Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Mt. Si stares at me every time I leave my house and mocks me for never having been to the top. It’s a 4 mile hike to the top that includes a 4000 foot ascent. I’ve put it off in the past because I felt like it was a bit out of my league, but this summer, it will happen. To that end, we put the date on the calendar (June 20) so we have something to train for. In reality, I think I could probably will my way to the top of Si right now, but it wouldn’t be pretty. I’d rather get to the top and feel good about myself.

Last Saturday was the first hike of the season to start getting ready for Si. Tim, MattW, Tyla and I headed up Tiger with Oskar and Reiko leading the way. While I haven’t checked the GPS data yet, I feel like we made decent time. I discovered that the lack of regular skiing this winter has left me in a lot worse shape than I thought. I think I’m going to need to supplement the training hikes with some exercise bike.

If the Mt. Si hike goes really well, I may look into finally making it up to Camp Muir. It is also 4 miles/4000 feet but it starts at 6000 feet so oxygen is a bit more hard to find. The end of the hike is also over a permanent snowfield which adds complexity.

There are five new photos from our hike tagged as Tiger Mountain.

What a weekend! As I mentioned in the last post, the whole crew headed to Fort Flagler State Park on the northeast part of the Olympic Peninsula. Tim, Chelsea and I got there on Thursday night. We set up the tents, had a quick fire and then headed for bed.

On Friday we explored the beach area a bit and played a lot of cornhole. Throughout the evening, Tyla, Andy, Stephanie, Matt and Laura arrived. For dinner on Friday, we took our Mexican aluminum foil food packets down to the beach and ate in front of a gorgeous sunset.

Saturday was the day for the big hike through many of the old fort installations. It's hard to imagine the amount of firepower that was aimed out into the Puget Sound. I would not have wanted to be on the receiving end. It's no wonder that the bunkers are all still in tact. I don't know how you would have gotten close enough to take them out. We followed that hike up with cornhole, another gorgeous sunset, and some great dinner courtesy of Laura.

On Sunday we packed up the campsite, spent a few more hours walking along the beach at low tide and finally headed home. We had to wait over an hour for the ferry back, but it was a smooth trip. I'm sure ferry rides get boring after a while, but it's still pretty new to me and you can usually find me out on the observation decks.

With eight people at the site, it was the biggest camping trip I've had out here. From early morning walks on the beach to late night chats around the campfire, it looked like everyone was having a great time. There were well over 1000 photos snapped on various cameras throughout the trip. I've picked through the ones that Chelsea and I took and posted some in the gallery. A few of my favorites are shown below.

Tim and I met at the main Tiger Mountain trailhead after work yesterday for a quick climb up the mountain. I decided to make the trip a bit tougher on myself and added two gallons of water to my backpack. (If you watch Good Eats you'll know that "a pint is a pound the world around" so it's easy to figure out that a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds.)

We were on a personal record setting pace. We stopped three times for about 5 minutes total and were on pace to make the summit in just over an hour. When we got about a half mile from the top, a storm started to roll in. That's right, a thunderstorm in Seattle. We've been having a bunch of them the past couple days. We sat out on the deck the other night watching the lightning. It's a very rare site around here, but it's not one that I really wanted to see on top of a mountain. We made it to about 0.3 miles from the summit when I finally caved and told Tim I wanted to turn around. Everyone coming down from the top said it was getting nasty up there and I really didn't want to be standing on top of a mountain in a lightning storm. As it turns out, we might have been ok since the storm didn't go directly over head. We got a little wet on the way down but nothing serious thanks to the thick canopy overhead.

I concluded carrying an extra 16 pounds is a great incentive to lose weight. I kept thinking "I should just pour out one of them. Eight pounds less would feel so good. Wait, I could just lose 8 pounds. Then I would feel this much better all the time." I'm happy to say I made it through the entire hike without reducing my load, but it was a big challenge.

