We had hiked up Goat Mountain at Baker the day previously, camped at Silver Fir and had planned on more Mt Baker excursions but when we got in the car this morning and found the low air pressure light on. After a visual inspection we found a pesky screw in the tire so decided it'd be better to head towards bellingham and find a hike that had cell service in case our tire decided to call it quits.
Both of us had done oyster dome previously but had done very little hiking in the chuckanut ridge area so we got to the north mountain trailhead and looked at the map to see what might be a good option. Our eyes were drawn to the little binoculars on the map indicating that there was a good view point at Madrone Crest. We saw that we could do a bit of a loop by going up Hemlock and then back on North Lost lake trail.
We passed a few mountain bikers but mostly had the hemlock trail to ourselves. A good portion of the hemlock and Madrone crest trails had large numbers of stinging nettles which could be avoided by raising one's arms but we were glad to be in pants. I haven't seen such a healthy crop of nettles in quite a while. We reached the junction of the Madrone crest trail and north lost lake trail and remarked that its a good thing it was only another .3 miles because we were starting to get hungry when we bumped into another hiker. We asked him how was the viewpoint and he said "view point, what viewpoint?" which did not bode well for possible views. He let us know that it was pretty overgrown and not only had there not been views there for a while but that there also aren't any madrones up there :-) A few minutes later, with expectations low, we discovered he was absolutely right. The madrone crest trail leads to a nice sitting rock for a snack but don't come expecting any views except the tiniest of peek-a-book views.
We were a bit bummed but enjoyed our snack and headed back down. A mile or so into our descent we heard a "hey ladies" and ended up bumping into Jim, the hiker from before, who let us know that the ridge hike is where the views are. We unfortunately didn't have time to explore further but enjoyed the 2.5 mile walk back to the car with our new hiking friend.
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