Sunday, February 4, 2024

Remembering Hiking Mount Baker With Hank Frank's Papa Joey


On this first Sunday of the second month of 2024 the Microsoft OneDrive Memory email from this Day is a good one. Several photos of Hank Frank's proud papa, my Favorite Joey Nephew, leading me up the trail leading to the Mount Baker volcano.

The first photo is from part way up the trail, the trailhead of which is a location called Schrieber's Meadow. That being a location where one can pick wild mountain blueberries in the Fall.

In that first photo we are still below the timberline.

This hike with Joey took place at some point in time during the 1990s. I believe this to be the last time I hiked up Mount Baker.


And now we are above the timberline, where trees can not grow. Joey is looking down a steep moraine, scoured out by a glacier. The trail atop this moraine is called the Railroad Grade. Why it is so called, I do not know. 


Joey takes a sitting rest, now that we are about at the furthest one can easily and safely hike up the Mount Baker volcano. At this location you are close enough to smell the sulphur fumes spewing from the crater.

When I lived in the shadow of the Mount Baker volcano it was just something I took for granted. Til Texas I'd never lived where there weren't any mountains.

I could see Mount Baker and the Cascade foothills from my Mount Vernon living room window.

I wonder, sometimes, if I will ever again hike a Cascade mountain trail.

Maybe next Summer Joey and Hank Frank might take me hiking up Mount Baker...

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