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On rare occasions I feel as if the current situation is perfect. I could not improve it if I tried. Today, for about an hour, I felt that way.

My plan this past Friday, when I did a short hike prior to babysitting, was to hike to Dirty Harry’s Museum on Sunday. But we wound up hosting our grandson Camden overnight on Saturday into Sunday afternoon – a nice alternative.

So today I decided to try to find Dirty Harry’s Museum. The weather was excellent, approaching 70, blue skies, not too hot, not too cold. I encountered no snow on this trail.

The Dirty Harry’s Peak Trail has a lot to offer. In addition to four basic destinations – you can stop short at the balcony, go a little farther to the museum (which is just Dirty Harry’s old truck, Dirty Harry having been a logger long ago), farther yet to his “bathtub” (a tarn north and east of the Museum) or all the way to the peak. The trail also hooks into numerous side trails used by rock climbers. On weekends the place is packed – a couple of weeks ago, Derek and I showed up on a Sunday at 8:30 am and the lot was full.

Anyway, I did find the path to the museum, thanks to a recent trip report. Some kind soul has put small cairns (piles of rocks) to mark the way through the trees. It is only about .3 mile from the main trail and voila! There is the truck.

I hit the main trail about 7:30 and was alone for the entire way up, except for a couple of young people who, faster hikers than me, passed me on their way up to, I assume, the peak.

This is a great trail and it offers amazing views along the way:

The view from the Balcony is awesome. Prominent is McClellan Butte and, immediately east, Mount Kent:

6.71 miles, 2,769 feet of elevation gain.

What made that perfect hour was this: when I got back to the car and fired it up, the radio came on automatically. In fact, I don’t know how to set it to not come on automatically.

It was tuned to the local classical music station and what should I hear but the very first notes of Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, the Pastoral. My all-time favorite piece of music!

So I cranked it up and, driving home via the back route, through Carnation and Duvall, I was as happy as I can be. A wonderful solo hike, nothing but sun and fun, topped off with such a serendipitous musical moment.

UPDATE: Forgot to add a picture of the route, via my Garmin:

Listing the route I took yesterday on Tiger Mountain makes it sound like a grueling hike – Nook Trail to Section Line to Bonneville Powerline to Wetlands to Puget Power to Around the Lake – but it was only about 5 miles with most of the elevation gain on the Nook.

I hit the trail from the High Point parking lot at 5:50 am. My plan that day was to do my bi-weekly gig as a babysitter in Snoqualmie but Jill’s work schedule has been changed and she wanted me there at 9 rather than the usual 8. Leaving home an hour later would get me bogged down in commuter traffic so I decided to do a hike a few miles from their home in the early AM.

I am glad I did. It really started the day right, and I spent the day with Camden (his sister was in school) who is almost 4 and a total delight. We are great pals.

I hope tomorrow to find Dirty Harry’s Bathtub, a small lake between Dirty Harry’s Peak and Web Mountain. If I can find the lake, Derek and I can go back there some day and find a way to summit Web Mountain.

The kids stayed with us on Saturday night and Jan took them into Seattle on the bus for a fun day at the Art Museum, Aquarium and the big ferris wheel downtown. That left the door open for me and Derek to plan a hike.

We were going to do Dirty Harry’s Peak, a hike neither of us had ever done (although I have been to Dirty Harry’s Balcony) but when we got to the parking lot it was full.

So we drove back down the road 1/2 mile to the parking lot we use when we hike Change Creek. We were the only car in the lot.

We were not sure how far we could get, given the possibility of difficult snow conditions, but basically we just kept pushing on and dealing with whatever the trail threw at us.

There was definitely a lot of deep snow but it was consolidated and we rarely post-holed. We spent most of the time in the snow walking on top.

And what a nice hike. We wound up, per the Garmin (which seems a little heavy on the elevation gain) doing 10.9 miles and about 4,500 feet of elevation gain. It surely felt like it.

This part of the world is outstanding:

This was a terrific workout. In fact, we were pretty exhausted at the end but that’s the way it goes when you do this kind of thing.

Here is a look at our track via GPSVisualizer.com:

Definitely a fun hike!

I have a class on Monday, doctor on Wednesday, wet forecast for Tuesday so I figured I would follow up yesterday’s hike with my standard conditioning hike this morning – Tiger Mountain/Section Line.

Great weather and a really nice way to start a Sunday (whether Easter or not). I went down the Nook Trail, which is a fairly typical Tiger trail:

It is still spring, summer has not dried up Round Lake:

Just before I got back to the E. Sunset connector trail (the steep but short connection from the E. Sunset Way parking lot to the Puget Power Trail) I noticed the little view point on a sunny day. This is looking west over Issaquah and Lake Sammamish:

Spring!

There was quite a crowd this morning. Ken and Wendy were there, along with their son and daughter-in-law from New Jersey (there to visit the newest member of their family, Ken and Wendy’s new grandson via their other son and daughter-in-law) plus Mark and Greg.

Their plan was to hike only up to Stan’s Overlook, since the out-of-towners are not accustomed to hiking on mountains. I left them at Stan’s and continued on towards Grand Prospect (although I turned around a bit before Grand Prospect, it was starting to rain and I had not brought my rain gear). I have said before, I just love the forest above Stan’s and today, on a cloudy, misty day, they were beautiful and mysterious.

