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Rattlesnake Ledges

I covered some of the same ground today that I did last Saturday – basically, I did the relatively short hike I was planning before I decided to turn right rather than left when the Southside trail intersected the Olallie Trail.

But today I turned left, went back down Olallie to PTC and back to the car.

I had calculated this hike to be about 6 miles and sure enough, it came out to 5.95 miles.

A very pleasant Thursday afternoon outing, but nothing too demanding.

Track below.

Track

Trail View

What a wonderful hike today, I had such a great time.

I went 16.15 miles with about 3K elevation gain, 8 hours. Awesome fun.

My plan this morning was to drive to the ‘upper’ Rattlesnake Lake parking lot (the trail to the Ledge is closed and most of the parking near the Ledge Trail is also closed), the one that is east of the lake, the one you park at to go east on the Palouse-to-Cascades (PTC) trail.

I took PTC to Cedar Butte trail, went up to the saddle:

And then I had hoped to finally be able to hike the entire (.8 mile) length of the Southside Trail. I knew from maps and trip reports that the Southside Trail intersects the Olallie Bike Trail. I figured I would get to Olallie and then just loop back to the car, for a 6 mile hike. And sure enough, I was able to see the path very clearly today.

But when I got to Olallie I thought: what the heck? What else do I have to do today but hike?

So I turned right and took Olallie all the way to where it intersects the Mt. Washington trail, at where there used to be a little pond. From there it is 2.75 miles down Mt. Wa trail back to PTC. But I figured, well, I have gotten this far, let’s have a little more fun.

So I took Olallie to where it intersects the Great Wall Connector Trail and took that trail back to the Mt. Wa trail. I estimate this added about 1.5 miles to the hike. Whatever. I love the connector trail, there is never anyone on it and it has some very nice views:

So, all in all, a terrific Saturday. Track below.

This is another one where it is probably more of a walk than of a hike but I did go 9.3 miles today and there was a very sharp hill exactly in the middle. Here is the elevation profile:

The numbers above represent meters for elevation and kilometers for distance.

Anyway, I get sick of driving around during the week as traffic is (depressingly) getting back to normal, which means obnoxious. So I drove to the Bothell Landing park and walked east from there. My goal was to make it to the Tolt Pipeline Trail and go up Heart Attack Hill, get to the top and turn around and go back.

And that is just what I did.

Great weather, lots of people around but we all had masks and used them when getting close to someone else, but most of the way it is quite wide open and easy to stay away from other people. Plenty of runners and cyclists, as well as people like me who just like to go on long walks.

Not sure if this is a hike or a walk. On the one hand, it is 7 miles and quite hilly. On the other hand it is basically a road walk (not that vehicles besides service vehicles are allowed on this road) and I do not bring my back pack. I just bring my little Rick Steves day pack to carry phone, water, iPod.

Perhaps I will get it together tomorrow to do a proper hike. Summer is fading.

This week our extended family spent time in eastern Washington and, on Tuesday, Derek and I took the opportunity of being near bigger mountains to do a hike on the Mission Ridge trail.

It was a very nice 13 miler with about 3,500 feet of elevation gain. During the hike, which featured big ‘up’ sections and big ‘down’ section, we speculated about what the elevation profile would look like. Here it is:

This was a really beautiful hike. This part of the world features much bigger mountains than we have near Seattle. We started at an elevation of 4,600 feet, a higher elevation than the summit of many of the mountains around here.

The trails we hit can be seen in the track below. Part of the time we were on a very nice service road and when we were, the views were stunning and continuous:

An excellent day, we had a great time, a good workout and it certainly was the high point of our trip for me.

After my nice little hike on Thursday on Squak Mountain Derek and I did another epic hike/scramble – not sure how to categorize this one.

We parked in the lot down the road from the Exit 38 Mount Washington lot and left to go up the trail about 6am. We were worried about a possible very hot and sunny day, but in fact it was reasonable all day long.

We headed to the Change Creek Trail and visited Hall Point:

From just down from Hall Point we took the shortcut up to J’s Landing, straight up the ridge, and from there headed up and up and up until we finally hit the summit of Songbird Peak.

