Lord Hill Regional Park — Sunday, Nov. 25, 2018

With a bit of a chest cold and a sketchy forecast for the mountains, we decided to explore Lord Hill today.  After a delicious breakfast at the Maltby Café, we drove up and around to the parking lot on the north side of the park, off 127th Ave SE.  Take advice from the WTA Pro Tip in the description and print yourself some maps from the Snohomish County website beforehand.  We brought along the primary trail map with its messy spiderweb of trails, as well as the simpler-but-less-complete Trail Mileage map.  I also had my GPS with me, which was a big help exploring around and searching for views.  

We decided to turn right at the first intersection after the boardwalks, unlike most hikers/walkers, and go by the equestrian entrance and onto the Main Trail.  From here we took the first right onto the West View trail, hoping that with names like West View Loops, Devil's Butte, and a listed View Point ahead we'd find some views.  Unfortunately, whatever views once existed on this side of the park are now blocked by trees, even in late November with bare branches.  

Staying straight at the intersection with the Devil's Butte Trail, continuing west, brought us to what's listed as South Loop on the trail map or Loop Trail on the mileage map.  We turned right to take the lesser trail around the South Loop.  It winds along a hillside and gives glimpses to a pond below to the north (outlined with a thin, blue line on the trail map), and then eventually leads to the designated View Point 650' on the mileage map, which appears as just a little spur on the main trail map.  Here there is a bench, picnic table, and what may have once been nice views, but all directions are now blocked by trees with just some peekaboo sights between.  

From here we wound north to the West Loop, taking the route left around the loop, the path signed for horses at the junction rather than the bicycle-signed path to the right.  While wandering through this area, we encountered a couple other hikers who asked if we'd found the viewpoint.  We told them about the spot with a picnic table and bench, but they described some location they'd found on a prior visit where the trail drops down and leads to a large rock that you can climb on top for great views with a sheer drop below.  This sounded intriguing, and I thought maybe it was at the end of one of the dead-end spur trails shown leaving the park off the North Loop on the main trail map, so we headed left on the North Loop, zig-zagging toward those spurs.  

We found the side trail heading off that would take us to the spurs but people had laid a pile of branches across it and tried to disguise it as much as possible.  There was a faint footpath to the left, so we followed that around the blockage and reconnected briefly with the old trail, only to then see why people had blocked off the start of this path: a massive blowdown of trees completely smothered the trail ahead.  Enter my GPS!  Thanks to having a constant view from above on my little Garmin, we were able to work our way around the blowdown and venture out to the north spur.  It ended on the shoulder of a hill, but with no views, and several boot paths descending further down the hillside in different directions.  We decided there wouldn't be any views further down so we headed back to the blowdown, climbing over some trees and connecting with the south spur.  This led steeply down, getting us excited that maybe we'd found the path the other hikers described.  But then our excitement was extinguished when it ended at private property and a No Trespassing sign.  There was a little flat area just beyond the sign that had a bit of an overlook of the valley below, but no real views because once again there were tall trees in the way.  

After our search ended in disappointment, we climbed back up and around the blowdowns and returned to the main Devil's Butte trail.  We followed this east where it descends and goes past the pond we'd seen from above earlier on the South Loop.  By now it was getting late so we circled south along Devil's Butte trail back to the West View trail and retraced our route to the car.  The search for views never succeeded, but we did manage to spend hours enjoying the beautiful forest and photographing all sorts of neat trees, plants, fungi, and water, making for a great, low-key day.