Our group met at the North Chuckanut Mountain TH and started up the trail around 9am with the North Lost Lake Trail as our target goal.  The trails was several intersections, including a horse detour so it can be a bit tricky to know where to go.  But the nice thing about this area is that every intersection has signage of some kind!  Just familiarize yourself with the map beforehand and head in a mostly southern direction (right) and you'll be fine. We decided to take an indirect route and visit the Chuckanut Falls, arriving there in about 35 minutes  and 1.5 miles from the trailhead.  It's always fun tThis stop is an in and out, but you don't have to go all the way back to the junction so we opted to take a turn left out from there and go up to Hemlock to connect with the Lost Lake trail.  We saw some recent trail construction in this section, you can see a lot of work went into the new tread. o start a hike out with some nice scenery.  From the junction with the Hemlock Trail,  you go right to find the North Lost Lake trail.  Once here, you are on decommissioned service road until you get to Lost Lake.  Shortly after leaving Hemlock and heading south on the North Lost Lake trail (the junction has a kiosk and map), we came to the intersection for the ridge trail at about 10:30 am and 3 miles in to our journey.  It was an hour at a social pace to get to the Lost Lake junction and GAIA totaled us at 5.27 miles so far.  When I had been here last month, the trail had been snow covered and icy, this time the theme was mud and slick.  Footsteps were carefully place as we navigated wet roots and rocks dodging puddles. There were several view points out onto the lake on this section, but we stopped at the outlet and waterfall for lunch at noon. 5.73 miles so far.  The waterfall was melted out from last time but I took the opportunity to visit it from a few different angles.  I really just love how the water comes down over the steps of rock. Our next destination was the Rock Trail, so we went back around the north end of Lost Lake (I didn't want to lead a large group around the south end as I was unsure if it was more than a boot path and we had varying levels of hiking skill with us today. This got us to the junction with Rock Trail @ 12:45 am and 6.8 miles.  The Rock Trail was just as cool as last time, but without the threat of large chunks of icicle falling down from the cliffs of rock above our heads.  From the Cyprus Gates parking lot (you can drive up Cleator Road to this TH), we walked down the road a bit to connect with the ridge trail and head back to  the junction with the North Lost Lake trail.  This is a really nice trail that I'm sure has some amazing views of Baker but we had nothing but eerie trees enveloped in fog.  No worries, though.  We needed our attention to be on the trail as it maneuvered rocks and roots, up and down, for the little more than 3 miles of this section.  We were back to the junction with North Lost Lake at 3:20pm, almost 2 hours later and our trip back from here to the cars was uneventful. Be careful as it is easy to leave the trail and end up walking down California St. instead (there are houses) or taking a right turn and walking away from the parking lot.  You won't go far but when you are ready to take your wet gear off and get dry it can be disappointing.  I was back to the car by 4pm with a total of 12.76 miles for the day. For more details and pictures, including my GAIA track, check out the link below.

Today, the gate was closed at the junction with Fragrance Lake Road, due to downed trees and a parking lot filled with compact ice/snow. This is better than two weeks ago, when it was closed at the Two Dollar Trailhead. I had about 0.8 miles of road walking up to the Rock Trail parking lot (aka the 'Cyrus Gates Overlook'). It offers spectacular views over the bay and even into Canada, and has an interpretive sign that tells you what all the various islands are. The Rock Trail itself is fantastic - my favorite of any trail in the Bellingham area, so far at least. It was built in 2013 completely from scratch, and as such it's in fantastic shape. You walk through new growth forest with occasional views of Canada's Golden Ears, past massive rocks with echoing drips of water, and down beautiful new wooden staircases. The Rock Trail was mostly dry as a bone today, no snow. One significant blowdown right before the wooden bridge was a bit treacherous to hop over, with no real alternative routes. If you're not limber, you might have trouble. I then connected with the Lost Lake trail. The last little bit was pretty muddy, and there weren't any great places for views of the lake. Wildlife was pretty active around the lake, though, and I heard endless birds chirping. The weather was gorgeous today - many hikers and mountain bikers were out. Several mountain bike trails pass through the same area, including the Double Diamond Trail, which I saw a couple groups riding on. I made the roundtrip trek in just under 2 hours with about 5.6 miles, including stops but hiking at a fast pace.

