Our First Hike in Washington

Bradley posting here. Emma and I wanted to go out for a hike last weekend but time ran out and it was postponed until today. We decided on the closest, big hike to home. Mt. Si seems to be pretty popular and we heard it might be packed but when we got there and it was true. There was not a parking spot to be found! We had to park way down the highway and walk to the trail (which is fair enough considering we were there to go for a walk).

The walk started out in the thick of the trees, mossy and green. It was cool but rapidly got hotter. We wore layers and had to strip them all off because we got so super sweaty. There was no point where we were walking on level ground and as we huffed and puffed to get up the mountain we watched people come back down from the top breathing easy and running. We wondered how they handled the hike up, if they too were exhausted.

The summit was full of people but it was a very large, rocky, bald peak. There was enough space, even though there were maybe 100 people scattered about, for us to find a place alone to eat and rest. There was another peak, even higher than ours, that could not obviously be walked up. We read later it's a "class 3 scramble" and falls are "not always fatal" so...maybe we should have tried it. There were people (survivors) up there.

The extra high peak. This is that class 3 scramble that we didn't do.

Emma from our rest station

The way down was way faster! It took about 2 hours to get to the top and the way down was a little over half that to run down. And yes, we did run basically the whole way down. Just like all those other people we saw going down on our way up.

The view down the North Bend. We parked to the left about 90 degrees.

At the bottom we soaked our feet in the freezing cold mountain creek, stretched and drove home. I at a majority of the rest of a loaf of banana bread I bought at George Bakery in North Bend. Good hike.