Wilderness Peak Loop — Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016

Issaquah Alps > Cougar Mountain

This is a great time of year to hike in the Issaquah Alps. The trees have their maximum fall color and enough leaves have fallen that the ground is covered with a bright yellow blanket. This is one of the hikes that I like to do when I'm on call for work because its close to my home and has good cell phone coverage. On the way up we caught up with a group of about 20 Chinese people who were obviously not accustom to hiking. The foot wear was somewhat comical with high heal tennis shoes and black leather dress shoes in the mix. Unfortunately they were spectacularly loud. It was almost as if the older males were having a screaming match to see who was the dominant alpha male. It was very unpleasant. My wife and I passed them (which required some pushing through when they did not respond to multiple "excuse me's"). At that point we practically ran to get away from all the noise and commotion. When we got to the top we met a very nice man named Nick who was responsible for placing the bench(dedicated to his parents) at the peak. Unfortunately we lingered too long because the Chinese group noisily showed up as we were decending. To get away again we changed our route and found a bootleg trail that heads off of the Wilderness Creek trail to the north. It takes off just a few dozen feet from the spur trail that goes to the peak. This very nice bootleg trail eventually comes out to the Eastside trail. We made our way back to the Wilderness Creek trail via Fred's Railroad. The journey down the Wilderness Cliffs trail was now quiet and peaceful Suggestion to folks new to hiking: Please try to speak quietly and enjoy the natural scenery.