Hiking in the Puget Sound

Many thanks to Steve who was able to re-route me and get me to the Mt. Washington summit.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

My plan today was to hike Mt. Washington again but this time via a route that Derek and I had noticed, the Great Wall trail:

The trail is awesome with views, on average, much better that the main trail.  For example:

A couple of sections of the trail are closely bordered by what I would categorize as, well, as great walls:

I was following footprints.  There was so much snow, and I did not know the way, so the “trail” for me was footprints from someone a few days previously who had blazed the way:

Ultimately the footprints just stopped and doubled-back.  Uh oh!  But I pushed on (and on and on) and finally got to a rocky outcrop just below a summit.  It was a summit but not the one I was looking for.  That’s when I turned around and decided to back-track to the main trail and go up to the summit from there.

But, luckily for me, I ran into Steve, who showed me the correct route.  This is a marvelous trail, and it gets ultra-steep right at the end.  But well worth it for the views on the top:

And:

And:

I was hoping to do this route and get back to the car in 5 hours, because I am only going to have 5 hours to hike on Wednesday.  I think this route is a bit long for 5 hours but – this hike is great via both trails, we could do the main trail up and down (perhaps that jog to the right at the pond for a switch) in 5 hours no sweat.

Looking forward to Wednesday and thanks again to Steve!  Without Steve I would have failed in my mission of getting to the summit via Great Wall

How fitting we would encounter a mountain goat on Shakespeare’s birthday, as one of his great insults (from Henry V) is: “Thou damned and luxurious mountain goat….”

We saw the goat on the way down.  He kept moving around to get a better view of us so we decided to leave him to his own devices.

It was a great day to hike, perfect weather and views to begin with:

McClellan Butte has some very steep sections and we were not hiking fast:

We saw a really cool little lake that is shaped like a salmon:

The trail has many very nice sections:

We did not do the famous “scramble” at the top.  The scramble is a final rock pile of 200 or 300 feet that looks like it would be very doable except for one thing, namely, if you slip you die.  We skipped it:

 

But we got close and the view from here is amazing:

All in all, this is a very steep and very tough hike and we loved every minute.  We will definitely do it again when the snow is gone to see if we can improve upon our round-trip time of 6 hours.

We have hikes scheduled for this Sunday, the 26th and Wednesday the 29th.  Should be fun!

Yesterday Derek and I did a nice ~16 mile hike up and down and around Tiger Mountain.  We would need one those GPS devices that integrates with mapping software to show the route we took but this Washington Trail Association description is pretty close:

http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/tiger-mountain-trail

I arrived at Derek’s house at 6 and we were on the trail at 6:25.  It was just a bit dark (we have headlamps but didn’t bring them along) when we started and somehow, we learned on the way back, we completely missed a beautiful little pond not far from the trail head.

The weather was wonderful.  It was not warm and sunny during the entire 8-hour hike.  But the variety was fun – grey and cloudy, some rain, some sleet, some hail, a reasonably fierce snow squall, followed by warm and sunny at the end.

The elevation gain on this hike was not in the league of Mt. Washington or Mt. Si (or McClellan Butte, which we are going to tackle as soon as the weather permits) but there were seven or eight sections with enough elevation gain to get our attention.

We have been experimenting with pace.  When you hike mountains you have to pace yourself appropriately.  We met one guy yesterday whose pace was a run.  He ran from the bottom to the top and back down again.

That is not our pace.

We have to go at my pace (Derek can go faster than me, and with Finley on his back!) because I am a decrepit old man.  During the week I practice my pace on a hilly training walk in my neighborhood.

I power-walk downhill and level, but slow down considerably on the hills.

Yesterday, that pacing strategy worked great.  We did a very long and steep section at one point without a single break to calm down the calves or catch our breath.  Slow and steady when it is steep, faster on the kinder sections works fine.

We are doing another hike on Thursday, the Ninth, and since Finley is on spring break next week, if she wants, we could be a threesome.  One option is to drive to the base of Cougar Mountain (not a very tall “mountain”, at least in this part of the world) and hike to the little Cougar Mountain Zoo, hang out there for awhile, and hike back.

But we will see if she wants to go.  If not – well, if the recent snowfall up in the Issaquah Alps has melted we might try the mighty McClellan Butte.

No camera yesterday, still trying to figure out how to show the awesomeiositude of the beautiful environment we are so lucky to be able to enjoy.

Yesterday, March 26, 2015, Derek and I hiked to the top – well, almost the tippety-top – of Mount Si.

The Mount Si hike is one of the most popular hikes in this area.  Indeed, yesterday, a Thursday, we met far more people on the various trails than we had in all our previous hikes combined.  But it was a beautiful day.   Instead of the cool weather and rain we had dealt with on some of our previous hikes, it was sunny and warm, and the moisture was from our sweat.

