Mount Si — Friday, Mar. 24, 2000

Snoqualmie Region > North Bend Area

Well, it all started while I was twiddling my thumbs sitting through a boring meeting on Saturday morning. I thought to myself, ""this sucks, let's go hiking!"" (""let's"" being me and my brain) So I did. It's been late December since I went up the Mt. Si trail and I've been wanting to get a good long hiking workout for months now. I've been doing Tiger Mountain probably every other weekend, but needless to say, that was getting old. So I decided to brave the lingering snow, lots of innexperienced people, and the possibility of rain, and I went to Mt. Si I got to the parking lot at around 1:45 in the afternoon hoping to make it back before dark. As always, the first half mile of the trail is in much worse condition than the rest of it. There is a sizeable creek for part of the way. After that, there were no problems on the trail except for the occasional expected mud. By some chance, I met some guys from my Boy Scout troop coming down as I was going up. It was really weird. Anyway, there is no snow to speak of until the last half mile of trail. It is occasionally VERY SLICK AND ICY. I was able to do fairly well because I have a hiking stick. Just find irregularities in the surface and stay to one side of the trail in the less compacted snow. It worked well to use trees to pull me up at times. Just go slow and be careful. I made it to the top of the main trail (that big weird rock garden) and there was very little snow on the rocks so I scrambled up on top of a big heap of rocks and had lots of M&Ms. It was great. It was fairly cold up there and I found myself needing the long underwear and wool jacket I had on. If the sun ever had fully come out, I would have been in sore need of sunglasses due to the glare off the snow and clouds. Just as I started my way down from the top, I passed a couple that was a little uneasy about the snow. I confidently strutted past them and promptly fell right on my ass in the snow. Fortunatly only my pride was hurt and I continued in good spirits proceeding to slip, trip, slide, and fall at least three more times in that snow covered half mile. I never did feel in danger and it was really more comical than nerve racking. As long as you go up expecting and accepting the fact that you will fall on your ass, you'll be just fine. I got to the trailhead easily before dark, but was in quite a bit of pain considering I hadn't hiked more than four miles since December. I still felt good about the fact that I made it to 4000 feet on my own power in March.