Hiking in the Puget Sound

I was marshaling at the US Open/Chambers Bay all last week and I forgot the camera.  What I did this morning is probably not photo-worthy anyway.  Just noting this hike to support future trips down memory lane.

Derek will understand what I am saying.

1. Got to Exit 38 lot at 6:35 – Father’s Day, I figured it would be jammed.  But I was the first car.

2. Headed up at 6:40.

3. Owl Point at 7:30, that is, only 50 minutes (it is 2 miles from the parking lot).

4. Summit at 8:37 – 1h:57m!

Only 2 breaks from the car to the summit.  3 if you count a minute gathering and stacking rocks to create a little cairn marking the junction of the (what we call) the North Trail and the Main Trail.  I also figured out that there is a better mid-hike break spot than the usual, which is where two large boulders sit in the middle of the trail.  It is fairly level just past that spot and maybe 200 yards past the boulders is a nice view point.  So next time I do this trail, I will power past the normal break point and enjoy the view just a bit farther up the trail.

First one up so I did not see anyone on the way up, perhaps 15 or so people on the way down, including several rock climbers, one of whom was holding a toddler who was not happy and not shy about showing it.   Poor little guy!

Happy Father’s Day to anyone reading this.

Many times hiking around the Mt. Washington area we have seen a pond down in a valley, way off.  Last Saturday we got tantalizingly close but did not get down to it.

Today, our overall goal was to hike up – as in starting low and going high – the Change Creek trail we hiked down last Saturday.  The last (longish) leg of our hike last week was down to the John Wayne/Iron Horse trail via Change Creek.

And one of our side trips was down one of the two trails that lead down to the pond.  And there it is.

We hit Hall’s Point and J’s Landing, both view points, along the way and discovered what appears to be a trail at J’s Landing that goes a long way up one of the spines around there.  Next time we go back we are going to investigate that one.

As usual, there was no shortage of ‘wow!’ moments, like the nice view above or this one, with Derek enjoying a mini-break:

Shortly after we hit the trail we noticed someone who wants it even steeper; note the purple rope you could use to pull yourself up:

Many awesome views around this neighborhood:

We think we did about 11.5 miles altogether.  Derek naturally wanted to get back to little Cam – who can blame him?

Next week I am going to be a marshal at the US Open in Chambers Bay, just barely south of Tacoma.  My shifts are one Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.  I have the other days to hang out at the Open and spectate but I just might drive north for a little hike on Wednesday.  I don’t want to get out of shape for what promises to be a super-steep on on Monday, June 29 to Vesper Peak.

 

Derek and I were going to do Kamikaze Falls today and normally I would be disappointed with a cancellation.

But not this time – Camden arrived last night and what a thrill.  Fin stayed with us last night and is asleep even as I type.

So Grampy is going back to bed to dream of future hikes with Fin and Cam.

Update 6/11: Cannot help but add this pic

Our hike yesterday was just a bit more than 19 miles with something in the neighborhood of 6800 feet of elevation gain.  Our goal was to use the Garmin to map Mt. Washington and its neighborhood – well, as much as we could in one day – and in that we succeeded.

In outline we:

1. Summitted Mt. Washington via the same trail we took on Thursday, the one that starts at a pond and ends with a mad trail-scramble (as compared to the various rocky scrambles in the area).

2. Went down the main trail to the Great Wall trail and then up to the summit again, this time via that trail.

3. Went down the Great Wall trail to yet another trail, up to the summit of Change Peak.

4. And then back down the Great Wall to the junction with Change Creek trail, and from there back down to the John Wayne/Iron Horse trail, which is about a mile east of where we hit the trail to begin with at 5AM.

It was about 3:30 PM when we returned to the car, for a ten-and-half hour hike.

Fun!

We have talked about Mt. Washington so much, would you like to see what it looks like from the Great Wall trail, heading (right in the picture) towards Change Peak?

Right in the middle of the mountain is a light-colored area with few trees and if you look closely you can see a sliver of trail going up and to the right.  That is part of the main trail and it switchbacks up to the summit a few times from where you can see it in the photo.  The second time we were standing there we saw hikers going up.

