Winter in July??

We went up to Blue Lake on Friday (near Mt. Baker) to do a simple 1 mile hike each direction. We were all ready for a nice warm day to spend together and have a picnic by the lake. When we arrived, this is what we found!





Yup, you see right, that's snow. And lots of it! At the parking lot there was snow only in shadowy places and in the saddles between hills where it had gotten extra deep. But as we hiked on, the snow got to be more and more prevalent. We had all come in shorts, capris, and the like, so we were totally not prepared for snow. We actually couldn't find the trail! So we asked another hiker who was familiar with the terrain which direction to go. Eventually we got to the lake, which was beautiful, but still frozen over.

There were glaciers with water running beneath them leaving really cool looking snow/ ice formations. In places where it was open to the ground there were little flowers and plants growing already. I think Blue Lake is only now getting to its spring!




But putting our cold, wet feet aside, we had fun and it was a neat thing to go play in snow in July :) We took some really nice pictures of Mt. Baker and some waterfalls on the way back home.




And a gorgeous sky over Puget Sound to top it all off!