Oyster Dome — Friday, Jun. 14, 2002

Puget Sound and Islands > Bellingham Area

Oyster Dome - Trail Report The Dome is a flat open slab of rock at the top of Blanchard Mtn. with views to the west of the San Juan Islands, Anacortes and the Olympic mountains. To get to the Dome you climb a sometimes steep trail up to the 2050 ft. summit. This trail starts at an elevation of only 150 ft. on hiway 11 a few miles south of Bellingham where the North Cascades spread all the way west to Puget Sound. Since this summit is so low it's an excellent early season hike. Often snow free by the end of March. My group of 10 Mountaineers were enthusiastic as we started up at 9:30. Temperature was in the mid 50's with a 4 or 5 thousand foot overcast that we hoped would burn off by noon and there was no wind. There are several trail junctions (mostly with signs) a couple of streams to cross (easy) and a bunch of big muddy sections (but the mud was all dried up!) before the summit . The tread of this trail is mostly good to execellent but it has poor sections which are steep, rocky/rooty , straight up where switchbacks are needed, etc. Arriving at the Dome we had it to ourselves for an extended lunch and nap session! No one else on the trail all morning. The clouds did thin and break up and we needed sunscreen. The view expanded to about 20 miles by the time we started descending. Next up were the Bat Caves, also known as Talus Caves 350 feet below the Dome at the base of a vertical rock wall straight down from the Dome. No bats but big caves formed from giant rock fall off of the cliffs. The caves were the trip highlight for some of my group. For wildlife we only saw ravens soaring below the cliffs, but the flowers were better than I expected for low elevation deep forest: honeysuckle, columbine, false solomons seal, bleeding heart, wild rose, stream violet, and indian pipe. After stopping at all the view points again on the way down we returned to our cars at almost sea level by 3:30. Oyster Dome trail is on DNR land and is built and maintained by volunteers of the Pacific Northwest Trail Assoc. Not on any Green Trails map but featured in the Hiking Whatcom County guidebook. The trailhead is very hard to spot, just a tiny sign on a tree opposite a wide spot in the hiway. The PNT web site www.pnt.org has good maps that you can print but the trailhead information is skimpy. About 8 miles and 1900 ft. elevation gain. Robert Michelson 6-15-02