Random Hikes In The NorthWest

“Hike Skagit Tours” are now taking groups to hike Blanchard Mountain, until summer months when we will offer several tours throughout Skagit county.
The Blanchard Mountain Trails, featuring the Bellingham Bat Caves and Oyster Dome Lookout offer some of the most amazing views in the Cascade Mountains. Blanchard Mountain is also the only mountain in the Cascade range that touches the water. The breathtaking natural beauty of this area makes it well worth the trek. With beautiful scenery, breathtaking views, and a plethora of caverns this will be one of your most memorable trips by far.

For the more seasoned hiker, we offer information on the area, how to find the trails, and basic info about how to get where you want to go.

For the newcomer we offer a Hiking Tour. For a modest fee we will guide you to our favorite spots, helping you get started in developing hiking skills and knowledge, while having an exciting time along the way. We will help you to set the pace that will keep you wanting to come back to this amazing spot.

Blanchard Mountain Trail has always been part of the Pacific Northwest Trail route. This trail is now listed as a National Scenic Trail. This protects these trails from ever being logged, at least in the near future.

Blanchard Mountain lies just to the south-east of Chuckanut just south of Bellingham and can be accessed from highway 11, and from Alger on the east side of the mountain.

http://hikeskagit.com/

As you can see I own quite a few knives.  Most of which just sit in a drawer or on a shelf looking pretty.  I have very few knives that I would trust in a “survival” situation.  In fact I only use 3 out of all these regularly.

These 3 or 4 seen in this picture are the only knives I use on a regular basis.  The top blade is a Frost Cutlery blade I got awhile back in a dealer kit I purchased.  Since I got this knife in a kit I’m not sure exactly what they call it.  The blade is 4.5″ total length 12″.  The hilt on it sucked and I shattered it the first time I tried actually using it for anything more than carving sticks, so I have replaced it with a custom hilt I fashioned out of a solid piece of bamboo I had lying around.  I carved it a bit longer than the original hilt to give me more chopping force.  Using the original bolts and some gorilla glue to secure it,  I then wrapped it with 550 paracord and soaked it in a bowl of water to shrink the cord and get a nice tight wrap out of it.  Honestly I think the blade will snap before the bamboo will.

The second blade which I carry with me everywhere is a Smith and Wesson® ExtremeOps folder I got for christmas a few years ago.  Since then I’v litteraly beat the crap out of it,  Using it to split firewood, throwing it at trees during boring moments at camp, and prying anything that won’t move when I want it to.  I think its the most use I have ever gotten out of a pocket knife without it breaking on me.  The blade length is 3.25″.

The third knife isnt really a knife at all but a Leatherman® Squirt P4.  This is my multitool of choice when I go into the backcountry.  This leatherman has pliars like most leatherman tools but the other option for this particular tool had scissors.  I used a micra for awhile that was great, but I was tired of lugging my big tool up into the woods when I planed on doing a little fishing.  So I got the squirt with pliers because of my fishing habit, those hooks can be a pain in the butt to get out of a fish without pliers.  Its also got a file on it which is great for sharpening dull hooks.  This tool also has the most comfortable grip out of all the multitools I have ever used despite its tiny size.  I got turned onto this multitool by earlylight over at Sectionhiker, go check out his article on knife size if your into ultralight gear or anything camping for that matter he’s got a great site.

The fourth one I use sometimes is an old swiss army knife.  Im sure you all know the benefits of the swiss so I wont go into it, The only reason I dont usually carry it is because the squirt takes care of anything the swiss could do, so I usually leave it at home.

I left out a few knives in the top photo because of their size or because they are just deco blades.  Couldnt really fit a machete in there with all the rest of em without making the other blades look tiny.

Weight isnt much of an issue for me when I decide what knife to carry,  I dont want to be hampered by a tiny “ultralight” knife that will break when I need it most.  I like to be able to rely on my blade and its nice to have a larger knife around for camp chores.

I for one am glad this is happening. It means the section of the pnt nearby on blanchard wont be logged at all, which is what the hiking community around here has wanted for years.

This view of the Oyster dome from the Bat caves is amazing.  To bad there wasn’t more sun that day.

“The designation is sought in a sweeping public lands bill pending before the U.S. House of Representatives, and is intended to bring better maintenance, funding, signage and visibility to the trail, which stretches from Glacier National Park in Montana to Cape Alava, winding through three national parks — Olympic, North Cascades and Glacier — and seven national forests.

Along the way, hikers take in the Rocky and Selkirk mountains, the Pasayten Wilderness, the North Cascades and Olympic Mountains, ending at a wild beach on the Pacific Coast.

