decidedlyodd

I went hiking up Mount Si today. Click below to see the full post for details and lots of pictures.

This morning I met up with 3 other guys to go hiking. Originally, our plan was to hike ‘Little Si’ which is not as high as the full blown Mount Si. We ended up carpooling with me driving. Upon arriving at the Little Si trailhead, all the parking was taking. Undaunted we decided to drive down to the Mount Si trailhead instead. From there we hiked up several thousand feet in about an hour and a half. While it wasn’t raining, the rainstorm from yesterday had dropped lots of snow overnight higher up on the mountain. There was none at the bottom, but at a certain point there was quite a bit of snow. Still, it wasn’t particularly cold out so the snow was melting rapidly. Because it was in the trees which hung over the trail, it often seemed like it was raining. Here’s a shot of the trail probably more than half way up:

Eventually, we reached the top where we climbed up some rocks to reach another short trail:

That trail took us close to the summit, where we ate lunch in the snow and fog:

Behind where we ate lunch was the haystack, which I think is the actual highest point on the mountain:

To get to top required some scrambling, so only one guy actually went up to the very top. On the way back down, we made a wrong turn but we got to see some cool icicles:

Back down the mountain a ways, there was actually a view of the valley floor and a mountain on the other side of it:

After we got back to the trailhead, we got back on the road. We drove for a bit before stopping to take pictures of the mountain from the valley:

As you can see, it was sunny at this point on the top of the mountain. If only we had waited a bit longer at the top, but it was getting cold up there. After getting back on the road, we went to Snoqualmie Falls which was nearby:

There was quite a bit of water in the falls today. The spray was getting caught by the wind and brought up to the viewing platform even. From there, we went into Redmond for lunch before returning to Seattle.

It was a great hike. I had a great time and got to know some cool guys a lot better. Score one for getting involved with Outventures!

More pictures are here.