Washington’s Cascade Range of mountains is sprinkled with volcanoes and Mount Baker, a snow-covered 10,781 foot tall cone stands off on our eastern horizon. We chose to go for a spin to this mountain today and, on the map, it looked like it was close to where we have parked ourselves for the next few days.
A few blocks south of our park we turned east on the Birch Bay – Lynden Road and passed over I-5 into the town of Lynden about 10 miles from the freeway. From Lynden we followed a series of Washington roads through Sumas about a half mile from Canada where we turned east again and passed through tiny towns called Kendall, Maple Falls and Glacier. This road skirts the Nooksack River and starts climbing steeply toward Mount Baker above Glacier. We have no idea what a “Nooksack” might be but it sort of sounds like a purse carried by a pimp although it could also be an Indian word for something. The river is gorgeous as it squiggles around through the mountains. The state highway guys were out oiling some of the roads and that led to some delays and black wheel wells but we persevered.
The portion of the road above Glacier is bordered by fantastic stands of old growth cedar, fir and hemlock trees with regular peeks of the river through the wooden columns. About a half hour above Glacier, we pulled over at Nooksack Falls. There are multiple waterfalls here cascading from both the river and some intersecting streams that have slashed through the fascinating andesite formations that fill this area. The rocks here look like big stockpiles of pentagonal and hexagonal columns stored in contact and on end.
We finally climbed through the treeline where we pulled out at a visitor center building built back in the day by the Civilian Conservation Corps and they did a fabulous job. The little building looks on the outside like it should be located in the gorgeous rocky spot it is because it just fits. The interior is all pine siding and framing and it is very attractive, too. They sell books, trinkets and postcards here and that is a bit problematic because they have no electrical power so they use a battery-powered cash register that makes tortured, pitiful sounds when they try to ring up your purchase.
From the parking lot the views are spectacular of the surrounding glacially-formed landscape and the glaciers on the side of enormous Mount Shuksan to the east. However, Mount Baker lies behind some ridges to the west of the parking lot so it is not visible. From the visitor center, another section of road goes up another 1,000 feet to a place called Artist’s Point and, Alakazam and Zowie! there is the giant active volcano. Mount Baker sticks up 5,700 feet above Artist’s Point and the eastern flank is completely buried by glaciers. It is awe-inspiring. To the south we could see Baker Lake down a long valley. Baker Lake’s other end is down by Concrete, a four or more hour drive from here.
We ate a late picnic lunch at the top of the hill before taking a short stroll around the area and then descending back the way we came. The scenery was just as gorgeous going back down. The lack of construction progress road crew was just about done with doing whatever they could do while invisible so we only ran into one short delay. We weren’t going very fast today and you can tell because the round trip took around eight hours despite what our map shows. We enjoyed every minute of it.
We got some pictures as we passed through this spectacular part of the world and you can see some of them if you click here