I'll admit, our infatuation with Mt. Baker grew into a full on love this weekend. We both can't wait to get into those mountains again, and have already picked out a bunch more trails to try.

And yes, Jared finally convinced me that backpacking and primitive national forest camping would be a fun time. But that'll be an adventure for another day. :)

Lynn Canyon

 This past Saturday Jared and I skedaddled (which, by the way, is a real word. I looked it up :) over to Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver with our friends Jared and Elise (another J & E!) to explore this  free (and much smaller) alternative to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which is a popular attraction in the Vancouver area. Both parks feature bridges suspended over a rushing river and overlooking beautiful waterfalls, but while Capilano's bridge is  450 feet (137m) across and 230 feet (70m) above Capilano River, Lynn Canyon is only around 50m (about 160ish feet) above the river. But while Capilano costs 27.95/person, Lynn Cayon is FREE!! and that almost always wins for Jared and me.

Despite its smaller size, it's a spectacular and beautiful park. After weaving through groups of tourists and stopping to throw things and spit off the edge, as you must do when you cross a bridge, we took a short hike through the woods to another waterfall. The river was small but mighty, and had to work hard to get through narrow canyons and boulders and rapids. It was a gorgeous clear green color, so clean it made you thirsty just looking at it. 

We snapped a lot of pictures too, but were disappointed when we looked through them. Some turned out way too dark, probably because of the thick trees in the woods, but the ones that did turn out just didn't do the place justice! But here they are anyway:

The bridge

The view from the bridge

Spitting off the bridge :) Elise is in the front, you can just see my purple hood behind her

Jared exploring a giant tree trunk. This thing could explode with one good kick, it's so decayed

This isn't actually my photo....but it's a great view of the bridge and the falls. Our version of this photo didn't turn out

 We spent the rest of the evening at Jared and Elise's house, where we ate some delicious homemade pizza and tried our hand at a new game that's huge around here, Dutch Blitz. Being 50% Dutch and from West Michigan, you'd think I would have heard of this game before now. But that's ok, now that we've learned it and have been soundly beat by players more experienced than us, we can only get better. Mostly I just love the look of this card game:

We could frame these cards and hang them in our kitchen, and they'd be a perfect match. Which might happen if I don't start winning sometime soon :)

Exploring the Golden Ears

God was smiling on British Columbia this past weekend; the beauty outside was absolutely spectacular. Waking up to see blue skies and sunshine, Jared and I both knew we just had to get outside, but weren't quite sure where to go. After a bit of research, we'd picked a hike and decided to explore Golden Ears Provincial Park. The park is about a 45 minute drive from our house, and offers camping, beach time and quite a few trails.

The trail we took was called Golden River Falls--it was an easy hike along a river that ended at a beautiful waterfall. Here are some of the camera-phone photos that I took along the way. 

 

 Have I ever mentioned that the woods here are spectacular? They are squishy and wet, full of ferns and boulders and huge trees. And everything, everything is covered with moss. Some of the trees are just dripping with it. I absolutely love the trees!

 

 Most of the trail we were on just offered some glimpses of the rushing river through the thick trees, but we poked into the forest to explore a bit ourselves.

  

And as always when we're near a river like this, Jared wastes no time picking and climbing his way over the rocks.

 

Around each  bend was an awesome new view of the mountains. It was a beautiful day!

We weren't far enough into the mountains for it to be snowy, but the temps have been pretty low recently. Here, they were low enough to have left evidence of freezing. As you looked up into the hills, all the pine trees slowly got whiter and whiter, looking like they'd been dipped in powdered sugar. And as we picked our way across rocks near the river, we noticed that some puddles showed evidence of freezing too. The water had  frozen into awesome swirls that my camera did obviously not capture very well.

 And right next to it, the ice had been broken into sharp splinters. It was so cool to see the difference between the two, one was all curves, the other straight, wicked looking lines.

Scattered throughout the woods were these giant stumps. Having been to the Redwoods and Sequoias in northern California, I can imagine what these monsters must have looked like when they were still alive. But now, they're just serving as nutrients for other trees. This particular stump reminds me of a three generation family shot--what you can't tell from this picture unfortunately is that this old stump is actually "holding" a baby tree--the little guy is growing right out of the top of it.

Jared got much further out into the river than me--the rocks were pretty slippery from all the moss and moisture. Needless to say, I stuck closer to shore. 

 

This was the end point, the Golden Falls. It was quite beautiful. As you got closer to the falls, the air was just full of mist. At the look out point, we noticed that the mist had frozen, and the ground was just covered in tiny little ice pebbles. 

We poked around the base of the falls as well, and saw that there the water and mist had frozen and glazed each rock and fallen log it touched. It was slick, but once we found a dry, sunny rock, it was the perfect place to grab a snack.

After our hike, we headed home to cook up one of our new favorite dishes, chicken curry. All in all, it was pretty much a perfect Saturday.