A little farther down this trail is Change Peak, our goal after summitting Mt. Washington twice.  Since we were at about 3100 feet when we took this picture, the peak doesn’t look very tall, but the GPS told us it is about 4300 feet at the summit:

One of our landmarks on the Great Wall is a rocky prominence that, Derek discovered last Thursday, has a little cache object (a plastic box) on the top, semi-hidden.  I suspect we stumbled across a geocache (Google it if you are curious).

Here is a picture of Grampy Joel on the top, reaching for the cache to leave a souvenir for the next explorer:

To reach Mt. Washington summit from here, keep going straight, turn right at the logging road intersection, and when you reach a trailhead that looks too steep and too unmaintained, that’s it.  It’s a 30 degree grade for 900 feet to intersect with the main trail, just a few yards from the summit.

By the way, since Derek was the first of we two to climb this little pile of rocks, he is on the hook to name it.  As of 6/6/15 he is still considering it.

And here is the neighborhood of many of our other hikes, including the one we plan for Tuesday, June 9, looking north from around the corner:

Little Si is out of the picture to the left; Mt. Si/Haystack on the left; then two peaks that represent a ridge between Si and Teneriffe; then Teneriffe.

On Tuesday we are going to pretty much go straight up Teneriffe via the invisible trail just to the left of the first taller (actually, just closer to the camera) tree starting in the center of the picture.

The Change Creek trail was new to us and because it is twisty and turny we were a little tense that we were going to head back to John Wayne/Iron Horse but suddenly our goal was in sight and our fears of having to backtrack seven miles disappeared:

All in all we had a terrific hike.  Just over 19 miles on the GPS.  Ten hours and thirty minutes by the watch, and for our Boeing On The Move calculation that counts as 630 minutes @137 steps a minute.

Tuesday is the Kamikaze Trail to the summit of Mount Teneriffe on two days of leg rest so I am – except for a pending trip to the off-leash dog park with Jan and Lili later – a couch potato today.

 

As much as we love discovering new hikes, there is something utterly compelling about learning more and more about otherwise familiar territory.  Mount Washington is our exploration laboratory.

On this hike, we started on the main trail, passed the Sallus View and Great Wall detours and hiked up to a pond where, we had noted, the main trail switchbacks up but a side trail loops up the west side of the mountain.  Here is a view of that spot with the western trail behind the camera, the main trail coming up and switching direction:

This led us to some amazingly steep sections.  Hand-over-hand for at least 1/4 mile in one spot.

We had been coached on this by a man we have now run into twice.  We do not know his name but hikers in this area owe him a big debt, as he regularly (perhaps every day!) scours these trails for overgrown branches, which he trims, and new routes, which he marks:

Anyway, we absolutely loved this route to the summit and are going to do it again on Saturday, 6/6.  (we changed our plans because of the projected 85+ degree heat we will defer our 31 mile hike to a weekday, and one that is cooler).   On Saturday we will have no real time constraints and we will have the GPS device to map all the main trails.

Here is one of the scrambles, this one to the summit of what we are calling Change Peak, which is also known as East Mount Washington:

The scenery around there is outstanding:

We did about 12.5 miles in 5 hours and 40 minutes – not too bad considering how steep much of it was and the time we spent scrambling up rocky challenges.

Derek found something like a geocache on the top of one of our landmarks and we are both going up there Saturday to leave a present for the next explorer.

A future hike: 6/29 Derek and I are going to hike with George del Campo and Darrell Hull up to Vesper Peak.  Should be fun!

On the one hand, Derek, Jill and Finley definitely live in a city, the city of Snoqualmie.  It has its own Champions Tour event (the Boeing Classic), a nice downtown, an older section of town with a railroad and on and on.

It is civilization.

But the view from their balcony shows how close they are to the Issaquah Alps, although yesterday the best view was obscured by the morning marine layer.  You can see a corner of a mountain in this view:

Saturday the 30th we had time constraints so all we did was walk out his door about 7am and did an almost 3 hour hike.  There are so many trails in their neighborhood that it may be tough to choose a route, just like it can be hard to pick your food from a crowded menu.

