Mike and I were in the park for a day hike on the Mizzy Lake Trail, and I lobbied to hike the Lookout Trail as a warmup for two reasons. First, the Mizzy Lake trail is a decent length, but it’s kind of flat. The Lookout Trail looked like it would give us a bit of wow factor without taking too long. The second reason is there’s no geocache on the Mizzy Lake trail.
When we got our permit they informed us that the parking for Lookout wasn’t plowed, so we’d have to park at the Big Pines parking lot. This meant we had to climb a bit of the hill, but it was still a far cry from having to climb all the way up from the bottom. There was an outfitter setting up four teams of sled dogs in the parking lot, and as we pulled in they all started to howl. Pretty cool.
It was a short but uninspiring walk along the highway and up the hill to the Lookout trailhead, and then we had a much nicer walk on the trails in the bush. It isn’t really a difficult trail, but I was soon breathing hard and had to pull off a layer before we got to the top. The view was as spectacular as expected, and because it was such a clear day we could see for a long way. We sat on the bench taking it in for a while before proceeding along the edge to the geocache.
I found the cache rather quickly which was a bit of a relief because there was still enough snow that finding the cache was a bit dicey. I think the only time I put my gloves on the whole day was while I was brushing snow off of cache hiding spots.
I must admit that while they both have their charms I preferred this trail to the Mizzy Lake trail. Not just because of the rewards of the view and the geocache, it’s just a nicer hike. Despite being shorter it’s a rugged trail, whereas most of the Mizzy Lake trail is just an abandoned railway.