Designation would bring national recognition to the trail, and put it among its better known peers including the Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails.”

This view from the top of the oyster dome is a part of the pnt and one of the great views one can get on the trail.   The samish overlook is about 2 miles away near the wedge cut you can see in the trees on the next hill over.

“”This 4-season stove operates a butane-propane cartridge that has a patented fuel extraction system that delivers steady performance at all temperatures and altitudes. Lightweight and durable aluminum and magnesium alloy components. The aluminum cartridges can be punctured when empty with the included “Green Key” and then crushed and recycled. The stoves are adjustable from simmer to high.”"

That’s what another website has to say about it anyway. You can’t get this stove from the Coleman store anymore since its an older model. I got it on a clearance sale for 20$ a few years ago and have used it many times since then.  The only beef I have with it is you have to use the powermax fuel if you don’t buy their adapter.  And powermax fuel isn’t the easiest thing to come by, it took me a year to find a store around here that had it.  So I had this stove just sitting there for the longest time that I couldn’t use.  I eventually broke down and bought the adapter for it so I could use the standard fuel canisters, shortly after that I was looking around in my local sporting goods store and noticed they had the powermax fuel that I had searched for so diligently.  Go figure, at least now I have the option to use either fuel type.
Other than the fuel issue its a great little stove. pretty lightweight, and durable. Though not the smallest stove, it gets the job done quickly and efficiently, boiling water in just over 3 minutes.  I cant remember the exact times the canisters are rated for. but you can run it full blast for an hour and not run out of fuel.  Which comes in handy for those long simmering back country stews that are so good.

Overall if your looking for a cheaper stove that gets the job done and if your store carrys the powermax fuel canisters than its a good buy.  But if your looking for something more lightweight and more multi-fuel then I would look elsewhere.

I purchased the Earthmate PN-20 recently and it is the best gps unit I have ever used.  Mind you I haven’t used that many, but still.  The main things I like about the PN-20 is its high accuracy and the ability to upload satellite, aerial, topo, and whatever maps I might come across, as long as they are properly formatted, onto it for use in the field.  There are 2 different handheld gps units Delorme offers, the PN-20 and the PN-40, I opted for the cheaper of the two and found a great deal on the PN-20 at tigergps.com for around $160, whereas if I had bought it directly from Delorme it would have cost me $200.  Still it was kinda pricey but I sold my old gps so I needed a new one preferably with better features than the old and the PN-20 fits the bill.

So far I haven’t Logged that many miles with it, barely 8 miles in fact, but the ease of use has surprised me.  It comes with topo 7 software you load on your computer and it allows you to download maps from the Delorme server for a price, fortunately it comes with $140 in free map downloads so hopefully I wont have to pay for downloads for quite some time.  I loaded some Satellite and Aerial Maps of Blanchard Mountain near my house and went out there the next day and hiked around the mountain to test the accuracy of the gps and the maps it contains.  It tracked my miles as 2.41 but in the parking lot before we left I noticed it had .38 miles already on it.  I couldn’t figure out how to clear it soon enough as the people I was with were eager to hit the trail, so I just subtracted that from the final mileage.  Also this thing drains batteries like no other, It takes 2 AA batteries, I had put some Energizer Max batteries in it that it came with and they died up at the bat caves.  I have yet to try my NiMH 2500 mAh Energizer rechargeable’s in it but hopefully they last a lot longer than the 3 hours I estimate it was on from the time I got it to when it died.  I am amazed at the amount of imagery and different map types it can use.  I can even upload pictures to it and it will auto-sync the pics up to my tracks and provide me with a good way to figure out exactly where I took that picture of a squirrel or bear.

These are the different map types it can use:

• » USGS 1:24,000 quad maps
• » NOAA nautical charts
• » High-resolution color aerial imagery – U.S. States
• » High-resolution color aerial imagery – Select U.S. Cities
• » Black-and-white aerial imagery
• » 10-meter color satellite imagery

From what I was reading you can upload your own scanned maps and have them work but I have yet to get that to work.

This thing also keeps track alot of other data that my old gps unit didn’t, such as how long I have been moving or stopped, usefull to see where I have to take breaks later on.  it keeps track of your current speed, speed max, and speed average along with the usual coords and trip odometer.  Elevation of course is a standard feature of most gps units but as this one is loaded with topo maps its a hell of alot more acurate than most road gps’.  Another fun feature is the Sun/Moon rise and set, also the tide chart will come in handy when I hike around at the beach.  It has alot more data info fields but I cant list them all as this paragraph would be way to large.

I cant rave enough about this, the only drawback I can see is the short battery life which my rechargeables will hopefully remedy.