That is a straightforward description but it leaves out the fact that not long after you go up from the spot where the trail above J’s Landing ends, you arrive at your first of many rocky scrambles. Each one is more or less exposed, which means you are crawling around in the rocks with a cliff near at hand. One such encounter left both of us with very tight hindquarters.

For the worst ones, we found ways to scramble down the side of the mountain to skirt the too-exposed ridge line, and then back up.

Finally we got to a point where it was just straight up through a meadow that, long ago, had been logged – judging from the numerous old tree stumps, that is.

When we got to this last section I took out my Garmin and measured the distance we had traveled and the elevation we were at so we could calculate how steep this last meadow was. It was a grade of about 60 degrees. But we did make it.

On the way down Derek took the Garmin and headed up the higher summit, known as Mid Mother Mountain. He said there was an animal trail, as well as steaming fresh bear scat, and that it was not too difficult to travel across the MMM ridge. He did hit the high point and bush-whacked down.

The hike was 9.74 miles and surely well over 3K elevation. This was a very steep, very difficult hike but worth it.

We went down Songbird the “easy” way, took the service road that is the northern boundary for part of the Watershed, then the Great Wall to the Olallie Bike Trail, that to the famous Pond Shortcut, then a shortcut within the shortcut, eventually back on the Change Creek Trail which we took to the Hall Creek Connector Trail, and back to the cars.

Whew!

We saw the rock climbers as we hit the former John Wayne Trail (now the Palouse-to-Cascades Trail):

All in all a great day.

Track below:

After 3 straight challenging hikes I did a nice little conditioning hike today on Squak Mountain. Margaret’s Way to Debbie’s View and back down. 6.2 miles, about 2,300 feet of elevation gain.

I started at 6:30 and finished at 10 – good workout, nothing extreme.

Nothing special but a fun way to spend the morning. Track is below.

Track

Short post today, hard to type because I took a spill on the way down and hurt my wrist. Probably a sprain, hope it feels a little better tomorrow.

This is by far the toughest solo hike I have ever done. Hard to find the trailhead (I put pink flagging tape there on the way out, not sure why no one has done that before); hard to get to the trailhead because you have to drive several miles on awful service roads (rocks and potholes); 2,500 feet elevation gain in two miles, which is tough but not a real problem; but rocks! boulders!

Here is a picture of the trail and a picture of one of the boulder fields:

When you get near the summit the trail disappears and you have to just pick your way through a boulder field. Trail picks up again but then there is another boulder field; and then another; and the summit is one huge boulder field.

I did make it to the highest rock up there but I did it really carefully. All of that was tough. But what was really tough was coming down. I had to slide on my butt numerous times, holding on to tree limbs to keep from picking up too much momentum. It was near the bottom, in a dusty patch, that my feet just gave out and I came crashing down with most of my weight on my right hand. Ouch!

On the bright side, the views at the top were magnificent:

As for the track, see below. There is a short (.6 mile) and easy connector trail to the actual trail and after that it is pretty much just straight up to the top. A tough hike/scramble but in the end I am glad I did it and extra glad I started early (hit the trail at 6:30) because today turned into a hot one.

Track

South View of Mount Rainier

Derek and I did an 11.3 mile hike with about 4,500 feet of elevation gain. Here is what we did:

We met at 6am at the Little Si parking lot. Derek parked his car and I drove us to the old Mount Teneriffe trail head. The new one does not open until 7 and we were earlier than that.We went up Teneriffe Trail to the waterfall and, from there, took the spur trail east to the Kamikaze trail. This section of trail, about .4 miles, is very steep and features numerous miserable step-ups.

I am 68 years old and only five foot nine so most of the time I had to take a step, find something to pull myself up with, and pull hard enough to get me to the next step.

At 2,800 feet there is a rocky scramble that, in our view, marks the beginning of the Kamikaze Trail, so called because it climbs up the ridge adjacent to the falls, known as Teneriffe Falls and unofficially as Kamikaze Falls. To be sure, it is easy to slip and die if you try to get too close.

