Let's Just Go Somewhere: Mt Baker & Mt Shuksan (afternoon)

Mt Baker and Mt Shuksan are located in Washington State close to the Canadian border in the Cascade Mountain Range. Mount Baker is 10,778 ft in elevation and is an active volcano that is closely monitored just like Mount St. Helens and the other 3 active volcanos (Mt. Rainier, Glacier Peak & Mt. Adams) in Washington State. While Mount Shuksan is not a volcano, it stands nearly as tall as Mount Baker at 9,127 feet and has sharp, jagged peaks surrounded by glaciers and snowfields.

While eating our picnic lunch in the car, we headed east on Hwy 542 to the Mount Baker Wilderness. After passing through some rural farm area, the road became thickly lined with lots of very tall trees.

Our first stop was Nooksack Falls. This picture was taken from the bridge at the top of the falls.

The water had that same glacial silt in it giving it a cloudy light green appearance.

We walked down to where we could see the falls from a fenced-in overlook.

These two waterfalls...

come together near the bottom with another waterfall to the right...

...and flow into the Nooksack River below which we could not see from the fenced-in, "Danger Beware", overlook.

The falls were both beautiful...

and powerful.

After leaving Nooksack Falls, we continued up Hwy 542 to Mt. Baker. We would see these bright red berries in places...

...and these deep pink bell flowers.

While the road was thickly lined with trees, we could only catch glimpses of the mountain peaks. (The clouds that were still hanging around didn't help either!) :(

But then, all of the sudden, there was Mt. Shuksan, in front of us....

...and he was gorgeous!

We continued up the road and then circled to the right of Picture Lake...

...where we stopped and admired Mt. Shuksan from the other side of Picture Lake.

As we continued heading even further up...

...and could see Chain Lakes off to our right.

And then we continued going up further and further...

...until we finally reached the end of the road: Artist Point. The parking lot had been snowplowed and the snowbanks were melting into the parking lot. (I never thought I would be saying that in August.) :)

After parking the car, we walked out to Artist Point.

Here, the snow had been plowed through for the walking trail.

We continued walking the trail around Artist Point. It was a relatively easy trail with a couple of minor snowfields to cross ...

but the views were absolutely gorgeous!

The only disappointment was all the clouds that kept us from fully seeing Mount Baker...

...and also Mount Shuksan now too. :(

Below is a video clip of the AMAZING views from Artist Point

Mount Shuksan is surrounded by glacier fields along its jagged edges.

The little ponds here and there were beautiful too...

...as were the little wildflowers.

We sat on the rocks at Artist Point for probably 30 minutes enjoying the views and hoping the clouds would lift more to get one more cloudless picture of Mount Shuksan.

The clouds never fully moved away but we still enjoyed just sitting and looking at God's wondrous creation from Artist Point.

On the way back to the parking lot, several visitors were looking at a herd of mountain goats below Mount Baker.

A lot of families brought their sleds. Can you imagine? Sledding in August?

Maybe a snowball fight???

Unfortunately, it was time to head back home.

As we were heading back down, the clouds started to move away giving us one more picture-perfect memory of our now favorite mountain peak: Mount Shuksan.