On Friday afternoon, Tim, Chelsea, Andy, Stephanie and I headed down the road to Kanaskat-Palmer State Park. It's less than an hour from home near Black Diamond and Enumclaw. The park itself wasn't all that special, but we had a nice campsite and a lot of laughs.

As we sat around the fire on Friday night, somebody thought they heard something. Flashlights flipped on and a pair of glowing eyes stared back from the edge of our campsite. It was a full grown raccoon. We scared it away, but it reappeared three more times that night in different parts of the campsite. On Saturday, we peed a perimeter around the campsite. Did it work? I don't know but we only saw the raccoon once on Saturday night and it didn't get as close as before. Also, it was fun to try to pee all the way around the campsite.

Other than peeing, we went on a little hike on Saturday. The park borders the Green River rapids. While the trail didn't give us great views, it was pretty impressive. They have class II, III, and IV rapids, and it was neat to see them up close.

We played a little bocce ball and a lot of cornhole. Our games of cornhole usually get a lot of attention from other campers, but this time was a little different. We only got two comments. One was a little kid riding past who said, "They're still playing that game?!" and an older lady who said, "Oh, I see, you have to drink when they get it in the hole. Now I like it."

A little rain on Saturday night made for a wet night, but we had strung some tarps up over the tents to help keep us dry and they worked fairly well.

All in all, I'd say it was a very successful start to the camping season!

Pictures are available under Outdoors > Kanaskat-Palmer State Park.

It just occurred to me that this title would work for a golfing post, but that's not what this is about. On Sunday afternoon, I headed down to Tiger Mountain as soon as I got home from church. It was 70 degrees and sunny so the place was busier than I've ever seen it before. Thankfully I had spent some time with the map the night before and figured out a route that I thought would avoid the crowds.

Tiger Mountain is made up of a series of peaks and my route took me across all three of the biggest peaks which are numbered 1, 2 and 3 from east to west. The photo above is taken from the street that leads away from my house. The main trail up the mountain only goes to peak 3 and it feels like walking through a busy mall because it's so crowded and loud. My route headed up the eastern side of the mountain: High Point Trail, Dwight's Way, Lingering Loop Trail, Tiger Mountain Trail, east at Fred's Corner, north on West Tiger No 1 Trail, then west along the peaks trail and then straight down on the cable line trail. All in all it was 6.5 miles and 2700' total vertical gain.

I saw maybe five or six groups all the way up to peak 1 and across to peak 3. When I got about two tenths of a mile from peak 3 I started to hear the whoops and screams from the huge crowd (30+ people) on top of the main trail.

It was my first time on the other two peaks and I was incredibly impressed. The east side of the mountain offers a very different feeling and peak 1 has an incredible view. It was hazy but I could see a long way south, west to the sound, and northwest to Seattle and Bellevue. I was also looking down on a bunch of the paragliders that launch from the southwest side of the mountain.

On the hike up I was thinking about the numbers from Lost and trying to figure out if I could make 4 8 15 16 23 42 spell something interesting. About that time, I heard voices coming through the woods. I rounded a corner and saw a radio tower! A few minutes down the trail and I came up to a building that was surrounded by a fence carrying signs about staying out due to some weird radiation from the towers. Luckily I didn't see any polar bears.

It was a long trip and wore me out. Other than the 30 minutes I spent on top of peak 1 taking pictures and trying to call Dad for Father's Day, I only stopped for a total of 20 minutes on the entire hike. It's great to get out there alone with my thoughts and enjoy some scenery.

Photos from the trip are in Outdoors > Tiger Mountain (the first five are from this hike.) And of course there is a new panoramic photo from this trip. I hiked up with a small tripod in my backpack to help with this one. It came out fairly well, but unfortunately the dark spot on the lens inside my camera is getting worse. I've noticed it for a while but it's to the point where I'm thinking of replacing the camera. I've tried to edit it out of the photos. That's a story for another day though. Click on the panorama below for the full size image.