The views are excellent no matter where you turn:

Pretty nice, eh?

We figure we did about 8.5 miles yesterday in about 2 hours and 45 minutes.  We figured this was a training exercise, so instead of pacing ourselves on the steep portions we just powered ahead the entire way.

It was fun.

And we planned our next two hikes.

Next Thursday, June 4, we are going to honor the fact that the new baby’s birth is imminent and that Derek sure needs to be accessible if Jill starts going into labor, so we are “just” going to do another version of the Mount Washington hike.  This time we will, at some point, do the Great Wall trail, but explore a new trail by hiking the Change Creek trail that intersects the Great Wall.

And next Saturday, June 6, we are planning a 31-mile Tiger Mountain/12 peak trek.  At no point will we be too terribly far from the car so it is doable within the exciting baby-watch embrace.

UPDATE 6/1: Derek informs me that yesterday he and Finley and some of her Girl Scout pals hiked 4 miles on Cougar Mountain, with 1,200 feet of elevation gain, and Fin hiked every step!  Kudos to Fin for a great performance.  She may earn a nice reward if she can join us to do Cedar Butte which is, come to think of it, probably easier than what she did on Cougar.

This time we made it to the summit of Mt. Teneriffe, but not via Kamikaze Trail.  We did, however, discover where that trail intersects the main trail, and we chatted briefly with another hiker who had just ascended via that route.  We also explored it from the top for a little way down and decided that, as we thought, it would be a nice way to ascend but we will descend via the main trail.

We got to the Mt. Teneriffe trail head just a bit after 6AM.  We were the first car there.  We went up the main trail, passed the sign for Teneriffe/Kamikaze falls and continued to the Mt. Si summit – just below the haystack.

Derek went a ways up the Haystack but wisely decided to defer the final ascent to another time:

As for me, I will let the young and the trained climb the haystack.  It is out of my league.

The trail itself for most of the way is in excellent and recently upgraded shape:

We hiked down from Mt. Si and then across an interesting spur and up to the summit of Teneriffe.  It is a great peak.  Like many of the mountains around here you have to scramble to make it to the very top but this one is doable even for old guys like me:

And the view from the top is awesome!

Derek at the summit

Our maps said we hiked about 15.8 miles, our GPS put it closer to 14.8 miles.  We had thought about extending it to 18 but time was not on our side.

We are planning a 31-miler on Tiger Mountain, tentatively set for Sunday, June 7.  We figure about 17 hours on that one, as it goes up and down 6 mountains twice each.  Fun!  We may do something shorter but steeper between now and then as an extra training workout for our legs.

Looking forward to the big one and to the imminent arrival of Derek and Jill’s new son,  Finley’s baby brother on or about June 16.

I was back at the upper Rattlesnake Lake parking lot today with a plan to investigate Cedar Butte and Sallal Point.  Plan accomplished but my explorations today revealed quite a few more trails to explore.

You gotta love this place!

Cedar Butte is a fairly benign (2 mile round trip, 800 ft elevation gain) prominence about a mile down the Iron Horse trail from this sign.  I wanted to explore this to see if it is as family-friendly as it seems from the written descriptions.  I think it is a hike we can do with Jan and Jill and Fin (and ultimately, the little guy who is due to arrive on or about June 16).

It definitely is family-friendly but I don’t think I actually found the summit.  I was wandering around looking for a rumored new trail from Cedar Butte to Mt. Washington and I went up and down and around a couple of times and found myself mysteriously back on the Iron Horse trail.  I looped around without realizing it and rather than start over, I decided to re-explore this nice little trail some other time.

So I took off towards Mt. Washington, which is about 1.7 miles past the western trail head for Twin Falls (see sign above).  Sallal Point intersects the Mt. Washington trail about 1.5 miles from the trail head:

Derek and I have seen this sign many times and always wondered what it is.

Well, what it is is a nice trail for sure.  Derek has the Garmin (he is figuring out how to use it) so I figured I would just stay on the main Sallal Point trail, which I did, but I noticed three tantalizing trails heading up (towards the right) from the main trail.  I am sure we can investigate these at our leisure.

