Another perfect Day in the alps. Had to stay close to home because I'm on call for work. This works out great since there's good cell coverage everywhere. 

Everything is lush and as green as can be. Not at all crowded since there's no outward views.

I joined a WTA work party at Cougar Mountain today. We started at the Harvey Manning Trailhead. I arrived around 8 AM and parking was plentiful. There are privies available and they are in decent shape. Our work for the day mostly involved improving drainage on the Lost Beagle Trail, with one group working on a problematic muddy area and the other securing a culvert with rocks and gravel. When the work party ended around 2 PM, the parking area was full. 

After the work party, I took advantage of the good weather and decided to hike a bit. From the parking area, my hike was a counterclockwise loop involving all of the trails named in the title of this trip report. All of the trails are in good shape and are mostly dry with no blocking obstacles of note. This route has a good variety of up and down with flat stretches of trail. It's worth noting that the Harvey Manning Trailhead is the highest trailhead on Cougar Mountain so pretty much everything is down from the trailhead and of course, everything is up on your return trip. My loop hike took about 2 hours and Strava noted the distance to be about 4.5 miles. I also noticed that the bugs were out in force today and were generally abundant whenever we stopped moving during the work party but were not bad while I was hiking. So I guess the key is to keep moving! 

All the trails are well signed but it's always good to have a map handy. There is a large map at the trailhead you can take a picture of to reference during your hike or you can download one at this link: 

https://aqua.kingcounty.gov/gis/web/VMC/recreation/BCT_CougarMtn_brochure.pdf

April 3, 2025: Update: All down logs/trees have been dealt with.  Other than some mud, the trails are in excellent condition.  Flowers of colt's foot are in their prime as are yellow violets; June plum, miner's lettuce, and salmon berry are beginning to flower.The replanting has begun near the trailhead.

March 25: I have enjoyed this trail complex three times this late winter/early spring (March 7, 14, and 25).  Between March 14 and 25, I was surprised to find three very large trees down and across the trail at about 0.85 miles in the Big Tree Ridge trail (last switchback before the flat section before the junction with the Precipice trail) (see Figure 1).  It was not until I got above this obstacle that I was able to unravel how it happened and why there was such a complex of stems and branches at the point in the switchback where I first encountered this new and recent tree fall.  A very large Douglas-fir on the east side of the trail along the relatively flat ridge top had gone over and taken two large western hemlock trees, situated on the west side and down slope, including their root wads over so that three robust sections of each tree's crown was now embracing this section of the trail.  As I had a large dog on a leash, I opted to bushwack up the steep hillside rather than have dog, leash, and me fighting the stems and branches.  Raised the old heart rate!  I had assumed that all the big tree damage, done during the bomb cyclone, was in the past (see Figure 2).  It wasn't.

In spite of these obstacles (nothing kills a walking rhythm liked down trees or high water flows in streams), it was a great hike on a very warm spring day with lots of flowers emerging (especially Colt's Foot and June Plum).

The other interesting change that has occurred and that I first witnessed on my March 7 hike (previous last hike had been on November 15, 2024) is all the deciduous tree thinning that has occurred in the bottom 0.3 miles of the trail.  The obvious reason is the endeavor to add species and structural diversity to this relatively young, dense red alder -- bigleaf maple forest (with some black cottonwood and bitter cherry).  I wish that they had not cut down the robust bitter cherry tree (these are becoming scarcer without fire or clearcuts) and I think they are going to find that when the remaining hardwoods leaf out that there is more shade that they had hoped for (see Figure 3).  Some suggestions to deal with the shade, plant western hemlock, grand fir, and in the most humid places, but not in constant water, Sitka spruce or if you going to stay with just Douglas-fir (big mistake if you are seeking species diversity), cut more hardwoods down.  You could also girdle trees that would prevent leaf retention and result in wood that came down at a later time (3 to 10 years).  However, there is a surprising amount of carbon on the forest floor now -- as it decomposes, the decomposers will be very strong competitors with the newly planted trees for nitrogen.

RWHG had a great loop hike at Cougar Mountain Regional Park today. We pulled into the Redtown Th at 9:00 and were on the trail by 9:30. It was 28 degrees with clear blue skies. The parking lot was quite busy on Martin Luther King Day even though the trails didn’t seem all that crowded. We planned our route to take busier trails first and less crowded on our way back to the TH Lot. The Porta Potties at Red Town, Harvey Manning and Sky Country Th’s all were relatively clean with TP, seat covers and hand sanitizer.  Our 7.6 mile loop hike followed: Red Town, Cave Hole, Coal Creek Falls, Quarry, Fred’s Railroad, East Fork, Tibbett’s Marsh, Shangri La, Lost Beagle, Coyote Creek, Cave Hole, Old Man’s, Nike Horse, Military Road, Sky Country, Red Town Creek and back to the TH. All the trails were complete solid frost heaves in the early morning and shady areas all day long. After our lunch at the Million Dollar Pagoda some of the trails made your boots quite muddy. Wildlife sightings were limited to a few birds. We saw robins, juncos, creepers and bush tits. Hair icy was all along our route and a few mushrooms were still looking good despite the freeze. Redtown and Sky Country Th lots were jammed when we walked by and pulled of the lot just before 2:00. Another fantastic day out in nature with friends.

This is first time that I've hike this trail since the Nov 20th windstorm.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that there wasn't much wind damage on this part of Cougar Mountain.  There are just a few windfall to negotiate on the lower trail and the rest of the way has all been cleared by the excellent King Co crews.

Fantastic Erratic is looking pretty fantastic.  This is such a cool feature.  It was carried here on the huge Cordilleran ice sheet from somewhere deep in  Canada about 15,000 years ago.  On geologic scales, 15,000 years is just a blink of an eye.  It is mind boggling to imagine how Puget Sound would have looked as it was covered with a 2000 ft thick river of ice.  

5.8 miles 1300 ft