All's well that ends well

Fourteen Senior Trailblazers left the parking lot at Clayton Beach trailhead on our way up to Fragrance Lake and beyond. Here's Al at the lake when all is still going according to Plan A. In three years that I have been hiking with the Trailblazers, nothing like what happened today has occurred before. And this picture shows when our adventure really began.

Here we all are at the beginning of the hike, getting our equipment adjusted and starting out with our rain gear, as it's forecast to be gray skies and possible showers all day. It always amazes me that so many of us show up to get our exercise on Thursday when the weather is dubious, but I've found that I'm not the only one who heads out anyway.

Raindrops in the lake

We had been staying quite close together, all 14 of us, until just before the turnoff to Fragrance Lake. Since Mike always brings up the rear, we assumed that he would be just behind us when we turned from a quick break at the lake to start back up the trail. But there was no Mike, and two other hikers who were with him were also missing. We went back to the junction and found no sign of them. A hiker told us he had seen the three of them heading up our intended trail from the lake, so we took off in hopes to catch them. They, on the other hand, thought they had gotten far behind us when one hiker went to answer a call of nature. They hurried on hoping to catch us.

No sign of them, and several trail junctions gave us time to speculate where they might be. It was as if they had been snatched up by aliens, it had happened so fast. We headed to the clearcut area that was our destination, hoping for a view of Bellingham Bay and our friends. We had discussed that the bulldozers and harvested timber would make it possible to see a view that had been hidden previously. Here you see the icky part in the foreground as we looked out at the bay.

I do have trouble with the logging practices around here, but I am told it has been going on like this forever. Hopefully I'll get used to it. As you can see from this picture, the skies were indeed cloudy and the bay looks very mysterious in the distance. Weighing on all of us, however, was the location of our missing friends. We decided to have four people head back to their car and hopefully see them on the way down to the parking lot. We had cellphone connectivity and while the rest of us had lunch, the others headed back down the few miles in search of them. Now we were seven, since three were missing and four headed back to the cars. We went up to a viewpoint and saw a much nicer view of the bay, without all that clearcut.

Kimberly took this very nice picture of me as we headed back down to the junction. When we got there, we learned from the four that our missing friends had not arrived at the parking lot, so there was nothing to do but head back towards Fragrance Lake. This is what we did, and then we ran into them! Once we were all together and told the others at the parking lot that the missing hikers had been found, we all ended up happy to have learned some important lessons without anyone getting hurt.

I'm sure we will change some procedures before our next hike, but like I said at the beginning of this tale, all's well that ends well! (For Kimberly's take on the day, click here.)
:-)