Attempting to recreate the classic 1988 challenge, we set out to traverse across the full width of Tiger, Squak, and Cougar Mountain parks. This was a long day, 12-1/2 hours (including a lengthy stop for lunch between Tiger and Squak Mountains), covering 25 miles and 5600' of total elevation gain. We entered the parks at the Tiger Mountain Trail trailhead in Hobart, at Tiger Mountain's southernmost entrance, traversed over the tops of Tiger Middle Summit, Squak Mountain Central Peak, and Wilderness Peak (Cougar Mountain), then exited at the Red Town Trailhead in Newcastle.
We spent time on quite a few different "official" trails:
Tiger Mountain: Tiger Mountain Trail, Middle Tiger Trail, Main Tiger Mountain Road, 15 Mile Railroad Grade, Hidden Forest Trail, One View Trail, Poo Poo Point Trail, High School Trail.
Squak Mountain: Sycamore Access Trail, East Ridge Trail, Phil's Creek Trail, Summit Trail, Squak Mountain Road Southeast, a bit of unnamed trail, Bullitt Fireplace Trail, West Access Trail, to the Route 900 Trailhead.
Cougar Mountain: Squak Mountain Connector Trail, Wilderness Cliffs Trail, Whittaker Wilderness Peak Trail, Shy Bear Trail, Fred's Railroad Trail, Quarry Trail, Coal Creek Falls Trail, Cave Hole Trail, Red Town Trail.
The day started strong, about 6:30am, from the not-much-used and easy-to-miss southern Tiger Mountain Trailhead in Hobart, and fairly quickly we obtained the first of three summits for the day. Middle Tiger Summit is not especially overwhelming. It's heavily forested (for now; logging operations are planned here in the very near future, I believe), so there is no view to speak of, and it's just a high point in the trail marked with a rock cairn. At 2608', it isn't actually the highest point in the park -- I think East Tiger Summit at 2995' has that distinction -- so arguably the traverse should have gone over East Tiger. However, our understanding of the classic route is that Middle Tiger was the primary traverse objective, so that's what we did.
Shortly afterwards, at mile 6, along the Main Tiger Mountain Road, we encountered a WTA work party just getting started. We stopped to say hello, recognized a familiar face or two, then moved along.
Then came the "15 Mile Railroad Grade." It's not at 15 miles for our route, but that figure appears on a number of landmarks in this part of the park. There is practically no evidence that this once was a railroad route, as today's it's very wild, one of the "wildest" parts of this otherwise suburban park. This part of the trail is relatively flat, so that's the railroad grade aspect, but today the trail is completely overgrown with berries, goat's beard, and devil's club. Although it wasn't raining, we quickly got soaked just from pushing through all the wet brush, enough so that at one point my phone in my pocket got perhaps a bit too wet and shut itself down into emergency mode for at least 10 minutes (which led to a gap in my route tracking, so the stats are a bit short of actuality). The trail does exist underfoot, you just have to look hard to find it! Then every now and then you come across a wooden footbridge over a bit of stream crossing, and even once a full-on trestle bridge in great shape, so it can't have been that long ago that this trail was maintained. It's a beautiful section of trail, some great lush forest, but it's sorely in need of brushing.
After a couple miles of bushwhacking, we connected with the Hidden Forest Trail (also overgrown), which led steeply uphill to rejoin the classic Tiger Mountain Trail, close to the junction with One View Trail. Yes, we could have just stayed on that, and I'm sure that's what most people do, but despite the overgrowth, the 15 Mile Railroad Grade was an interesting diversion, and I hope it gets some love.
From here it's a steady downhill to Issaquah High School, along very popular routes, so we started to see people on the trails (other than the work party) for the first time of the day. Here we were met by W with hot coffee and cold pizza, and it was a nice break before continuing on to Squak Mountain.
After walking a couple blocks through Issaquah residential streets, the Sycamore Access Trail starts on a narrow right-of-way between two houses. Very quickly, though, we left civilization behind, and the trail heads very steeply up the east side of Squak Mountain. At this point we regretted the pizza, as it just became a lead weight in our bellies, and we realized it was probably not the ideal "power" nutrition. We met a few folks on this trail, but not many, until we gained the summit of Central Peak at 2028', which is marked by the namesake of this park: a big radio tower. Most people come to this from the other side, so our gradual descent after the peak was more populous, going by such famous landmarks as the Bullitt Fireplace, then winding down to a small trailhead along the side of state highway 900.
It was only a short walk along the narrow shoulder of the highway (and a quick dash across) to find the Cougar Mountain trailhead, but this was easily the most dangerous and least fun part of the day.
And then we began another steep-ish climb up to the high point of Cougar: Wilderness Peak, at 1621'. Here we found a much-appreciated bench seat to take a rest and eat a sandwich (which greatly improved the nutrition situation over the pizza), while appreciating the bushido quote engraved into the bench and signing the summit register (this was the only one of the three to have a register). We took a few minutes to read through the many entries from earlier in the day, realizing that apparently this is a more popular hiking destination than I had thought, though of course by this time it was 5:30pm, so most people are done with their hikes, while we still had miles to go.
After this, the route is a steady and mostly gradual descent to the western end of the park, for which we were grateful. It started to rain a little before we attained Shy Bear Pass -- we had seen only a few sprinkles earlier, and even some sunshine -- and we even heard some thunder in the distance. Then it began to pour down in a torrent, soaking us despite our gear. We reached Coal Creek Falls, and I was amazed to see it as only a trickle, not the more voluminous falls I remembered from earlier hikes. This was also the first time I had ever seen the falls with no one else around, which was likely due to the rain and the lateness of the day.
Not long after Coal Creek, we reached the Red Town Trailhead at about 7:00pm, where we were able to stand under a tiny shelter while awaiting W who was on her way to pick us up. The rain let up just as she arrived, so we could change out of boots and load packs into the car without making things wetter than they already were, and we congratulated ourselves on a successful conclusion to what had been a little over a year of training for this event.
All in all, most of the trails are in good or even great shape, with the exception of the 15 Mile Railroad Grade. That said, I'd still recommend exploring that underutilized part of the Tiger Mountain Park.
Comments
stever on Issaquah Alps Grand Traverse
Great hike and report. Awesome job! SR
Posted by:
stever on Jun 19, 2023 12:01 PM