Baker Lake Backpacking Trip

J and the boys went on a two night backpacking trip. C was required to do a backpacking trip that including staying at two different campsites. This was a Philmont requirement. J wrote this account.

We left home at about 0900 on Friday, July 1. We stopped at Cabela's on the way up for a water filter. We already had "life straws" but wanted to upgrade. That added another 50 bucks to our total backpacking trip total.

We later stopped at Subway in Sedro-Wooley for lunch and proceeded to the Baker Lake Trailhead. Alas, we missed the turn for the trailhead because it wasn't signed and didn't really realize until we were well into "Pothole City" on the wrong side of the lake. We turned back and found our turn. We never did figure out why the guys who did this a week earlier didn't warn us about that, but whatever.

The most striking thing about going the right way is that you find yourself driving over the top of a dam, with water on one side of you the same level as you, and on the other side a vast torrent of water crashing down hundreds of feet below you.

A little further along another potholed road and we were parked at the trailhead, and heading out on foot with our packs, at 1PM. An hour later than planned. We arrived at Maple Grove campsite at 2:20 PM. The hike felt a lot longer to me with the full pack. C also had a full pack. A carried a school backpack, but still heavily laden. The views of Mt. Baker across Bake Lake made the effort worthwhile.

We had no problem finding a campsite. We had been cautioned that finding a campsite could be competitive so we were happy to find that wasn't the case. In fact, one couple arrived at 5PM and found a free site. In fact, at least one site was unused that night.


We passed the time by playing around on logs on the waterfront. We thought about swimming but the water temperatures were just a little prohibitive. The air temperature was a pleasant 70+ -- good for hiking but not hot enough to drive us into the water.

We had Mountain House freeze-dried meals for dinner this day, as we did the whole trip. They aren't cheap (about 11 dollars each which feeds only one person). Our campsite was right next to another site which had an empty tent for many hours. Finally around dinner our neighbor lady returned with her dog after a full day of hiking and shared our picnic table with us. She was very chatty. And quite nosy.


We set up both our tents and the new hammock. The boys slept in the big tent and J slept in hammock but woke up at 1130. Even at 55F, it was too cold to sleep without a bag. J moved into the small tent. The sleeping bag kept me warm but the ground seemed to get harder and harder with each passing hour with the thin foam pad.

C also had a rough night and moved to the hammock at 3AM. He found it hard to sleep on the ground with back brace, even with the inflatable pad.

We were up at 6. J made coffee with the Jet-Boil. We had bad Mountain House for food. Turns out "Breakfast Skillet" sounds better in theory than in practice. Oops. We were on the trail by 730. We made a calculated decision to leave our smaller tent behind to reduce weight.

Such classic expressions!

After one hour of hiking we got to the point where lake bends and lakeside trail goes east instead of north. After 1 more hour we got to Silver Creek campsite. The only people there was a couple boys about to head out.

We had lots of time to kill here. After a Mountain House -- or Alpine Aire -- lunch, C had a nap. A and J hiked on to Noisy Creek without packs at the top of the lake. 

It was 30 minutes each way. The campsite itself was not impressive. It seemed quite limited, and surrounded by brush. We felt quite pleased with our decision to camp at Silver Creek. 

We had good weather all day. The Silver Creek sites were filled up from 2 to 4. We had dinner and went to bed early.

And then we had a thunderstorm about 11. For a while there was lightning with no rain and little thunder. Eventually it started to rain. J was hoping to sleep in the hammock by the creek, but once the rain hit he moved into the tent. Thankfully the rain never really got into the tent despite the undersized fly. But J didn't get much sleep.

We all got up at 5 on Sunday and packed up in rain. No coffee. No breakfast. Left at 6. We hiked straight back except a 30 minute stop at Maple Grove to retrieve the other tent. The boys got back to the trailhead by 930. J took 15 minutes longer. It rained on and off whole way back and we were all soaked, and the rain added a bunch more weight to our already heavy packs. J was going very slowly up the inclines by the end. We did rotate packs a bit.

We drove straight back home except for stop for a McDonalds breakfast in Sedro-Wooley. I was very impressed by both boys but especially Christopher's stamina.

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Mushroom Hunting at Lord Hill Park

Back on October 27th, a Sunday afternoon, J and I went out to Lord Hill Park (near Snohomish) where we met up with a colleague of J's (her name starts with S) who is a mushroom expert and a great photographer. I follow her on Instagram and enjoy all the close up photos she takes of mushrooms. She brought her young son along and he was an expert at spotting mushrooms.

We went way off the official paths and found an amazing amount and variety of mushrooms.
I learned a lot from S and had a lot of fun. I don't know the names of all the mushrooms we spotted. In time, I'll get better at identification.

S took this photo of J and I taking photographs.

These are coral mushrooms. They are actually really small.

These are "boring" mushrooms but boy, did we find a lot of them in one place!

I think this is an oyster mushroom.

These mushrooms were my favourite, due to their colour.

It was pretty dark in the forest so many of the photos I took turned out blurry. S used a macro attachment (clipped onto her phone) to take close up photos. I've asked Santa for one for Christmas.


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