Baker River — Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2025

We hiked the Baker River trail midweek, on a sunny, warm spring day.  The road in was excellent until the end of pavement.   It is worth stopping now and again to appreciate the lovely views of Mount Shuksan, Mount Baker and Baker Lake.   The final, unpaved section of the road has many potholes that were hard to see in the dappled sunlight.  After a few hard jolts, we slowed to down to about 15 mph and were able to steer around the worst of them.  Nevertheless, it was a bumpy last few miles. 

When we arrived at the trailhead just before noon there were five vehicles in the lot.  When we returned shortly before 4, there were five vehicles again, although two were different than in the morning.  One family was picnicking, one group was fishing, and another group were backpackers returning from hiking the Baker Lake trail. 

As might be expected given how few cars were in the lot, we had the Baker River trail to ourselves.  We saw nobody else on the trail until just before getting back to the parking lot, when we met a young family heading out for an overnight camping trip, and a lone hiker out for a short stroll. 

The trail was in excellent shape all the way to Sulphide Creek.  We had expected mud but only encountered a couple of small patches.  With the exception of Lake Creek (more on that below), all the creeks were easily crossed via stepping stones or simply by jumping across.  The views of the Baker River Valley are lovely and we spent a lot of time stopping to enjoy the views and to just appreciate the gorgeous day (see photo).  The forest is beautiful all along the trail (see photo), with lots of variety to keep things interesting.  The salmon berries and huckleberries have leafed out and the former are blooming.  We saw our first trilliums of the year, as well as yellow violets, spring beauties, several fairy bells and even some early bleeding hearts.  Bright green mosses carpeting the ground and on the trees gave a luminous green radiance to everything (see photo) that emphasized the joy of a sunny day in early spring.

At Sulphide Camp, the creek is running along the north side of the streambed, so there was a wide area of rocky streambed for exploring.  We walked upstream for about a third of a mile, enjoying ever closer views of the imposing bulk of Mount Shuksan (photo) and the Sulphide Glacier. 

The only difficulty along the trail is getting across Lake Creek.  The creek itself is not particularly wide or deep, but it is flowing fast with quite a steep grade.  The main problem is that the creek is in a gully which is clogged with fallen logs and branches.  When approaching the creek from the south, you come to a large log that clearly once served as a bridge across the creek.  It has been carved flat and has the remains of a cable for holding on.  We walked across on it, thinking it was the bridge, only to discover that the creek has eroded away the bank on the north side and gone completely around the butt end of the log, leaving us high and dry above the tumbling creek.  We then backtracked and made our way along a pair of big cedar logs that zig-zag across the gully, ending in a steep but doable climb down to the north bank of the creek (see photo).  On the way back, we decided to try to ford the creek instead of balancing on logs.  We rock-hopped across the creek without difficulty just below the zig-zag logs. The challenge then was finding our way out of the ravine on the south side of the creek.  That required a lot of scrambling over huge logs as well as through tangles of branches.   This might have been less of a problem farther up the creek.  Our advice would be to scout carefully before deciding how and where to cross.

Other than the challenge of getting across Lake Creek, the trail is easy and makes a lovely, relaxing short hike.  In a few days the carpets of bleeding hearts along the trail will be in full bloom, making it even lovelier than it was today.