A Chilly Sunday Funday Hike at Chantry Flat

So a storm was supposed to hit this weekend, but I’ve been itching to go hiking so my friend and I thought what the heck, let’s just take our chances and go for it. Adventure is out there, right? So last Sunday [3.1.15], we decided to grab life by the horns and not let the anticipated rain ruin our plans!

We headed out to Chantry Flats and she brought along a four-legged friend, Cooper! Parking at the lot there is usually terrible, but considering the weather, we figured our odds would be high of getting a parking spot… and we were right. There were a couple of spots open and I already had the permit so it all worked out.

The Lorna Jane outdoors workout was the day before, and since the rain did not come down until late that day, we figured things were looking good. It was sunny this morning too, just chilly. It did get just a teeny bit cloudy as we drove to the mountain though, and the sun hid for most of the hike. We were covered head to toes with extra clothes and umbrellas in my backpack; the weather was 48° and it was freezing!!

We embarked on our hiking adventure at 3 pm and started down the Sturtevant Falls trail which I’ve done before. I wanted to try something different, even though the weather and daylight was not on our side, but my friend was down so we continued onto the Chantry Flat loop trail. This forks at the green bridge. It’s 5.5 miles to finish from that point, and 1.25 miles to get to Hoegee’s campground. We passed by a small cave and I noticed this mountain has a lot of beautiful small purple flowers which never caught my attention before… and you know how I like purple. 😛

There were lots of small streams to cross — I counted at least seven (one-way) we passed. This reminded me of the rivers from The Bridge to Nowhere hike except these were smaller with rocks closer to water level, so I thought it was a bit more challenging, especially since it was unexpected too. It did not help that our four-legged friend was a little wussy hehe. I usually crossed first, but had to go back halfway to get Cooper. There was only one stream on the way back he was able to run across himself. He took off before my friend was ready to cross so she let go of the leash and I caught him on the other side.

We only made it as far as the campground and turned back since we were running out of daylight and it looked like it was about to rain. Also, since I haven’t done this trail before and was not exactly sure where it would end, my friend did not want to take any chances. Better safe than sorry, right? It was about 4pm by the time and we made it back by 5pm. Good thing we turned back when we did cause the it started to rain lightly once we got to the bottom. If we kept going to finish the loop, it would have only been an extra mile and a half or so, compared to us retracing our hike back.

Driving down the mountain was beautiful. We caught the sun just before it started descending and it was a sight for sore eyes! We pulled over to take some pictures, and there was a car parked behind us… with no one in the front seats… but at least one person in the back seat… we could imagine what mischief they were up to.