My party of two hiked a nice lollipop loop today from the Mount Si Trailhead. Overall about 11.5 miles in 7 hrs, with 4000' of elevation gain.
ROUTE: We started up the regular Mount Si Trail, then took the Douglas Fir Trail to the next junction (North's Road), where we cut up to the Mount Si Old Trail. We followed the old trail to the top, then passed the Haystack and took the Si-Teneriffe connector over to the Mount Teneriffe Trail. We followed this down to the next junction and took a side trip to visit Teneriffe Falls. Returning to the Mount Teneriffe Trail, we continued down to the Roaring Creek Trail, which we then followed back to the Mount Si Trail and down to the car.
Teneriffe Falls is running pretty good now, and there is no snow at the falls.
TH: Nothing much to report, there are plenty of potholes in the parking lot. Plenty of people hiking the area today, there were around 20 cars in the parking lot when we started at 8:30.
BLOWDOWNS: Most of the trails had plenty of small branches on them, but we didn't encounter many serious blowdowns. The main exception was on the North's Road Trail - at least 20-30 blowdowns here, but fortunately almost all are step-overs.
SNOW: Started at about 3000' on the Mount Si Old Trail. There was about 5-6" of snow in the summit areas of Mount Si and through most of the connector trail toward Teneriffe. Snow gradually lessened on our way down the Teneriffe Trail, until it disappeared completely at about 2800'. Most of the snow was new and we laid in the first set of tracks across the connector trail this morning.
GEAR: Gaiters were helpful in the deeper snow on the Si-Teneriffe Connector, but you could get by without them now that the trail has been tracked out a bit. Spikes were not strictly needed, except to climb over the boulders at the south-facing Mount Si viewpoint. But that was mainly because the snow was new and providing good traction. It will get more slippery as it gets tracked out, so spikes are definitely recommended. Snowshoes would have been overkill today.
Comments