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Quick stroll around Cougar Mountain on a lovely day. Headed to the Sky Country trailhead around 11am on a Saturday and though we grabbed the last spot in the car lot, there was plenty of parking in the RV (?) lot and many folks coming and going. 

The trails were in good condition with many folks and families enjoying the nice, summer weather. Check out the MaoVador's trip report to see the trails we covered.

Our ultimate goal was the Million Dollar view. The vegetation is growing fast and the view is close to being obscured. Check it out before it's gone!

Stats: 4.83 miles, 623 elevation gain, 1 hour 28 minutes, 3.3 mph average moving speed.

Hit up the Cougar Mountain area for a quick walkabout before heading to a concert in the evening.

Started at the Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park trailhead and headed out on the Nike Horse trail to the field that was once Nike Site S-20 before connecting with the Cave Hole trail. 

We totally missed the small cave holes due to all the underbrush, but didn't realize until we were on the By Pass trail, so we didn't go back to look for them. Kept following the trails with our ultimate destination of the Million Dollar Pergola. 

Made it there pretty quickly as all the trails are very well maintained, before doing the customer stop at the "summit" of Cougar Mountain, before taking Shangri-La and Coyote Creek back to the trailhead.

Overall: 4.83 miles, 623' vertical, 1:41:26 total time with breaks

Awesome trail! No running water this time (all dried up), so I suggest bringing some for your pup if they’re tagging along. ALSO: for any hiking newbies, some trails ( like shangri la) just stop at housing developments and it’s very disheartening/anticlimactic so I highly recommend planning to attach a loop trail to it so that the whole thing becomes a continuous loop :).

Near 11:30 today, I parked at the Big Tree Ridge Trailhead and noted 5 cars, two of which left as I parked (see below, Tahoe arrived after I had begun hiking).  Weather was cloudy, misty, and the foliage and ground were damp.  The facility is clean, the signage is excellent, and the trail is in good condition with occasional very recent improvements in the bed and drainage off the trail.  Just before the Big Tree Ridge Trail reaches its upper junction, there was a considerable improvement and the formation of a new trail around the root-wad of a winter up-rooted large Douglas-fir tree that took the old trail bed with it. 

I made a series of figure eights as I wandered from the trailhead to the top and back -- I really enjoy the extraordinary vigor of the understory plants with Pacific waterleaf being the shortest, then Siberian miner's lettuce, leaves of colt's foot (vying with devil's club and bigleaf maple for having the largest leaf), and bleeding heart, then fragrant fringecup and piggy-back plant, then bracken, lady, and sword ferns, then stinging nettles (some reaching 6 feet), red currant, and salmonberry, then devil's club, and finally elderberry, hazelnut, vine maple -- so thick, lush, and green. There many other plants!

The streams are drying up.  The dog with me was able to find both running water and deep enough pools to drink from at three different points stretched and nicely spaced along our 7.82 mile hike.  We did something we should not have as we walked the connector trail between the Harvey Manning Park at Talus and the Big Tree trail on our descent (involved some ascent).  There is a lot of work to do on this trail before it will be open. For me, what was truly discouraging were the number of very old and large Douglas-fir, western hemlock, and especially large western red cedar that were blown down in early December.  If we examine our suburban and urban parks, they are really postage stamps on the original envelope of forests, meadows, and grasslands that made up the landscape of the Pacific Northwest.  Loss of these time and size monarchs from an already diminished pool is discouraging.

There is an interesting experiment occurring in the first part of the Big Tree Ridge Trail.  The first couple of hundred feet of vertical were previously spent in a relatively young and very dense second growth stand of red alder, bitter cherry, black cottonwood and bigleaf maple (originated mostly from stump sprouts).  Previous attempts (as well as natural occurrences) to increase the coverage by evergreen species (e.g., western redcedar) mostly failed as inadequate light and heavy herbivory killed them.  This winter the stand was thinned by at least 50% removal.  There is an amazing amount of down, but well-organized wood and woody debris.  I am interested to see how this treatment plays out (it would have been an excellent silvicultural exercise for UW students in SEFS, but they were not contacted).

The well organized wood from the silvicultural treatment and even the spot-wise and scattered, but much more impressive, the downed wood, branches, and needles from the wind-storm form an interesting threat.  These disturbances have potentially provided considerable fuel for a fire.  As the summer progresses and these and other fuels dry, a fire would start easily and with strong winds move rapidly.  I have not seen much discussion of this potential for the wind-stormed damaged forests of the Puget Sound Area.

For a plant nerd, this hike rivals subalpine and alpine and eastside hikes.  However, context makes the others win almost every time.

Ps: A Tahoe with California plates had two of its right side windows broken completely.  No other cars had damage in the trailhead lot.

Hiked this trail today with a friend.  We started at the Big Tree Ridge TH, hiking up the series of switchbacks up the trail that eventually connected to Red Cedars Trail.  The trail flattened up a bit once we reached Surprise Creek and Shangri La Trails.  We reached Harvey Manning TH aka Anti Aircraft Peak TH and had a snack at a picnic table.  Trail conditions were good and unremarkable.  The signage is also clear and well marked at the junctions.  Noted that Precipice Bottom Trail is still closed is still closed d/t storm damage to a bridge.  We spotted a cool colored banana slug and a snail.  Some wild flowers are in bloom.  We also ran into a WTA led youth trail crew working on tread on the way back to Big Tree TH and said hi to my fellow trail crew folks.  Looking forward to explore more of the Cougar Mt. trail system in the future.  Happy trails!

**Check out vlog link to my Youtube channel below