Mount Si (old trail)

Ideal conditions on Mt Si right now. Set out on Little Si trail w/ Woody & his son Luke. Took the second Boulder Garden Loop fork to the right & after 3/4 mile or so the Old Si trail is to the left. Soon after I noticed a 35 pound weight wedged into the rock wall. Looks like somebody made quite the effort to put it in there. This trail is a little bit more direct & steeper than the main Si trail. Also far less crowded. We saw 2 others going up & just a few coming down. When the Old Si trail comes real close to the main trail (just after 3 miles or so) we opted to go over to the main trail & hike that trail the rest of the way up. No snow on the trail up to Haystack Basin. A little snow on trail near the base of the Haystack. We opted to ascend the Haystack since it was dry all the way up. Gorgeous views on this bluebird day. Mt Baker & Glacier Peak to the north. Mt Rainier to the south. Olympics to west w/ Seattle & Bellevue in foreground. And many other still snow-covered lower peaks to east along Snoqualmie corridor. Met a nice guy named Brandon going up to the Haystack. He was from Atlanta out here for work conference for a few days. His Seattle workmates recommended Mt Si to him. Good choice for this day. Cheers Brandon if you read this - hope you caught up w/ your workmates at the pubs in Seattle. We spent about 1/2 hour at the top. Only 4 of us for awhile until others showed up. As we were coming down the chute, quite a few people were coming up. With the traffic jam it was almost reminiscent of the Hillary Step on Everest! We descended the Old Si trail and went left at Boulder Garden Loop trail to complete the loop. A stop at Scott's Dairy Freeze in North Bend completed a great day.