Sumas Mountain

Guest blogger: Ed

Julie promised that I would blog my hike two weeks ago, so I’d better make good on it. She wanted to make my 35th birthday as special as possible, so she asked for things that I’d like to do, and one that kept coming up was that I wanted to hike up Sumas Mountain.

Why Sumas Mountain? Well, because it's there, right there out my front porch:

My good friend Todd has been up once before, and brought back a picture of my neighborhood from the mountain, so it seemed like a great way to spend a day. We used an iPhone app to track our progress up the mountain. Here's our route, overlaid using Google Earth. (That's Mt. Baker in the background.)

It took three hours to get up there; the hike was pretty steep, at least for me. I'm sure Todd would have made better time if he hadn’t been dragging me along, but I just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

I suppose, with some math, I should be able to figure out the average incline. Let's see... We climbed 3,308 feet. We traveled four miles, which is 21,120 feet. Trigonometry was never my strong point, but I think I can use an inverse tangent on the ratio, which gives me almost 9%. That's steep, right?

Anyway, on the way up, we stopped to look at an old vault of some kind, an old coal mine, and an old log shack with a nice view.

At the top, we first got to look north into Canada. It was a very pretty day. Apparently there's a different Sumas Mountain on the Canadian side as well. I suppose we must be looking at it, but I don't know which one it is.

Finally, after a short trip along the ridge of the mountain, we got the payoff – a bird's eye view into my hometown, not to mention a beautiful view of the Puget Sound off in the distance. I loved the clouds, though they did put a shadow over my house, which made it impossible (for me) to actually pick it out. Next time I'll have to bring binoculars, or at least Julie’s zoom lens. But it was an awesome view and well worth the trip.

The trip down was uneventful and an hour shorter. Probably a bit more dangerous, but we managed it without any injuries, and had a nice conversation to boot. Thanks again to Todd for leading the way, and to Julie for giving me the day to do it. I’ll have to do it again one of these days. Maybe we’ll see if any of my girls can make it up!