Mount Baker Highway – First snow of the season

With the snow starting to fall in the mountains, we decided to head up the Mt. Baker highway in search of a new camping spot and the hopes of seeing snow up close and personal for the first time since last winter. It was a rainy day. A VERY rainy day. But we figured it would turn to snow as we got closer to Mt. Baker. We had also gotten word that Olympic National Park had to close because of the heavy rain, but it wasn’t about to stop our adventure into the North Cascades. Normally I prefer a little rain, but when we got up to the Mt. Baker ski area, It was almost impossible to get out of the car without becoming completely soaked. It was far too rainy to take photographs. That was the first time I was defeated by the weather.

We headed back down in search of a camping spot. Even with the rain, we were very excited to set up camp and relax for the remainder of the day and night. We went down Canyon Creek road, a somewhat hidden road just out of the town of Glacier. I wanted to camp by the river, but the water levels were dangerously high. You could see trees being swept down the river, and I was not about to join them. We set up the tent at about 4pm and escaped the rain. The rain never let up, so we decided to stay in for the night. We ended up staying in the tent for a good 15 or so hours, we filled the tent with pillows and brought up my laptop to watch movies until it ran out of battery. Even with the heavy rain and wind, we stayed completely dry. The tent is surprisingly weather resistant and holds the heat inside well.

We woke up to another very rainy day, but decided to search for snow one last time before we headed back to Bellingham. We proceeded up a forest road to see if we could get a view of Heliotrope Ridge. We were quickly welcomed by snow, and we were quickly stopped by it a few minutes later. As we climbed, my Jeep Patriot couldn’t handle it anymore. We did about a 20 point turn on the narrow road, then proceeded to head home. Although we didn’t spend as much time outside as we hoped, we found the snow and got a few pictures we were happy with.