Worth adding to any trip to Artist Point!

Road: a couple construction one lane brief waits on the highway a few miles before reaching this trail.

Trail: perfect for strollers, small children, wheelchairs..

Fall foliage: just starting to turn beautiful colors.  

Crowds: just a 4-person wedding party finishing up when I arrived

Left Seattle at 6 and drove up in basically Misty, moody and cloudy conditions until we were basically at the ski resort! Got to the top of artist point parking lot at 9 and lucked out with one of the only “legit” parking spots. Kind of crazy how many cars but we saw almost no people just going out to Huntoon point. Spent some time at each of the tairns and then my 5 year old and I painted Mt Baker together with our watercolors.

Hiked around 2 miles or so and then also went down to picture lake for the loop. It definitely smelled Smokey coming out of the car and it was hazy over Shuksan. SOOO many cars coming up to artist point as we were leaving. Overall a great Labor Day adventure with my little buddy!

This was a terrific little leg-stretcher after the long drive up from Bellingham - easy walking, awesome views, vibrant flowers, and almost no people!  Blue skies made everything pop.  This is a super easy walking most anyone could do.

We hiked the trail twice, once in the morning and once in the evening. It was not busy either time and there was plenty of parking available. Thursday was a free day but passes are now required at all Heather Meadows area trailheads. There were a few mosquitoes but we did fine without any spray.

The two viewpoints were snow free and fully accessible. The back side of the loop had a couple snowy spots left. One of them may linger a bit longer - we were able to follow the footpath across it just fine in the morning but by evening it was a slushy mess that revealed it was not on the path, but rather over the edge of the lake and breaking through or sliding meant a foot in the lake. (Please don't step in the lake or on the meadow.) The actual trail goes a bit higher up slope at that point and was still rather snow covered.

Lake and mountain were beautiful like always.

Milo, age 5: Picture Lake is really pretty and really snowy on one side. There are boardwalks. There were yellow violets and lots and lots of avalanche lilies. a couple of dandelions and few other yellow flowers that I don’t know. 

We’ve never stopped here in all the years we’ve been hiking at Baker. We stopped before heading back down the mountain and my kids said that every time we come here, we’ll stop and do the short loop. Took us about 10 minutes with intermittent snow on one side. Lots of avalanche lilies in bloom.