Took advantage of the beautiful day to hike Rock Trail then down to Lost Lake. One of the gates along Cleator Rd was closed, so we had to hike up the road just to reach the trailhead. There were giant, beautiful icicles along the trail and a large tree had fallen over, blocking our path but we were able to pass it by stomping through some mud. Lost lake was frozen over and a gorgeous site to see. Perfect trail for a sunny day!

I decided to spend the day in the Chuckanut Recreation Area and leave serious snow for this weekend (if you don't see a trip report from me by Monday, we didn't survive snow camping). I'd heard about a waterfall on the Lost Lake Trail, so I set out to explore the area. I parked at the Fragrance Lake TH and set out about 10am. I managed to hit the view point, Fragrance Lake, do the loop around and take the side trail up to overlook the lake, head over to the South Lost Lake Trail, walk around Lost Lake and find that waterfall, then back down the Rock Trail (which was AMAZING) and Double Diamond Trail to connect back with the Fragrance Lake trail and out by about 4:30pm. Most of the snow was on the Lost Lake and Rock trails but there was plenty of black ice all over. I had spikes but only used them when I had to walk out on to Lost Lake because I ran out of fisherman's trail while circumnavigating it, but my poles came in handy as most of the snow is compact and slick. Other than the snow, there are very problems with the trail. Watch your head on the Rock Trail, plenty of icicles dropping large chunks of ice on the trail. I imagine that come Monday when it warms up, there will be plenty of mud and mush to deal with. And more ice falling of the ledges above. My total came to about 11.5 miles for the day, but I had a couple turnarounds that extended my trip. For more details and pictures, follow the link below.

We stated at Arroyo Park's easternmost trailhead along Old Samish Road. We hiked up to the Chuckanut Falls Trail and then the Hemlock Trail, which is an old road. This is where we started getting into the snow/ice. We hiked up Hemlock to the Salal Trail, briefly hiked that and then we hiked up the Madrone Crest Trail. We dropped down to the Lost Lake Trail and hiked that under some cliffs that had absolutely incredible giant icicles and frozen waterfalls. We hiked to Lost Lake, which is frozen over. We followed the trail around the east side of the lake on the little ridgeline that parallels the lake. We passed a large viewpoint of the lake and then reached the lake outlet. From here I made my way down to the waterfall. The way down was slick and results of a fall could prove fatal, so I strongly advise microspikes if you wish to see the waterfall, which was very cool looking with the ice on it! We hiked back to the Lost Lake Trail and then hiked up the Rock Trail, which goes between some massive huge boulders and under some towering overhanging cliffs with more great ice displays! Very cool trail. We reached the junction of a bike trail and continued straight ahead to reach the Cyrus Gate parking lot (under over a foot of snow and closed to vehicles). Here there was a great view out to Vancouver Island, Strait of Georgia, the peaks of BC, and even skyscrapers of Vancouver! We then followed the road briefly until the start of the ridge trail and continued north on that. There is a great view of Mt. Baker and the Twin Sisters. We followed the ridge trail north for what seemed like forever, but it was a fun trail despite lots of ups and downs. Be sure to stay right at any junctions along the ridge. Toward the north end of the ridge there were some great viewpoints looking north to Bellingham an the BC peaks beyond. The trail dropped down off the ridge to the Lost Lake Trail, which is an old road. We went left and hiked down until we reached an unsigned junction at a house. Stay right here (going left is a road leading out to Chuckanut Drive) to compete the loop and get back to the TH. About 12 miles and 6 hours RT. Microspikes strongly advised as there are some pretty icy parts of the trail.