Blanchard Mountain

Blanchard Mountain is the only mountain in the Cascade range that actually touches salt water, rising over 2000' from Samish Bay on Puget Sound. Located in Northwest Washington along Chuckanut drive, Blanchard contains several hikes that can be done seperately or as part of a loop trail. Today we did the Oyster Dome/Lily Lake/Samish Overlook loop, in my humble opinion the best way to see the mountain.
We started on the west side at the Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) trailhead. The trail begins an immediate and relentless march up for the next mile and a half. At 1000' elevation there's a small bench and your first clear view out over the San Juan Islands. This is a good place to have a drink of water (you should have worked up a good sweat by now) and a handful of trail mix, but don't get too complacent, you're only half way to the Dome. Keep going up (and up and up...) until you see the sign for the Talus Trail. Follow this short detour to the Bat Caves, which aren't caves at all but large boulders that create a talus slope at the base of the Dome's 400' cliff. Take a moment to admire the view; you'll be looking down from there in a few minutes. Try to stay out of the caves, to protect the bats from you and protect you from the boulders, which are unstable and dangerous.
Go back to the main trail and head up the main trail to Oyster Dome. You'll eventually emerge on to a gently sloping rock dome with stunning views of the San Juan's and the Olympic Mountains, as well as the Samish and Skagit delta's. Don't expect solitude here. This is a very popular hike, and on the first sunny, warm Sunday of spring we shared our lunch break with 40 to 50 others.
Solitude isn't impossible to find here, however. We left the Dome by way of the Lily Lake trail. We passed two people and saw the bootprints of 4 or 5 more, but by the time we got to Lily Lake just a mile from the crowded Dome, we were completely alone at a pretty, frozen, snowy mountain lake, where we took an uninterupted 45 minute pause. There are some nice campsites here, and also another mile away at Lizard Lake, a smaller, less visited spot that's just far enough off the main track to make it peaceful and, after sunset, probably a private campsite.
From Lily Lake, we headed for Samish Overlook via the PNT (the trail we started on and at the end of which our truck - we hope - is waitnig to take us home). Samish Overlook is accessible by car, and is a popular launching spot for hang gliders and parasailers...or is it parasailors? In any case, you can see folks lined up to take the plunge, and may even see eagles joining in the fun, looking for the same thermals as their nylon winged counterpats. This was a fun place to people watch too. We match a woman dressed for a cocktail lounge but snapping photos of raptors, a man in a bizzare 1980's sedan fitted with strange multple antennae trying to talking to hamm radio operators from Sverdlovsk to Auckland, a very Federico Fellini/Northern Exposure assortment. This is another nice place to take a break and take it all in.
From here the walk back was an easy 2 mile down hill stroll. The whole loop was about 9 miles, with almost all of the elevation on the first 1/3 up to the Oyster Dome. We hiked the whole thing between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm, although the trail could easily be done in 4 hours by the ambitious and impatient. But at a beautiful hike like this who wants to hurry?