They are steep, and I do mean straight up!

The trail I was on seemed to run out after a healthy little scramble:

 

So I unwrapped the trekking poles to help me down and back-tracked to Iron Horse again.  What a nice trail the Iron Horse is.  You see horses:

And bikers:

And, just go a little ways off-trail and you can see evidence that other creatures share this environment:

My Boeing On The Move pedometer registered 33, 325 steps from car back to car, and adding up the dots on the map I figure about 15 miles today.

Not too drastic, far from extreme elevation gain (but just try the first 1.5 miles of Mt. Washington, it is a good conditioning hike), but very worth it.

There are numerous trails and mysterious paths intersecting Iron Horse and I will check out as many as I possibly can.  One little path led to a little stream smack next to old railroad rails:

 

 

Next weekend I will be on a golf weekend in eastern Washington, returning Sunday,  but Derek and I are planning a hike on Memorial Day.

And Derek: by the way, I believe that Mailbox Peak road is open from 3:30 PM Friday to 7:00 AM Monday so maybe we can test our legs and cardio fitness on Mailbox really early some Saturday or Sunday.

After the hike we had the extreme pleasure of visiting Finley’s kindergarten class to attend her birthday presentation – her sixth birthday was yesterday, May 11, 2015.  Happy Birthday Fin!

But the hike itself can only get mixed reviews.

On the one hand, we got to see an impressive waterfall close up:

And from different angles:

The good news about the hike is that we did get to do some very challenging sections, as for instance climbing up the side of the falls:

Ultimately, though, we arrived at a bit of an impasse.  We could see something faintly resembling a trail on a spine that appeared to lead to the summit of Mount Teneriffe, perhaps 2,000 feet above us.  Very rocky and steep but it did look like something we could ascend.

However, descending, given the time constraint (we did NOT want to miss Fin’s presentation) seemed a bit iffy.  We decided to go back down and try to figure out a way down from the summit for a future hike.

More looking at the map and GPS (which is newly arrived and not easy to figure out) led us to believe that we definitely could have summited along that spiny unmaintained trail, and that there is an alternative way down.

Tomorrow, 5/13, Derek is going to investigate a trail we sampled on the way down to see if it does in fact lead to Teneriffe’s summit.  If it does, we are in business and will re-trace our path one of these days, but next time to the summit.

In the meantime, the hike had its very nice magical moments:

And this:

Much of this trail looks like that.  It’s a fun trail, and we will be back.

And if Derek makes it to the summit tomorrow, look for a photo from up there, a great 360 view for miles around.

Any day that is capped off with a visit to Fin’s class is a memorable day indeed.

Our plan today was to hike Mailbox Peak (there it is) but the road to the trail head was under construction and a very nice but very firm highway worker told us to scram.

So we came up with a quick plan B.  We went four miles farther east on I-90 and, once again, found ourselves in the parking lot from which most hikes up Mount Washington are launched.  And we decided to do the Great Wall trail again, but this time make the final turn correctly.

Which we did.

70 degrees, perfectly sunny, absolutely perfect weather.  And when you are hiking through a forest, the sunny weather creates some awesome interplays of sun and shade.

Check out the final sentence in the 2nd episode of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and multiply it by several miles and you will get the idea.

Speaking of forest, it has its own attractions:

View after view makes it difficult to choose a winner but this one is pretty nice: (good eye, Derek!)

The Great Wall is an exceedingly impressive wall of rocks and trees:

Every time you get a nice view of Mt. Rainier from the summit of this mountain the view is different.  Infinitely interesting:

Looking at the map and adding the distances as best as we can we figure our hike today was about 12 miles.   And we did it in about 4:45 – not exactly running, but given the elevation gain (about 3300 or 3400 feet) not bad.

Our next hike is scheduled for Tuesday, May 12 and we are aiming at Mount Teneriffe.  With just a little luck we will have the Garmin eTrex 20 I ordered last week and we will be able to map our route and gather all the statistics – groovy!

UPDATE 5/10/2015 (Happy Mother’s Day)

Removed video link 5/11, just too much hassle.