Gates Overlook via Chinscraper

This is part of the view from Gates Overlook, with the Olympic Mountains in the background as we look out over Samish Bay. The weather today was perfect: in the 50s with little wind and no rain, although it was overcast with a few sun breaks now and then. Twelve Senior Trailblazers hiked today in Larrabee State Park from the Clayton Beach parking lot up to this overlook, and we went via a trail called the "Little Chinscraper." I found this very apt description of the trail in a book on trail runs by Mike McQuaide:

At a "Gate Ahead" sign, find an obscure trail leading to the right and to a serious ascent. Little Chinscraper is what the trail is called; big pain is what it causes.  In 0.9 mile, this ridiculously steep rock- and root-strewn connector trail climbs almost 850 feet. So do what most trail runners do here: walk.

I can attest to the trail's difficulty, but remember we are hikers, not runners. I cannot imagine someone running up this, but I would not be surprised one day to see some animal of the human variety huffing or puffing his or her way up this... for fun. However, being Seniors, it's perfectly fine for us to pace ourselves. At the top of the trail, we drop down a bit to Gates Overlook and the lovely view you see in the above picture.

It was still too early to stop for lunch, so we hiked over to Chuckanut Ridge on our way to Fragrance Lake, and I was rewarded with this view of the Twin Sisters, which was obscured on the same portion of the hike two weeks ago. We headed down to the lake for a nice place to have lunch. Several fishermen were out hoping for a catch or two, but one fellow gave up and headed out while we ate our lunch. We might have disturbed his solitude a bit, with twelve of us parked nearby.

The day was warm with little breeze, so we spent a half hour resting before walking back around the lake and out to the cars. Even though I was looking carefully at the vegetation on the side of the trail, I didn't see much indication of the coming spring, although little green buds are popping up at lower elevations. As you can see in this picture, the ground is still covered with last year's brown leaves.

On the way down, we spied this moss-covered tree and dubbed it the Monkey Tail Tree, for obvious reasons. Nobody can tell me that the moss here only grows on the north side of the trees! In fact, any naturalist who can tell which direction is north in this picture, with clouds obscuring the direction of the sun, deserves high praise and a pat on the back.

By the time we twelve returned to the cars, of course the first thing we asked the two GPS holders was "how far how high"? We covered about eight-and-a-half miles and more than 2,000 elevation gain and loss. It was the second really satisfying hike in a row, and I'll take another next week just like this one, please!
:-)