Saturday, February 04, 2006

Larrabee State Park


Hey, I've never heard of it either! Last night, as Storm Watch '06 sounded the claxon call of impending high windage in the Puget Sound area, I surfed around, looking for a place to do some storm watching, that wasn't too far away. Larabee State Park is on Chuckanut Drive, a beautiful scenic highway just south of Bellingham. As it's on the water, I thought there might be some good storm watching, and because it's a very large park (nearly 2500 acres), it also contained some good hiking trails, several of them going to different area lakes.

Sure enough, Saturday morning arrived along with the predicted high winds and by 8 am I was on the road. As usual, no one wanted to tag along, so I was going solo. I stopped for Egg McMuffins and gas (no pun intended) at Burlington and by 10 o'clock I was at the parking lot (the only car, by the way). Winds were high, but had already begun abating so I checked out the beach trail first. The tide was high, so I had to stick to the low-bluff trail. I moved around a protected point and was hit by the full force of the wind, which was flying in unimpeded from the Straits. Waves were crashing on the rocks and sending curtains of spray 40-50' up in the air. It was very exhilirating, but cold, so I headed back to the parking lot.

Across the highway from the beach was the trailhead for Fragrance Lake. It looked to be a little more than 2 miles one way, and from the topo map, looked pretty steep in places. There are other hikes and other trails in the area, but since I was here and because it was already starting to drizzle, I decided this was good enough.

The trail started up a couple easy switchbacks, crossed a maintenance road and flattened off onto a fern-filled valley with steep edges of weathered sandstone and first- and second-growth hemlock. Gradually steepening, the trail went into full switchback mode, through more old growth timber, mostly cedar now, becoming muddy in the turns. The storm had done its damage, with much fresh downfall, most of it in the form of broken branches, with a few large trees blocking the trail. The remaining wind was now just in the tops of the highest trees and could barely be heard, creating an eerie silence. I didn't see or hear a single creature on the entire hike, not a chipmunk or even a bird. The closest thing to wildlife was a rotted stump that looked like a couple rabbit ears.

The trail flattened out a little at the top and about an hour after I started, the lake appeared in the mist. By now, it is completely raining, but I finally found shelter in a nearby cave to eat a snack. I walked around the lake (about 1/2 mile) and headed back down the trail, rain rushing down my back.

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