Upper Ridge Trail Hike #77

 On Sunday L and I went hiking up in Bellingham in Whatcom County. I had originally thought that the kids were coming with us, but my husband ended up staying home, so the kids stayed with him.
 Now I was running late that morning (seems to be my norm), and after gathering everything up I left. I was driving up to Mount Vernon to pick L up and was almost there when my car's check engine light came on and the temperature gauge was maxed out. I pulled over and let it cool of then made it to the next exit with a gas station for water or coolant. This put me further behind by quit a bit. After putting fluid in my car and some tears of frustration I was back on the road and made it to L's house, where I loaded everything into her car and we headed off.
 When we finally arrived we found that there were lots of cars, but finding a parking spot was easy since it is a larger parking area.
Looking around I noticed a couple of benches/picnic tables, a wonderful view and a pit toilet, but there was not a water source.
To get to Chuckanut Mountain take I-5 North or South and take exit number 250. Turn onto Old Fairhaven Parkway. Turn Left onto 30th St, then continue onto 32nd St, turn Right onto Old Samish Road. Turn Left onto WA-11 S/Chuckanut DR, turn left again onto WA-11 S/Chuckanut DR, turn Left onto Hiline Road, then take a slight right onto Cleator Road.

Walk down the road for a very short distance to get to the trail head.

We took the Raptor Ridge trail.

The trail starts off pretty nice. There weren't any views along this section due to the trees.

We discovered on the way that large amounts of the salal were dying and it made us wonder why.

Finally a view!

Not long after we arrived to this section of trail. 

It was steep going down,

and steep going up. However all of the tree roots made for nice stairs.

The view looking down on what we had come up.

The sun finally broke through the clouds!

The sword ferns were huge and very lovely.

Yay more sun!

This was fun to go down, but people go down this on mountain bikes. I would end up flat on face if I tried.

Continue on Chuckanut Ridge trail to Dan's traverse.

This part was nice, not covered in roots or rocks.

A better view.

Be very careful on this..it is very slick! I almost fell.

We then hiked for a while on a section of dirt road.

We took the Lost Lake trail.

This area was very wet and muddy, with streams flowing down it.

I enjoy taking pictures of downed trees.

We went right to go look at the lake.

Had to walk across these logs. Be careful they move and are slippery.

Lost Lake was pretty. I apologize for my finger in the picture, I was attempting to block the glare so I could take a picture.

This root ball was huge because it is made of a few different trees.

So the rock trail was rather cool to see. And you can guess as to why it is named the rock trail.

Most of the the very large boulders had holes in them shown in the picture above.

At one of the rocks L put her trekking pole into to see how deep the hole was. She couldn't even touch the back of the rock.

Yay almost done! I didn't take pictures but there are numerous and I mean numerous stairs to go up.

The trail splits into three directions and you want to take the middle one, it will lead you back to the parking lot.

The best view by far is from the parking lot, as you can see in the picture above. We didn't see many people and there were more mountain bike riders then people hiking. But if you are looking for something that is close and don't want to go to the "mountains" then I recommend this hike. We ended up hiking 7 miles from all of the different trails we connected.
 In all honesty I will say that I didn't find this hike enjoyable, not after just having come back from our road trip and hiking Lost Lake in Wyoming.

Until next time!