A good friend of mine and I went backpacking in the North Cascades a couple of weeks ago (been busy, this post is a bit late), setting up camp on the slopes of Mt Baker – unfortunately the weather prevented us from seeing it clearly except from a distance on the hike up to camp.

The plan was to hike to Park Butte and enjoy the views but with overcast skies and limited visibility we ended up seeing fewer mountains …

… but a ridiculous number of marmots (and I still remember when not so long ago seeing a marmot was a very unique treat)!

Fortunately we did enjoy a mountain sunset but if you look closely you can see the coming rain.

After enjoying our time watching marmots playing, running, staring, nursing, fighting, whistling and otherwise being everywhere we decided to head to a lower elevation in the hopes of avoiding some of the fog and clouds.

Better idea than execution – when we arrived at Blue Lake the fog was noticeable …

… and within a couple of minutes even more so.

Of course any adventure to the great outdoors isn’t complete without some mushroom photos – among all the fog and green these yellow cup mushrooms really stood out.

Despite the less than ideal weather conditions, it was overall a great weekend with a great friend. The next time we go to Park Butte I hope not only is the weather better but that we’re fortunate enough to echo our now familiar refrain “oh look, a marmot!”