Join Thor, Bear dog, and me as we continue our “Geezer Adventures” with an end-of-summer hike along the Lake Ann Trail in the Mt. Baker Wilderness.
NOTE: This summer Thor and I finally decided that we’d had enough with our continual rehab of various body parts, and needed to get back to our nearby mountains. We are now becoming experts at “Geezer Adventures,” or how to do as much as possible with minimal accommodations.
Our all-too-brief Pacific Northwest summer and mountain hiking are drawing to a close, and due to our various surgeries and health issues, we hadn’t ventured onto one of our favorite hikes in a few years. The Lake Ann Trail starts near the top of the Mt. Baker Highway and drops into a beautiful series of meadows, then climbs some rugged, rocky talus slopes to the foot of the Mt. Shuksan glacier. There, the icily refreshing Lake Ann welcomes the dusty hiker with a bracing swim that we’ve relished for many years. This year, we knew that Thor’s permanent nerve damage in his right calf would prevent him from managing those rocky climbs, and my own various issues would make it very unlikely I could manage. So we accepted that we have turned a corner and would just enjoy the beautiful hike for as far as we could go, with a tentative goal of the beautiful meadow pictured above. We made it, for a round trip of 8.5 miles, our longest hike in some time, so we feel pretty good about “seizing the day.”
Off we go along many switchbacks down into the first meadow:
We were blessed with mostly clear blue skies after driving up through some low-level wildfire smoke drifting from the fires still burning close to the east side of Mt. Shuksan.
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4 thoughts on “The Rambling Writer Hikes the Lake Ann Trail”
Love those middle and last photos especially, such terrific colors and natural beauty, unmarred by humans. (Though I love seeing Bear Dog!)
Thanks again, Sherwood! Yes, one of the reasons we love the mountains is the chance to embrace that natural beauty. Hermits that we are, even our smallish town feels crowded at times, and it is lovely to hike to vistas without human presence (or not much).
Sometimes slower and shorter hikes let’s you appreciate the beautiful things that you used to walk past.
Thor, yes! We’ve been noticing more of the smaller delights, maybe a reward of aging.