Another sunny day in Lynn Headwaters. The sunshine in the forest was really very cheery, and despite cool temperatures, spring is definitely here. The waterfall made a nice destination, although in reality this was a day for getting up onto a summit.
This hike was the very first trip I organized through Wanderung in April 2005 and I could not resist re-organizing the same hike a decade later, almost to the day :-) As expected for a week day, this time I had a smaller group – just one fellow hiker with me today.
The trail was remarkably dry, which made travel easy and fast: our hike time was 4.5 hours including a couple of food stops. There were only a few muddy and slippery patches up in the forest between the Lynn Loop turnoff and the third debris chute. The water level was quite low in Norvan Creek which made it easy to get down by the water for some nice waterfall shots. Lynn Creek was also fairly low, and dramatically lower than a week or so ago when I hiked the B-P trail. However, this will probably change again over the weekend with the incoming weather system.
Skunk cabbage is blooming all over the place, salmonberry too. Yellow stream violets are abundant along the trail by Lynn Creek, spring beauty is out here and there, bleeding heart foliage is out but only a few flowers just now. Near the parking lot, several large clumps of white wood anemone are in full bloom. The coltsfoot seems to have died back a little already.
Varied thrushes sang their mournful notes, wrens were noisily defending their territory (one flew up onto the tip of a dead snag about 20 feet off the ground, looking like a dollop of feathers on top of a stick :-) I expected to hear rufous hummingbirds among the salmonberry, but only a single bird buzzed past my ears.
Interesting to note that the stats recorded by my GPS and my phone gave a distance of 16 km (from the overflow parking nearest the trailhead), and a total elevation gain near 350 m.
Distance: 16 km
Elevation gain: 350 m
Photos on Flickr
Being. Outdoors. 