On Saturday, I headed to Stevens Pass to hike along the Iron Goat Trail. This trail follows the old railroad bed and contains numerous old concrete snowsheds, concrete walls to protect the wooden snowsheds, and tunnels. This also happens to be the spot of the deadliest avalanche in American history which wiped out a train in 1910 killing nearly 100 people. Dad, Luke and I have all read a book about this called The White Cascade. It's good reading, but if you want the short version, you can read this newspaper article which is a decent summary.

My hike started at the Windy Point trailhead which is about in the middle of the Iron Goat Trail. There are some ADA accessible trails, but I headed up a series of switchbacks to get straight up to the railroad grade. Unfortuantely, on the way up I missed one of the switchbacks and ended up on a large scree field. I figured the trail had been washed away by an avalanche and I knew the railroad grade was probably at the top of the scree field. So why not hike straight up? Well this probably was one of the dumber moves I've made while hiking. The field was about 500 feet long and very steep. I knocked many boulders loose on my climb up but eventually made it to the top. I was hoping that I would find the trail on the way down so I didn't have to try to down-climb that field.

Once I reached the railroad bed, I headed east and quickly came to the west end of the Windy Point tunnel. This is about 3 miles west of Wellington where the train was hit by the avalanche. A short hike around the tunnel (it's not safe to go through it anymore) brought me to Windy Point which offers a nice view of the pass. A group of volunteers and some rangers were there eating lunch so I chatted with them for a bit before heading on.

My plan was to hike 2.5 miles from there up to Wellington, but at about 0.4 miles, I started to hit snow. That quickly transitioned to full snow. While it's not terribly hard to hike through, I kept breaking through spots where streams of water were running underneath. I decided to turn back and avoid 4 more miles (2 each way) of that kind of hike.

After finding the trail down which avoided the scree field, I got to my car and drove to the top of the pass. Tye Road near the top of the pass leads down to Wellington and it's a short hike from that parking area to the scene of the disaster. Unfortunately that road is still covered in 3-4 feet of snow so I wasn't able to make any progress.

Viewing of the Wellington area will have to wait until another day later in the year, but it was still great to hike along the trail. Railroad spikes and old scraps of iron are easily found all over the trail. It's so nice to see it all preserved there and not carted off by all the hikers!

On the way back down US 2, I stopped on the side of the road to see if I could figure out where Wellington was. While I'm not sure I found that spot, I did see the concrete snowshed which was just west of Wellington. It also looked like the trail had a bit less snow on it near the east end so I wonder what would have happened if I had kept hiking. Oh well, that mystery will have to wait for another sunny weekend!

Photos are available under Outdoors > Iron Goat Trail. I tried to give some description on each of the pictures.

On Sunday, Rachel and I met at the Cougar Mountain trailhead for an afternoon hike. The weather was perfect for hiking – 65 and sunny. The hike came from a book of local hikes that Tim bought last summer. It's the first one in the book (seemed like a good place to start.) While there wasn't a lot of great scenic views, it was a good workout and a nice chance to chat for a few hours. We made the 6.2 mile hike with 1700 miles feet of cumulative elevation gain in exactly three hours.

I was pretty excited to reach the peak and see what was in store. Unfortunately, I still don't know because there is absolutely no view. It's just the highest point on the hill and it's surrounded by trees so you can't see anything. There was a couple up there who had just moved to Seattle from Chicago. We shared a laugh about the anticlimactic summit and then they took off.

Rachel grabbed the notebook out of the tuperware box and proceeded to read through entries from previous hikers. Along with various comments about people who claimed to have peed on the pen, there were some interesting notes. The first was something to the effect of: "Been here for three months. Running out of food and water and the squirrels have stopped talking to me." The longest entry (three pages!) was from a 24 year old girl who was in love with her 57 year old professor. She was on a hike to figure out what it all meant and straighten things out in her head. I feel like she probably failed.

I'm hoping that there will be many more hikes this summer so I have started a hiking photo gallery. Pictures from this hike are available in the gallery.

UPDATE: Thanks to Dad for catching my units error. It's probably not that surprising if you remember that I worked for Lockheed.