But let’s start at the beginning.

Derek takes Fin to school so we meet at a local (downtown Snoqualmie) coffee shop about 8:30.  I was sitting around drinking a latte and got up to toss out some trash and my hiking boots got stuck together – the laces snagged on something – and I went down, hard, against the floor and the table next to me.

Ouch!  I banged up my right hand, shoulder, and hip and was sore during the hike.  I am a little sore this morning, Friday the 27^th, as I type.

Anyway, we got to the Little Mt. Si parking lot about 9:10 and took off up the trail.  Little Mt. Si is way, way popular and there were a bunch of hikers straight off.  Shortly after we started we hit a loop, and we left the main trail to go onto the loop.

The loop intersected what is called “the old Mt. Si” trail.  It apparently used to be the main trail up to the top of Mt. Si, but a new parking lot a little way from the Little Mt. Si lot, and a new, more gentle trail from there has left the old trail in the dust.

Literally, because it is not maintained, it is a little rough in a couple of places, and it is mostly rather steep.  In other words, it is a great trail to hike.

Derek took a bunch of picture on the way up and we will sort through them and put a few in this blog.  From the verbal description viewpoint, I can say that the day was sunny and warm, the forest we hiked through is magnificently beautiful, and it was 100% fun the entire way.

Speaking of Derek’s pictures, here are a few:

 

 

Eventually we hit the main trail and took it up to the almost-top.  The real top is a rocky prominence known as the Haystack.  I sat on a rock overlooking the Snoqualmie valley – you could see downtown Bellevue and, way off in the distance, downtown Seattle (and Mt. Rainier from another angle) while Derek investigated the Haystack.

He got back and reported that it was a decent little hike to where you actually start to ascend the Haystack, so I hiked over there with Derek and he was going to see if he felt like going up.  I would wait for him there.

We got to the jump-off point and noticed a group of three people coming down.  They appeared to be stymied and one of the guys was yelling.  From where we watched it looked totally precarious, and with the one guy’s desperate shouting we had the sick feeling that we were about to witness a tragedy.

Fortunately, after we pushed on a ways, we encountered the group, safe and sound, and pumped up about their adventure.

When we hit the jumping off place Derek decided not to go up, because the time was late (we did have to pick up Finley from the YMCA, where she goes after school if she is not picked up at 2:50) and there were three groups, one descending, two ascending, ahead of us.

Ascending the Haystack looks tough.  The path is narrow and – let’s be clear about this – quite steep.  At this point it isn’t mountain hiking, it is mountain climbing.   Some additional gear might be in order to make it to the top of the Haystack.

In either case, the bottom of the Haystack was our summit and we went back down from there.

It is fun and not all that taxing to go down (I was using the trekking poles a lot, they take some strain off the knees going downhill, and are really good for balance – no good reason I could see of take a tumble off the side of the mountain) but it is always a little  sad towards the end because the trail head is the adventure’s tail.

But we will schedule another hike and I will have something to look forward to.

I will close this trip report with a little observation about mountain hiking in general.

I have been in the Pacific Northwest (hiker’s heaven) for 25 years now.  Only in the past few months have I done much hiking – I did a onesey years ago with Dennis Matthews by the Ho River – because I wasn’t in very good physical shape and I was afraid of bears.

I am still paranoid of bears but have convinced myself to be a tad on the rational side.  The probability of being mauled by a bear is far less than the probability of getting mauled by a vehicle on the freeway, so why not suck it up and lace on the boots (if they don’t trip me up in the coffee shop).

Having grown up in flatland (Illinois) I had no concept of what it is like to be hiking around mountains.  It was not conceivable to me.  No one I ever knew did anything like that.

But I am hooked now.  I can tell you that being up in those mountains is so wonderful I do wish I could retire and do it every day.  One of my Boeing friends is not just a hiker, he is a mountain climber and is in training to ascend Mt. McKinley this June.

Anyway, he has two friends who are retired and hike every day.  I am thinking that a daily morning hike and afternoon round of golf would be just about perfect.

I can dream.

 

It is Sunday, March 15, 2015 and this is the first blog post for Derek Swanson and Joel Grant’s blog.

Our goal is to record our hikes and walks in the Puget Sound area.

Derek lives in Snoqualmie, WA, with his wife, my daughter, Jill, and their daughter, my granddaughter Finley.  Snoqualmie is smack in the middle of a large number of mountains such as Mt. Si, Mt. Washington, Tiger Mountain, and many others.

We hike through those mountains – sometimes Derek and Finley go by themselves, Finley her dad’s back – and, sometimes, like today, just around the neighborhood.

Anyway, we are looking forward to documenting our adventures and having lots of fun (and great exercise) for as long as we can.