The Kamikaze Trail (see track below) just goes straight up the ridge, climbing from 2,800 feet to 4,760 feet in .9 mile. That’s an average grade of about 42%. Here is what a typical section looks like:

We took Kamikaze (slowly, I am painfully slow when it gets steep) to the junction with the main Teneriffe Trail, which is only a couple of hundred vertical feet below the summit.We scrambled up to the summit, which is an amazing 360 degree view. Here is Derek sitting on the summit:

We went down the main Teneriffe Trail. This trail immediately loses about 300 vertical feet but, not to worry, you gain it back and then some when you climb up to the tree-surrounded summit of West Teneriffe.

From West Teneriffe it was mostly down, (with one section where you gain back 200 feet) to 3,500 feet, to the junction with the highest Teneriffe/Si connector trail. We followed that spur (about .8 mile) to the summit of Mount Si at 4,000 feet, thus exhaustingly gaining another 500 feet.

Here is the Haystack on top of Mount Si:

We scrambled over the rocks at the Si summit and took the New Si trail just a short way until it met the Old Si trail and we took the old Si trail to the Boulder Garden Loop, and that to the Little Si trail, and that down to the parking lot where Derek’s car was parked.

I can tell you that car looked like heaven when we saw it, after 11.3 grueling miles. Derek drove me over to my car, and en route, we had the windows open and that felt heavenly. It was a mighty warm day – fortunately most of our hike was in the forest, and the toughest, steepest part happened before noon.

Still, this was a real physical challenge and I predict a bit of soreness tomorrow.

The view from Teneriffe summit is spectacular:

And here is our track, from CalTopo:

All in all an outstandingly fun adventure today.

Yesterday Derek and I made our fourth attempt to attain the summit of Chester Peak – and this time we did it!

The track is below but briefly, what we did is drive up NF9021 to just before the junction with NF110. From there we hiked up NF110 and looped around the southern end of the Mine Creek Gorge to approximately where the old service road loops back east (the service roads around there are very different on the ground than they are on the maps) and, using a large talus field as a visual mark, hiked up the talus field to the top, and from there, total bushwhacking up to the summit.

That’s the summary but the reality is that most of the way from the top of NF110 (it levels out at a wide point we call ‘the shooting gallery’ because there is so much target practice detritus) to the summit was as difficult to move through as anything we have ever encountered.

Here is Derek bushwhacking just past the shooting gallery, Chester is the misty peak in the distance ahead:

Below are a couple of pictures of the talus field including one with me (a little dot on the lower left) slowly climbing up.

But the worst was unrecorded by Derek’s phone (Jan was using our camera today to record our daughter Brittany’s wedding shower) because the conditions were extreme enough that there was no slack to pull out the phone and snap any pictures.

It is hard to describe the conditions on the ground there but I will try. We were going sharply uphill, I would estimate about a 40 degree grade, through extremely dense brush, and trees with branches reaching to within a couple feet of the ground. It was raining so it was very slippery. Over and over we would find a way to take a step up, only to slip two or three steps down.

For about 1/3 of a mile, I had to literally stop after every step up to survey the next step. In what direction did it look like progress could be made?

Eventually we hit a small clearing, the sun came out for a few minutes and we were able to take our bearings. I have a Gaia app on my phone and I had downloaded a map of the area previously so I did not need cell phone coverage in order to get a detailed map. We were just short of the summit so we pushed onward and upward and got to what appeared to be the highest spot around. A quick check on Gaia confirmed – we were at the highest point of Chester Peak! (see track)

We went back a different route. We bushwhacked down the southern slope to a decent service road (the same road you take to Mount Kent) and, again confirming via Gaia, went up another talus field to the McClellan Butte trail. From there we went down to the service road that intersects the McClellan Butte Trail and back to the car.

A side note: the 2nd avy chute on McClellan Butte is really dangerous and obnoxious right now. We had to slide down the side of a ravine and scramble up the other side. I don’t think this avy chute will be in decent shape for another couple of weeks. Which only proves, again, that McClellan Butte is only good for hiking during August, September, and October. Short season there.

Anyway, we did it, and are elated about that but I think once is enough for this one. For sure, the best (least worst) route to Chester would be via McClellan Butte trail, down to service road, etc.

9.81 difficult miles, about 3,700 feet of elevation gain. Great workout.