Month: October 2015

I met up with another hiker not far from the McClellan Butte summit and he said he would show me the safest path up the almost-vertical scramble.  So I followed him maybe 1/4 of the way and when I noticed that the natural “steps” were about 2 inches wide and that any slip would be fatal I decided to call it a hike.

I did turn around and, shakily (I was more or less petrified) took a photo looking down.  Enough said.  I made it back.

McClellan Butte is such a wonderful hike – really a great workout and plenty of nice views:

One noteworthy aspect of this trail is the switchback section.  I cannot count from the GPX file on the map because they are so thick in some places, but I think there are about 15 switchbacks in the space of about a mile.  It is steep!  Here is a view from just about the middle of the section:

Total hike today was 10.2 miles round trip, 3550 feet of elevation gain, 5 hours and 15 minutes total.  Perfect weather, no rain, no hot sun, just great.

I ran into 8 or 9 trail runners today.  These are people who RUN all the way up and all the way down.  Amazing.  I would like to think that I am pretty fit to be able to hike 10 miles up and down a mountain but I am a couch potato compared to the runners.

Respect!

Here is a link to a Garmin ‘adventure’ of the hike so you can see it on a map and look at the elevation profile (for anyone thinking about doing this hike):

http://adventures.garmin.com/en-US/by/djhiker/mcclellan-butte-10-24-15/#.ViwAapXlupo

Here is sort of what this hiking thing is about.  This is a photo I took on the way down, not far from the trail head.  The view is of a mountain a few miles north of McClellan Butte.

That’s about what you do when you hike around here.

 

It’s Sunday morning, why not hike?  But where?

I have been hanging around Rattlesnake Lake lately.  Did a mini-hike Wednesday (didn’t merit a post here) at Cedar Butte and so on and so I figured, why not just hike from Rattlesnake Lake up to the East Peak.

So I did.

You can see a map and some photos and elevation plot of this hike right here:

http://adventures.garmin.com/en-US/by/djhiker/rattlesnake-mountain-east-peak/#.ViQF0pXlupo

In the meantime, I see now what it means to be in a super-popular area.  Oh my!  I count seeing 8 or 10 people all day as busy.  Today, on the way down, after I passed Rattlesnake Ledge (which is where most people go, and they turn around and go back, which is a 3.8 mile round-trip) I must have passed 70 or 80 people coming up.

And this is a gloomy, cool Sunday in late Autumn.  Cloudy, not the greatest views.

But there was this:

And I passed a nice little memory.  The first hike I did with Derek was on 1/19/2015, well before we started this blog.  We parked about where I parked today and hiked up to this sign before we turned around:

 

Today, I went past this spot with a goal of hitting the East Peak, which is about .7 miles past this sign and, I might add for future reference, just past this sign is a nice little stretch of steep hiking.

Round trip today just over 9 miles, 4.5 hours, including a (in my opinion well-deserved) sandwich break at East Peak.

The Tiger Mountain Cable Line trail – there really is a cable line on this trail – is a notoriously steep trail from the parking lot at 400′ to the summit at 2500′ in about 1.7m.  This cable line has various warning signs that it is rough, unmaintained, etc.

Naturally, this draws hikers like ants on a pear.  It has five distinct steep and steeper sections and finally you get to the summit of Tiger 3.  (there are 6 peaks in and about Tiger Mountain)

We got there at headlight time, 6:30, and went right up the trail.

We went down Tiger 3 and then up Tiger 2:

Nice trail and nice view on the way down:

Just under 7 miles, 4.5 hours, lots of steep elevation gain, soaked to the skin – we had a great time.