The typical northern view along the service road that bypasses the trail below Stan’s was not much of a view today:

Yesterday I was in Snoqualmie babysitting and I was supposed to bring a bag of Easter candy. I forgot – my bad. But Derek was around this morning and I stopped by briefly after the hike to drop off the candy. The kids were there, looking longingly at the candy, but dad said they had to wait until tomorrow.

The cruelty!

Hoping for more hikes next week.

I did a solo hike today. My plan was to hike up to Teneriffe Falls via the standard trail, but take the Connector Trail back to the Mount Teneriffe Trail on the way down. Assuming I could find the connector trail.

Which I did, thanks to my Gaia app. This mapping app showed me where to look but finding the trail – more like a very faint bootpath – was not easy. The intersection is at the point where the standard trail is closest to the stream that cascades downstream from the falls. Even today, with the water running high, I was able to cross without much trouble.

(I will briefly mention the fact that you can get too close to these falls. People have died trying to get just a little bit better of a picture. I am paranoid about falling hundreds of feet onto wet rocks so I stayed back a few feet for the picture above.)

Anyway, finding the “trail” on the other side was not easy. Eventually I got it straightened out and from then on the path was fairly clear. It did intersect the Mount Teneriffe trail, but about 2 miles from the parking lot. I had estimated that taking the connector back would save about .4 mile but instead it added about that distance. I think I will forget this trail for most purposes as it was not all that exciting and added little value.

One nice point about this hike is there are a few spots with a view towards the mountains south of Teneriffe:

From L-R: McClellan Butte, Change Peak, Mount Washington.

I was reminded why I wear sturdy hiking boots – this trail has several very rocky sections:

I wouldn’t want to tackle this stuff with tennis shoes (and I have seen people on this trail and others like it with scant footwear) because it would slice up my feet.

Here is a Google Earth view of my track (blue) today. I went up and then to the right to the falls, then partway back down the track goes left (west) on the connector trail, then back down the Mount Teneriffe Trail.

6.58 miles, 2,545 feet of elevation gain, a decent hike and workout for a Tuesday. (beats working!)

No pictures today, Ken, Mark and Mike and I did the Adventure Trail/Section line hike to the junction with the Nook Trail and back.

We had planned, for the second week in a row, to hike to Granite Lakes, which is about 9 miles, but once again it was raining so hard we decided to do a much shorter hike. We got soaked but not as bad as it would have been had we done Granite Lakes.

I am hoping for some better weather in the next week so I can get back to thrice-weekly outings.

Derek wanted to hike today and he wanted to do something relatively mild because his knee has been acting up and that was just fine with me because I was sick all week (for the second week in a row) and not only did I not hike, I didn’t even do my normal hilly neighborhood walks.

So he suggested nearby Taylor Mountain and it was great. We don’t know the mountain well enough to form a big plan and there are lots of service roads and trails (many of them shared with horses) so we basically just wandered around, with numerous ups and downs for a total of 7.83 miles and 2,365 feet of elevation gain, both fairly respectable numbers. Take a look at our all-over-the-place track, snipped from Google Earth:

Basically we started and ended on the far left (west) at the parking lot. Going out we took a left, into the forest, and wandered around various trails (it looks like spaghetti) and came back down via a service road, the track on the bottom (south). It was really good fun.

I enjoyed this sign, which is one of the least enlightening trail signs I have ever seen:

That’s kind of like pulling up to an intersection and the street sign says ‘street’.

Anyway, Derek’s appearance was brought to us by Jan, AKA ‘Granny’ who was happy to hang out with Finley and Camden while we went out to play. Jill was at work (someone has to be productive, I guess).

A great day, I am hoping my nasty cold is in the past and I can resume my normal spring schedule: hike, hike, and hike some more.

Logistics are important. Jill and Finley are at a Girl Scout camp for the weekend and Derek had planned for his mother to babysit Camden so Derek and I could do a long hike.

But the babysitting did not happen so we downsized the hike and took Camden along. Fun!

We parked near Rattlesnake Lake and went by Christmas Lake to the PTC (Palouse-to-Cascades Trail) for a short jog up to the Cedar Butte trail.

We took the steep way up and the more moderate way down. We saw lots of mountain goat scat (they imported some from the Olympics) along the Cedar Butte trail and, on the way, back, we saw evidence of Beaver Activity:

Slightly cloudy day, not a great view from the top of Cedar Butte:

We had a great time, went about 4.6 miles in 2 hours 20 minutes, not a bad pace, particularly for Derek who was lugging a really big load pretty much the entire way.

Here is an image of our track:

I have had a sterling weekend – I got to babysit Camden on Friday (we saw part of the new Lego movie – Cam did not have the patience to sit through the whole thing), hike on Saturday, have dinner with Brittany Saturday night and join Derek and Cam for another hike today.

Lucky me!

Did a typical Tiger Mountain conditioning hike today, with Mark, Greg and Ken. They went farther than I did – at the junction with the Nook Trail they went up a ways (this is the ultra-steep trail that goes directly up to the summit of Tiger #3) and I turned around.

We met up for coffee afterwards.

I cut my hike short to save my legs for tomorrow – Derek and I are going to go somewhere, we will figure it out in the morning.

Have been sick with a nasty cold all week so this was my first hike since last Sunday. Mark and Ken have also been sick, and Jan tells me the hospital where she works is jammed to the rafters with patients, many of them with a vicious ‘flu that has broken out.

How many people are killed by influenza every year (and recall the devastating pandemic following WWI that killed about 50M world-wide) with no breathless media commentary?

Oh, well, human psychology is beyond my pay grade, but I continue to get my ‘flu shot every year and I wish everyone did.